It's Dangerous to Believe

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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.