It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies – Defending First Amendment Rights Against Secular Bigotry in America

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: a growing threat to religious liberty and 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 and what she calls the new intolerance 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 in the modern culture wars 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.

This essential book on the First Amendment and its place in our secular society reveals the forces threatening our first liberty:

• The Anatomy of a Witch Hunt: Eberstadt documents the alarming rise of a new secularist inquisition that punishes people of faith for their traditional beliefs on campus, in the workplace, and in public life.
• First Amendment Under Fire: An unflinching look at how recent laws and court decisions are eroding America’s first liberty, creating a climate of fear for believers who simply wish to live by their convictions.
• The Cost to Christian Charity: Discover how ideological lawsuits and political pressure threaten to shut down faith-based services for the sick, the hungry, and the poor.
• A Challenge to Liberal Tolerance: A powerful call for progressives to live up to their own standards of diversity and inclusion before well-intentioned activism permanently damages the fabric of a free society.

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.