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Religious reasons in the public sphere: an empirical study of religious actors’ argumentative patterns in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2012

André Bächtiger ,
Judith Könemann ,
Ansgar Jödicke  and
Dominik Hangartner
André Bächtiger*
Affiliation:
Swiss National Science Foundation Research Professor, Institute for Political Science, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
Judith Könemann
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Catholic Theology, University of Münster, Germany
Ansgar Jödicke
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, Department of Religious Studies, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Dominik Hangartner
Affiliation:
Lecturer, London School of Economics, Methodology Institute, London UK, and University of Zurich, Department of Political Science, Zurich, Switzerland
*
*E-mails: [email protected]
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Abstract

The ‘going public’ of religious actors is taking central stage both in religious studies and political philosophy. But this ‘going public’ of religious actors is controversial. The debate revolves around the question of whether religious actors must frame their religious convictions in terms of secular reasons or whether they should be allowed to introduce religiously grounded beliefs into public political argument without constraints. Despite vigorous and ongoing debate, there is little systematic and empirical research on this question. This article focuses on the public statements of religious actors in the context of Swiss direct democratic votes on abortion and immigration. Our empirical findings reveal an interesting gap: while many political philosophers and religious thinkers have moved to a position where religious actors can – and even should – openly employ religious arguments, the practice of religious actors in Switzerland is different. The larger denominations of Catholics and Protestants especially have a tendency to use a great amount of secular vocabulary. In addition, our findings also reveal that the use of religious or secular reasons varies considerably according to different issues, different media types (religious vs. secular press), different religious traditions, different alliance structures, and different media genres, while there is no clear time trend.

Keywords

religionpolitical philosophyargumentation
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 105 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2012

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