It's Dangerous To Believe by Mary Eberstadt

It's Dangerous To Believe by Mary Eberstadt

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.

Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes, edited by Mary Eberstadt, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Contributing Editor to Policy Review, and the author of Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes. She was the previous managing editor of the Public Interest and the National Interest's executive editor.