Doing God in a liberal democracy

While we agree with Cooling's argument from fairness, we argue that Cooling fails to give an adequate account of how fairness can be conceived, particularly because he does not decisively tackle the issues surrounding doing God in a plural context, or the contentious issues of compulsory collective worship and faith schools. In order to explore an argument from fairness with these issues in mind, we introduce three key concepts from the philosophy of John Rawls: reasonable pluralism, overlapping consensus and hypothetical contract. We then invite readers to conduct a thought experiment based on a hypothetical contract to explore the issues of faith schools and collective worship. We conclude from this exercise that hypothetically, a rational person behind a veil of ignorance would choose a system of educational provision where faith schools should be made available, but compulsory collective worship in religiously unaffiliated schools should not be enshrined in legislation. By appropriating concepts from the philosophy of Rawls, we hope to have offered a coherent, if novel, way of thinking about how to do God fairly; where those of all religious perspectives, including those of no religion, can put aside their partiality and think about the fairest way of doing God in the context of a liberal democracy.