"Pluralism, Politics, and God"

This conference, "Pluralism, Politics, and God?  An International Symposium on Religion and Public Reason", looks interesting.  It's going to be at McGill University's Newman Center ("Centre") in September.  Here's the blurb:

In his controversial Regensburg lecture, Pope Benedict XVI sought to re-frame the interaction of religious traditions on the principle that ‘not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God’.  He also called on the universities, and on all partners in the dialogue of cultures, to rediscover this principle by engaging ‘the whole breadth of reason’ – appreciating its grandeur and repudiating reductionist approaches to reason.

This unabashedly hellenistic emphasis raises important questions about the relation between faith and reason, and about the role of religion in the exercise of public reason.  Is religion necessary to sustain reason? Do different religions represent competing claims about reason and rationality as well as about revelation?  Does religious diversity mean that public decision-making, even as regards moral or ethical matters or human rights, should seek to bracket the God-question?  Or is that not possible without undermining the rational basis for deciding and acting?

Scholars from across North America and Europe will gather at McGill University to consider such questions, with presentations on a variety of related issues from Nicholas Adams (Edinburgh), Gregory Baum (McGill), Mark Cladis (Brown), Michael Ignatieff (formerly Harvard), George Smith II (Columbus School of Law), Janice Stein (Toronto), John Witte Jr. (Emory), and many others.