Secular liberalism admits religion publicly only if it abandons coercion for persuasion

Evidence

One old argument about the need to separate religion from politics is that because the former essentially belongs to the domain of faith and passion, rational argument and interest-guided action can have no place in it. The secularist concedes that religious beliefs and sentiments might be acceptable at a personal and private level, but insists that organized religion, being founded on authority and constraint, has always posed a danger to the freedom of the self as well as to the freedom of others. That may be why some enlightened intellectuals are prepared to allow deprivatized religion entry into the public sphere for the purpose of addressing “the moral conscience” of its audience—but on condition that it leave its coercive powers outside the door and rely only on its powers of persuasion. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 906

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the Cooper vault thread: secularism’s putatively neutral public sphere silently sets the terms on which religion may appear, privileging an interiorized, privatized faith that Christian modernity modeled.
• DEFINE: Establishes the core sense of ‘deprivatized religion’ Asad uses throughout this chapter.