This
paper examines how stances and understandings pertaining to whether
home education is civically legitimate within liberal democratic
contexts can depend on how one conceives normative roles of the secular
state and the religious neutrality that is commonly associated with it.
For the purposes of this paper, home education is understood as a
manifestation of an educational philosophy ideologically based on a
given conception of the good. Two polar conceptions of secularism,
republican and liberal-pluralist, are explored. Republican secularists
declare that religious expressions do not belong in the public sphere
and justify this exclusion by promoting religious neutrality as an end
in itself. But liberal-pluralists claim that religious neutrality is
only the means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience and
religion, the actual moral principles. Each conception is associated
with its own stance on whether exemptions or accommodations on account
of religious beliefs have special legal standing and thereby warranted.
The indeterminate nature of religion and allegedly biased exclusion of
secular beliefs, cited by some when denying religious exemptions, can be
overcome by understanding all religious and conscientious beliefs as
having equal standing as conceptions of the good. Analysis of court
documents from the Uwe Romeike et al asylum case are guided by
these understandings, and relationships among themes are explored. In
summary, some stances regarding home education may depend on one’s view
of secularism, particularly in relation to whether one views religious
neutrality as a means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience or
an end in itself.