oa [Religious Ethics and Secular Political Reason, Religiöse Ethik und säkulare politische Vernunft]

The argument of this article falls into three parts. In the first part, three models are outlined that describe the relationship between religious ethics and secular reason: (i) a ‘proprium model’ stating that religious ethics has a specific content that cannot be supplied by secular reason, (ii) a ‘harmony model’ stressing the overlap of religious values and secular reason, and (iii) a ‘separation model’ emphasizing the disjunction between the religious and the secular political spheres. In the second part, the analysis of the three models is illustrated with a discussion of In vredesnaam [‘For the Sake of Peace’], the most recent work of Dutch practical theologian Gijs Dingemans, who favours model (i). The third part criticizes the scepticism with regard to reason undergirding model (i) and argues that models (ii) and (iii) are preferable. It suggests that Dingemans’s other theological convictions are best supported by model (ii).