Eberstadt

I finished Mary Eberstadt’s It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies last night. It probably seems pretty easy - maybe laughably easy - to dismiss Christians who see themselves under attack as just the latest round of election-year fearmongering. There they go again, with the culture war stuff, and so on. I believe Eberstadt lays out a pretty good argument in response, heavily footnoted with references and citations:

Professed belief can be professionally dangerous, depending on where you work. It can be existentially threatening, if you happen to live in parts of the middle east. If you’re an organization providing charitable services, you may be put of business soon. A parallel between some of today’s discourse and the witch-hunting, red-baiting, and daycare-abuse hysterias of the past is slowly becoming clear.

I have to confess at the outset that I am probably not the intended audience of the book. The court cases, cultural touchstones, and news recaps are featured heavily in most of my daily current-events reading.