How to Be Secular
A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
Format: Book
Description: xxix, 306 pages ; 24 cm
"Berlinerblau mounts a careful, judicious, and compelling argument that America needs more secularists--not only among nonbelievers but among believers as well. It will change the way we think and talk about religious freedom."
--Randall Balmer, author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America
Weary of religious conservatives urging "defense of marriage" and atheist polemicists decrying the crimes of religion? Sick of pundits who want only to recast American life in their own image? Americans are stuck in an all-or-nothing landscape for religion in public life. What are reasonable citizens to do?
Seen as godless by the religious and weak by the atheists, secularism mostly has been misunderstood. In How to Be Secular , Berlinerblau argues for a return to America's hard-won secular tradition; the best way to protect religious diversity and freedom lies in keeping an eye on the encroachment of each into the other.
--Randall Balmer, author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America
Weary of religious conservatives urging "defense of marriage" and atheist polemicists decrying the crimes of religion? Sick of pundits who want only to recast American life in their own image? Americans are stuck in an all-or-nothing landscape for religion in public life. What are reasonable citizens to do?
Seen as godless by the religious and weak by the atheists, secularism mostly has been misunderstood. In How to Be Secular , Berlinerblau argues for a return to America's hard-won secular tradition; the best way to protect religious diversity and freedom lies in keeping an eye on the encroachment of each into the other.
Berlinerblau passionately defends the virtues of secularism, reminds us what it is and what it can protect, and urges us to mobilize around its cause, which is for all Americans to continue to enjoy freedom for--and from--religion. This is an urgent wake-up call for progressives in and out of all faiths.
www.jacquesberlinerblau.com
Contents:
What secularism is and isn't. What is secularism? (the basic package) ; Where the founders secular? ; Does secularism equal total separation of church and state? ; Does secularism equal atheism? ; How not to be secular -- The very peculiar "rise" and fall of American secularism. The "rise" of American secularism and the secularish ; The fall of American secularism ; Are democrats secularists? ; The Christian nation and the GOP -- Reviving American secularism. Who could be a secularist? ; How to be secularish (in praise of "secular Jews" and "cafeteria Catholics") ; Tough love for American secularism.
Subjects:
Secularism -- United States.
Freedom of religion -- United States.
Church and state -- United States.
United States -- Religion.
Secularism -- United States.
Freedom of religion -- United States.
Church and state -- United States.
United States -- Religion.
ISBN:
9780547473345
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
RELIGION Society Ber | Main (Downtown) | Third Level, Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references and index.