In Defense of Religious Liberty

On the Intercollegiate Studies Institute ‘s website, you can find an excerpt from David Novak’s latest book, In Defense of Religious Liberty . A sample to whet your appetite:

How one justifies a public stance that is consistent with one’s theology without invoking that theology as its public authorization is a philosophical question. It requires a philosophical answer. Unfortunately, though, when it comes to raising this question, much less answering it cogently, religious communities have not been too articulate, let alone persuasive. And I suspect that their political ineptitude is largely because of their lack of philosophical clarity on this and other public claims of religious liberty they make in public. So let me be so bold as to try to help religious communities make at least a more plausible, if not more compelling, philosophical case for their public moral claims. I do this, of course, with a vested interest in the matter, myself being an active member of one such religious community—a community that could and should be more vociferous in its advocacy of certain public norms, norms that are not simply for the sake of its own particular political interests.