Senior Fellow Jonathan Chaplin writes, "a forceful recent opinion on law and religion by Lord Justice Laws in a religious discrimination case has drawn renewed attention to two principles often supposed by liberal legal and political theorists to be essential foundations of liberal democracy: the principle of state ‘neutrality’ towards religion; and the principle that public reasoning must be ‘secular’. While the first principle is defensible, the second principle is invalid and illiberal, and proposes a conception of public reasoning that permits, indeed positively encourages, the invocation of religiously based reasoning in ‘representative’ political speech."

Many Canadians began 2012 with their New Year’s resolutions at the top of their minds. Faith Exchange panelists at the Globe and Mail, including our own Peter Stockland, convened to discuss the religious take on new beginnings.