The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum and the former Archbishop of the Anglican Church Rowan Williams both published a book three years ago pleading for room for religion in the public arena. Nussbaum makes use of, mainly, liberal arguments, whereas Williams has drenched his argument with Christian-social notions such as pluriformity, sovereignty and human connectedness. Nussbaum, on the one hand, argues that religious arguments must not be banished from the public arena. Williams, on the other hand, holds that religious arguments and stories must be heard in the public arena. Nussbaum offers clues for christian-social political parties to connect with secular parties that claim to liberal.

Some months after the German occupation of the Netherlands, the Reichskommissar inroduced a Germanlike system of collecting finances for the poor people, soon followd by an equal system of social work. These initiatives at the same time aimed at urge the national-socialistic ideology, as such dismissed by the society and the churches. The occupying authorities avoided a clash with the churches.