A divine command theorist can say three things in response to this objection. First, religious disagreement does not inevitably give rise to disagreement about moral principles. A divine command theorist and a nonreligious Kantian can agree on the principle that torturing the innocent is always morally wrong. They will, to be sure, disagree about why it is always wrong. The divine command theorist will say that it is wrong because God forbids it, and the Kantian may say that it is wrong because it is a failure to treat the humanity in another as an end in itself. But disagreement in the metaphysics of morals is consistent with overlapping consensus at the level of moral principle. Second, not all moral disagreement is divisive. A Kierkegaardian Christian may think that Mother Teresa was only doing her duty toward her neighbor as specified by the Love Commandment, while one of her secular admirers believes that much of the good she did was supererogatory.

But if they agree that she did a great deal of good, their disagreement about whether some of it was supererogatory is not apt to be particularly divisive.
And third, introducing religious considerations into ethics does not destroy prospects for rational agreement that would otherwise exist. The history of modern secular ethical theory gives us no reason to expect that agreement on a single comprehensive ethical theory will ever be achieved in a climate of free and rational moral inquiry.