It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies - Hardcover

Eberstadt, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062454013 ISBN 13: 9780062454010

Publisher: Harper, 2016

Synopsis

Mary Eberstadt, “one of the most acute and creative social observers of our time,” (Francis Fukuyama) shines a much-needed spotlight on a disturbing trend in American society: discrimination against traditional religious belief and believers, who are being aggressively pushed out of public life by the concerted efforts of militant secularists.

In It’s Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith—especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs—face widespread discrimination in today’s increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions. They fear that their religious universities and colleges will capitulate to aggressive secularist demands. They fear that they and their families will be ostracized or will have to lose their religion because of mounting social and financial penalties for believing. They fear they won’t be able to maintain charitable operations that help the sick and feed the hungry.

Is this what we want for our country?

Religious freedom is a fundamental right, enshrined in the First Amendment. With It’s Dangerous to Believe Eberstadt calls attention to this growing bigotry and seeks to open the minds of secular liberals whose otherwise good intentions are transforming them into modern inquisitors. Not until these progressives live up to their own standards of tolerance and diversity, she reminds us, can we build the inclusive society America was meant to be.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Religious freedom is under assault today as never before. A country founded on freedom of speech and religious belief is being changed from within by activists hostile to both. Is this what we want America to be?

Religious freedom is a fundamental right, enshrined in the First Amendment. In It’s Dangerous to Believe, author and critic Mary Eberstadt documents how those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs—especially Christians—face widespread discrimination in today’s increasingly secular society.

For holding “wrong” opinions on flashpoint issues like birth control, abortion, and same-sex marriage, people of faith are being publicly attacked and demonized by aggressive anti-religious activists in an effort to drive them out of public life and cripple their institutions. Examples from across the country and elsewhere of self-appointed adversaries undermining believers in the workplace, intervening in faith-based charity efforts, and interfering in religious education reveal nothing less than a targeted assault on faith itself. Eberstadt writes to call attention to this underreported campaign and argues that it is a classic moral panic reminiscent of the Salem witch trials and the McCarthyism Red Scare of the 1950s.

Eberstadt reveals how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere increasingly threaten believers’ freedoms of speech and action. They fear losing their livelihoods, their communities, and their basic constitutional liberties solely because of their convictions. They fear that their religious universities and colleges will capitulate to aggressive secularist demands. They fear that they and their families will be ostracized and that they won’t be able to maintain charitable operations that help the sick and feed the hungry.

In this spirited and powerfully argued manifesto, Eberstadt calls attention to today’s growing bigotry—and seeks to open the minds of secularists and progressives to the injustices being committed against believers by ideologues turned modern inquisitors. Citing titans of authority ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King Jr. and other eminent defenders of the open society, she builds the case that America will become truly inclusive if and only if the antagonists of religious faith live up to their own standards of tolerance and diversity.

About the Author:

Mary Eberstadt is an essayist, novelist, and author of several influential works of non-fiction, including How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization; Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; and Home-Alone America. Her novel The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism, has been adapted for stage and will premiere in fall 2016. She is also editor of the anthology Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. 

A frequent contributor to magazines and journals including TIME, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and First Things, Mrs. Eberstadt (nee Tedeschi) has also served as an editor at The Public Interest, The National Interest, and Policy Review. She has been associated with various think tanks, including most recently the Hoover Institution and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In 2011, she founded a literary organization called the Kirkpatrick Society that has mentored hundreds of writers.

During the Reagan administration, Mrs. Eberstadt spent two years as a speechwriter to Secretary of State George Shultz.. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University with a double major in philosophy and government. She lives in the Washington, DC area.

 

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062454013
• ISBN 13: 9780062454010
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192