Religion and religious issues are usually framed as ‘a problem’ in academic as well as political frames (Davie, 2015: 228). In social science, theology is likewise most often ‘mentioned in a pejorative sense’ and set in an oppositional binary to everyday or lived religion (Helmer, 2012: 230) or more commonly is simply ignored by social and political theorists (Billingham and Chaplin, 2020). Multiculturalism is no exception to this general social scientific malaise in relation to religion. This chapter sets out how religion features, or doesn’t, in the writings of prominent multicultural theorists. It suggests that religion has so far received insufficient attention, especially in relation to the stronger arguments multiculturalists make for ethno-cultural rights, recognition and respect. This then provides the ground from which the book's subsequent chapters develop its positions and framework for recognition for a post-multiculturalism and religion.

This chapter does this in two main steps. The first discusses how and why religion is either marginal for or treated with great suspicion by many, especially liberal multicultural thinkers. In the second step it turns to an alternative, the Bristol School of Multiculturalism (BSM), for which religion occupies a more prominent place. Here the chapter first makes the case that this form of multiculturalism stands out in its treatment of religion, the public role it accords religion in relation to the common good and in relation to the notion of political secularism. It nevertheless then goes on to argue how Bristol School multiculturalism can be seen as equivocal on religion, and it makes the case for the importance of a focus on religion on its own terms.