LIBERALISM’S RELIGION
By Cécile Laborde
Harvard University Press. 344 pages. £28.95
ISBN 978 0 674 976 269
Christians today are anxious about freedom in a ‘post-Christian’ society. So when public venues are closed to evangelists who oppose same-sex marriage, we are urged to support expensive legal cases to test the boundaries of religious liberty.
But, below the surface, we differ on the principles underlying our defence of freedom. A liberal society protects the equal rights of all to free expression, but how should it respond when competing groups apparently demand each other’s rights to be curtailed?