Sociologists and philosophers from the US offer seven essays that explore how religious convictions impact how people engage in democratic life, especially across deep political divides. They discuss how a narrow vision of religious citizens as dogmatic believers has led to the framing of religion as a source of democratic distortion; how religion and democratic politics should relate to each other in a spirit of intellectual humility; how American evangelicals practice intellectual humility; evangelicals engaging in public discourse with Muslims and the qualities of intellectual humility involved; the basis of the intellectual humility in fostering relationships, in the context of the evangelical movement and acceptance of LGBTQI identities; how religion might promote intellectual humility in public life, drawing on case studies from faith-based community organizing in the US and liberation theology in Latin America; and an alternative theory of ontic webs as applied to public sociology.

Ruth Braunstein is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, USA. She is the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide and co-editor of Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics. Her research has also been published in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Contexts, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Theory and Society, and Qualitative Sociology.

Chapter 1. Beyond the Dogmatic Believer: Religious Conviction Across the American Political Divide; Ruth Braunstein