Comments on: Expanding the Secular Square

By: Jason Joseph

Jason Joseph — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:44:01 +0000

John, sorry for the overlap. I’m behind in my reading

By: John Presnall

John Presnall — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:02:18 +0000

I agree with Carl–the Carson Holloway link is hard hitting, and it would be an informative and useful piece for Peter’s “fellow” big thinkers to consider. Thanks for posting this article Jason.

And thanks for your instructive comments that continuing privatization of religious belief will ultimately make religion a matter of mere mind (if even that). Good point.

Regarding Douthat and Levin–let me h/t John:

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2012/01/30/douthat-and-levin-on-religious-liberty-and-community/

Brilliant minds think alike!

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:37:47 +0000

Jason, thanks for this, and especially the Carson Holloway link. Peter’s extra-secularized interlocutors at BIG THINK could benefit from reading someone like Holloway who swings a bit harder and who presents how things look from the other side a bit more vividly.

By: Michael PS

Michael PS — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:42:59 +0000

In France, the Conseil d’État fully adopted this limited view of “freedom of conscience,” in l’affaire du foulard (the Headscarf Case), when it said of the ban on the hijab in schools that “pupils’ freedom of conscience, which is an internal freedom, in no way gives them ‘the right to express and manifest their religious beliefs’ in educational institutions, for that involves external acts which improperly introduce religion into the public domain of the school.” In other words, “Think what you like, but do what you’re told”

By: Mick Lee

Mick Lee — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:23:13 +0000

pointed out by Stephen Carter in these pages some years ago, liberalism has a serious religion problem. (Liberalism in the broader, enlightenment sense. Politically, the broader definition takes in most conservatives as well.) It boils down to each are in a battle in assigning meaning to the human elements and interactions of the world.

Liberalism is intolerant of other systems of meaning because it sees them as incompatible with its sense of mission. Humility and restraint are not in its bag of virtues.

But clearing the landscape of competitors also presents a grave fault contrary to liberalism’s own vision. With the removal or denaturing of the institutions between itself and the citizen, the individual is left naked before the power of the state.

As most of us have seen or experienced, our present, narrower version of liberalism sees no contradiction in taking away liberty in the name of liberty. Conservatives as well as others are excluded from committees and representative assemblies because they are not “democratic” enough or are insufficiently committed to diversity.

In an atmosphere where the “personal is political”, the privacy in one’s own home will increasingly will become a shrinking sphere of personal freedom.

By: Robert Cheeks

Robert Cheeks — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:45:24 +0000

Essentially we’re talking about the ‘immanentization’ of existence and therein the demonic reveals itself in all it’s depravity.