Further thoughts on talking to the unreasonable

In ‘When God Commands Disobedience’ (Clayton and Stevens 2014) we address the question of how Rawlsian political liberals should treat the religiously unreasonable. The religiously unreasonable are those who, for reasons of religious faith or perceived divine command, reject one or more of the fundamental principles of society as a cooperative enterprise between free and equal people, and who may seek to change (or even punish) the political community in line with their comprehensive religious beliefs. We argue, first, that political liberals have weighty reasons to engage with the unreasonable. However, second, following Hobbes (1991) in observing that divine law trumps law enacted by humans, we argue that the response to those who claim to have theistic reasons for acts that are unreasonable by liberal standards must be a theological one: political liberals must be prepared to offer a direct religious response. They must offer reasons aimed at establishing that the unreasonable are mistaken about the political implications of their religious doctrine or about the soundness of the particular religious doctrine they affirm.