It's Dangerous To Believe

It's Dangerous To Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies by Mary Eberstadt, 126 pages

According to Mary Eberstadt, there is a rising tide of anti-Christian sentiment and action in the United States particularly and the West generally.  Increasingly, as she chronicles, Christian churches and charitable institutions are facing potentially ruinous litigation intended to force them to conform their beliefs and practices to the prevailing orthodoxy, while individual Christians face a growing pattern of discrimination in hiring and college admissions.  This new orthodoxy, though it considers itself entirely secular and even "scientific", holds its dogmas as articles of faith, primary among them the unsullied goodness of the "liberation" brought about by the sexual revolution.

Eberstadt identifies similarities between the anti-Christian atmosphere of today and that which surrounded past witch hunts from Salem to the McMartins. particularly in the preternatural powers the marginalized group is imagined to possess.  Christians are held up for ridicule without fear of censure, much less violence, yet simultaneously imagined as participating in a massive conspiracy to install a theocratic government.  They are thus both open to attack and bereft of sympathy.  Beyond the increasingly narrow promises of "freedom of worship" which have replaced the traditional understanding of "freedom of religion", a grudging peace can only be purchased with the pinch of incense to Caesar or the sign in the greengrocer's window.

Eberstadt's ostensible goal - stated at the outset and repeated throughout the book - is to convince progressive advocates of tolerance and diversity that those values ought to include Christians as well.  It is difficult to believe that this book will succeed.  Partially this is because it is doubtful that it will be read by that audience, partially because the ingrained prejudice is too deep.