Through Paine and Madison, secularity emerges as a way to secure help without demanding allegiance.
Secularity can secure assistance without making belief, loyalty, or belonging a condition of receiving it. Through Paine’s account of common inheritance and Madison’s defenses of conscience and restraints on power, the paper develops a conception of public provision grounded in rights. Its central test is whether a person can receive what they are owed while remaining free to disagree with those who provide it.
