The role of religious diversity in social progress

This article brings together the notions of religious diversity and social progress and argues, against the sceptics, that the former can – and indeed must – contribute positively to the latter. To do this, it builds on to a major initiative in which the author had co-responsibility for the material on religion. This was the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) which assessed state-of-the-art knowledge that bears on social progress across a wide range of economic, political and cultural questions. The work of the IPSP as a whole is briefly outlined; the article then looks at the chapter on religion within this, foregrounding the material on religious diversity. This material is placed in a wider discussion of multiculturalism and secularism, in which links are made with the work of Tariq Modood and the Bristol Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. A short postscript introduces a more topical issue. It considers the role of religious communities (more especially religious minorities) as societies confront the ravages of COVID-19.