My central research interests focus on how we should respond to deep disagreements about pressing moral problems. I argue that we cannot properly manage such disagreements just by bracketing and setting aside the things that divide us, and so investigate how we should engage with those who disagree with us, so as to work through—rather than just around—our differences. In a co-authored debate book titled Does Faith Belong in Politics? Debating Religious Participation in Pluralistic Polities (with Paul Billingham, University of Oxford; under contract with Routledge), I apply this line of argument to deep political disagreements based on religious differences. Whereas other political philosophers (like John Rawls and Robert Audi) have claimed that religious reasons should be excluded from political debates because they are inherently ‘inaccessible’ to non-believers, I suggest that research in religious epistemology does not bear those claims out. Rather than trying to define strict epistemic boundaries between religious and non-religious beliefs, I argue, political philosophers should center social and psychological features of religious commitment that may serve as more proximate causes of social conflict. In particular, I draw on literature in social psychology and religious studies to show how religious affiliation can sometimes draw citizens into deliberative enclaves and strengthen their moral attitudes in ways that may, in turn, also contribute to political polarization. I conclude that religious reasons can be productively engaged in politics if these sources of political polarization are addressed. Specifically, I argue that religious reasons can be productively engaged in politics if religious citizens (along with other citizens) develop what I call a ‘strong deliberative’ stance towards their interlocutors, in which they exercise virtues of empathetic engagement, conscientious inquiry, and (what I term) ‘reciprocity in reasoning’.

While my book project focuses on how religious citizens may productively engage with others who do not share their basic religious beliefs, two other papers address how secular, liberal democrats might more productively engage with citizens who do not share their core political commitment to liberal democracy. Whereas those in the dominant Rawlsian paradigm claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss illiberal citizens’ complaints, I argue that a liberal polity must ‘deeply justify’ liberal principles to (at least) ‘fair-minded’ illiberal citizens by offering them ‘deep reasons’—that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal political principles and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from—for why they should accept the liberal laws with which it coerces them to comply (“Digging Deep to Defend Democracy: Sayyid Qutb, Illiberal Islam, and the Forceless Force of the Better Argument,” forthcoming in Philosophy and Social Criticism). In this paper as well as a related paper that focuses specifically on illiberal religious citizens ( “Reasoning with the Religious Unreasonable,” forthcoming in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy) I appeal to the example of Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), an illiberal Islamic thinker, to challenge the vilifying stereotypes of illiberal citizens that contemporary liberal theorists often appeal to in their arguments.

Both the book and the two aforementioned papers highlight cases where shared political vocabulary runs out, and citizens must deliberate about the deeper religious and moral differences that give rise to political disputes. However, citizens who are (or believe themselves to be) epistemic ‘superiors’ to their interlocutors may resist the suggestion, typically associated with requirements for democratic deliberation, that they must be willing to reconsider their beliefs in response to the reasons and counter-arguments other (apparent) epistemic ‘inferiors’ raise. My research in political epistemology addresses this concern: I argue that moral considerations related to respect and friendship can sometimes require you to open questions about the veracity of a contested claim that may, from a purely epistemic standpoint, rationally have remained closed. I argue for the importance of deliberative inquiry as an alternative either to simply compromising on one’s own convictions or to merely trying to persuade others to come to one’s own side, and apply my argument both to political and to ordinary interpersonal disputes (“On Giving Others the Benefit of the Doubt: Persuasion and the Political Imperative for Inquiry,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, revise and resubmit’ and “The Moral Case Against Dogmatism,” Journal of Ethics). In a further paper currently under development (“Personal Faith in a Public Context: Religious Devotion without Dogmatism”), I use my background in philosophy of mind and epistemology to explore how one can remain personally committed to a religious belief even while subjecting it, or an associated political position, to rigorous interrogation in the public square.

While my current co-authored book (Does Faith Belong in Politics?) aims to be accessible to an undergraduate audience, my next book project—tentatively titled, Piety, Polarization, and Public Justification: Promises and Pitfalls of Sacred Community in a Secular Age—targets a more well-read philosophical audience. In this developing project, I challenge not only the one extreme of Rawlsian liberalism—which requires religious citizens to largely keep their religious beliefs out of politics—but also (what I take to be) the opposing extreme of certain religious critics of Rawls, like Nicholas Wolterstroff and Kevin Vallier—who hold that religious citizens (and citizens generally) have few to no deliberative obligations to regulate when and how they incorporate controversial religious and philosophical beliefs into political debates. In response to Wolterstorff and Vallier, I develop my argument for ‘strong deliberation’ in more detail and also contend that religious communities who engage in such deliberation may be uniquely positioned to help heal our polarized political discourse. First, I suggest religious communities can draw on their substantial social capital to help build and retain spaces of belonging that transcends partisan identities. Second, I argue that religious communities may be able to draw on their rich moral and theological traditions to bring critical depth and historical perspective to moral debates that might—absent the influence of thoughtful religious citizens—more easily bottom out in shallow party disputes.

While my doctorate program in philosophy did not emphasize the history of philosophy, I was pleased to get more exposure to history in my masters’ degrees in philosophy and religious studies. I have published two papers on medieval Islamic thought: one on classical Islamic law (“Between Sale and Worship: Consistent Inconsistencies in Classical Ḥanafī and Mālikī Rulings on Marital Annulments,” Islamic Law and Society”) and one on Al-Ghazali’s moral psychology (“Between Mysticism and Philosophical Rationality: al-Ghazālī on the Reasons of the Heart,” Comparative Philosophy). My work on al-Ghazālī brings medieval thought on moral emotions into dialogue with contemporary ‘cognitive’ views of the emotions (a topic I also explore in “A Phenomenal Appreciation of Reasons,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics), and I am interested in investigating how both al-Ghazālī and Augustine’s related views about ‘cognitive’ moral emotions and the will anticipate present research on the pervasive effects of political emotions and identity on moral reasoning. Finally, in line with the final argument of Piety, Polarization, and Public Justification noted above, I hope to spearhead the development of an edited volume in which authors from diverse Christian traditions show how historical insights can help add moral depth to polarized political debates and mediate between conventional, party-line positions.