The Böckenförde Dilemma (German: Böckenförde-Diktum) refers to how secular governments that derive their authority from the citizenry enjoy the support of (at least some portion of) their citizenry, yet, due to varied and possibly fluctuating disposition within a secular pluralistic society, generally lack the uniformity of purpose found in an absolutist state that can more reliably create social capital.
As a liberal state it can endure only if the freedom it bestows on its citizens takes some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large.
Böckenförde draws attention to the paradox that the state in the attempt to defend democracy with "the means of legal coercion and decrees from authority" would itself become a dictatorship because it would infringe upon the idea of people as sovereign.
Gerhard Czermak writes that Böckenförde is "fundamentally misunderstood when not instrumentalized" when it is concluded from his dilemma that "the state should promote churches and religious communities as sources of virtue in particular...
"[2] In two interviews in 2009 and 2010 Böckenförde answered the critique that he had exaggerated the ethical force of religion: "This criticism misses the context in which I made this statement in 1964.
This had happened before 1965 when at the end of the Second Vatican Council the Roman Catholic Church for the first time completely recognized the concept of religious freedom.
The erosion of "civic virtues" such as sense of community and pride in work as well as declining attendance in churches and shrinking religious engagement have been noted as symptoms.
Instead of appealing, among other things, to the communitarianism, the public discourse, the communication free from domination (Jürgen Habermas) creates out of itself ("Selbstschöpfungsprozess") the values and behaviors (democratic virtues), that the liberal state needs to exist and survive.
But answering Böckenförde's call for "binding ethos" Montenbruck introduces the western secular ideas of civil religion that goes back to Rousseau: "The solution to this dilemma can only be found on an even higher level, such as that of the preambles.