It means traffic, exchange, dialogue, and debate. Pluralism is not simply a given with our new diversity, but must be created. The makings of pluralism are surely there on New Hampshire Avenue, but without any real engagement with one another, without being attuned to the life and energies of one another, this might prove to be just a colorful example of diversity interesting, but inconsequential and maybe divisive for American society. In the late 1950s, the Roman Catholic thinker John Courtney Murray described pluralism as the vigorous engagement of people of different religious beliefs around the common table of discussion and debate. I mean the coexistence within the one political community of groups who hold divergent and incompatible views with regard to religious questions. . . .
Pluralism therefore implies disagreement and dissension within a community.
There is no small political problem here. If society is to be at all a rational process, some set of principles must motivate the general participation of all religious groups, despite their dissension, in the oneness of the community. On the other hand, these common principles must not hinder the maintenance by each group of its own different identity. The engagement of difference in a pluralistic society is not modeled on the structure of competition, but on the structure of dialogue. Vigorous engagement, even argument, around the common table is vital to the very heart of a democratic society.