Given the cantankerous tone of many commentaries provoked by the pope's visit, many will appreciate Evan Harris's measured contribution to the debate over the place of religion in public life. Free from the irate polemics seen in some recent anti-religious commentaries (here and here), his "secularist manifesto" invites constructive dialogue.Interestingly, although Harris suggests that someone opposed to the whole of his manifesto is "probably archbishop material", its intent seems to converge with the "procedural secularism" proposed by Rowan Williams a few years ago. Under this model, advocates of contending belief systems may freely advance their political views in public debate within accepted rules of democratic engagement but with no one belief system enjoying entrenched constitutional privilege. Williams distinguishes it from a "programmatic secularism", which would seek to impose a secular humanist belief system on society via state power. Commendably, Harris distances himself from any such imperious ambition. His 10-point manifesto contains much that many citizens of religious faith could endorse: his championing of maximum religious freedom, including the right not only to hold beliefs but to manifest them in public; his argument against the political privileges still accruing to the Church of England; his repudiation of "parallel" religious legal systems; his opposition to "unjustified" discriminatory practices against both religious and nonreligious belief systems in the public sector; his objections to compulsory school worship, to the use of public money to support proselytising, and to obligatory Christian prayers in parliamentary sessions or local council chambers. Yet alongside these legitimate objectives the manifesto contains troubling elements, which serve to undermine his professed support for the right to manifest religious belief. First, it proposes a restrictive interpretation of the right to conscientious objection within the public sector, which would be limited to "rare and specific" exemptions agreed by parliament. His stance is in accord with the trend of recent employment tribunal and court decisions but it departs from the generous British tradition accommodating conscientious objection wherever possible. Why, for example, must a marriage registrar be legally compelled to perform a same-sex civil partnership ceremony against her religious conscience when other colleagues are readily available to do so? Protecting conscience would not imply a "blanket religious exemption based on subjective feelings" but rather a better balancing of objective legal rights. Second, it fails to recognise that an effective right to "manifest" belief is not only individual but organisational. For many religious believers, manifestation is a corporate not a solitary enterprise, coming to expression in a wide range of faith-based educational, welfare, charitable, publishing or campaigning associations. Some operate outside the public sector while others come within its purview either through historical incorporation by the state (eg. church schools, religious hospitals) or through having entered into contracts with the state to pursue specific public purposes (eg. faith-based social service agencies). But Harris wants to impose severe legal restrictions on the ability of such religious organisations to act according to their distinctive religious beliefs the moment they enter the public sector, thereby frustrating the very reason for them existing as distinct bodies rather than mere replicas of secular agencies. For example, it could have the effect of coercing church schools into hiring staff who might repudiate the very religious beliefs or moral practices defining the school's distinct identity, or of preventing such schools from teaching RE from their own perspective. Third, it elides the distinction between a separation of church and state and a separation of religion and state. The meaning of the first is plain enough but Harris is worryingly unclear about what he means by the second. Like many who call themselves secularists, he claims to be against "banning religion from the public square", yet the tenor of this and other public interventions suggest a desire to keep it on a tight leash. Since at this point his penchant for detail is not on display, let me suggest two forms of religious public speech he might care to consider: 1. Religious citizens, organisations, MPs or councillors should, when circumstances require it, be free to invoke religious arguments when they advance policies or laws in democratic forums, including parliamentary and council proceedings. They should, like anyone else, do so within the constraints of legality and civility. 2. Legislators may quite legitimately be significantly, even primarily, motivated by their religious beliefs to support a law or policy, even though governments themselves would not invoke religious reasons to publicly justify official acts of state. In this way religious beliefs might shape the content of law just as secular humanist ones already do. The outcome would be a boisterous procedural secularism in which religious voices could make their distinctive contributions unconstrained by the sort of deliberative restraints often imposed by self-styled secularists. Presumably Harris would not object to religious citizens exercising the same kind of democratic influence over law as that available to everyone else. Those, at least, are some starters for discussion.