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It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies Hardcover – June 21, 2016

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Mary Eberstadt (Author)
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4.4 out of 5 stars 24 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Harper (June 21, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0062454013
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062454010
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsReligious Freedom and Its Enemies is an excellent and timely book
By Luma Simms on June 21, 2016
Format: Hardcover
It's Dangerous to Believe is an extended meditation on secular progressivism's “soft persecution” of Christians and religious freedom. First comes a tight recounting of the history of this new intolerance. She then begins amassing the evidence by presenting case after case of discrimination, financial bullying, legal warfare, harassment, social media shaming, and all forms of intimidation used by secular progressive activists to shut down Christians. Mary Eberstadt is a superb analyst. The hypothesis—carefully demonstrated, and ringing true—is that secular progressivism is not just a political ideology; it is a competing faith, a religion. Although Mary Eberstadt brings up the “Benedict Option” that some advocate as a way for Christians to cope with the cultural hostility they experience, this is not the answer she is championing. And this is where Eberstadt's wisdom really shines, she does a commanding job justifying a strategy of active, hopeful, patient engagement. I don't want to give away the whole book so I'll stop here.
Mary Eberstadt's It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies is an excellent and timely book. It's tone and intelligence make it an especially perfect book to give to open minded secular friends. It's a book which deserves a wide audience, and the argument serious thought.
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5.0 out of 5 starsOn the increasing marginalization of traditional Christians
By Paul Mastin TOP 1000 REVIEWER on June 21, 2016
Format: Hardcover
Mary Eberstadt would acknowledge that it's not as dangerous to be a Christian in the U.S. as it is in, for instance, ISIS-controlled regions, where terrorists cut the heads off Christians. Nevertheless, as she points out in It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, American Christians are increasingly being pushed to the margins of culture, academia, and politics.

Eberstadt writes of "the mounting toll of a widespread and growing effort to shame, punish, and ostracize people because of what they believe." The root of the issue is a new form of Puritanism. The first commandment of the new secularist orthodoxy "is that no sexual act between consenting adults is wrong--possibly excepting cases of adultery." People who hold traditional Christian views of sex "are seen as a threat . . . [to] laissez-faire sexual morality."

Like their Puritan forebears in Salem, the orthodox secularist Puritans are on a witch hunt. Their standard of proof and quickness to judge and accuse offenders also resembles the Salem witch trials. "'You're a bigot if I say you're a bigot' is today's equivalent of 'you're a witch if I say you're a witch.'" For all their talk of diversity, the new secular Puritans have no tolerance for "traditionalists and non-progressive scholars."

Eberstadt's book is chock full of examples, some of which I had seen wide coverage. Traditionalist Christians are faced with the daunting task of figuring out how they fit in among the secular Puritans. Just try to get a teaching position at a major university if you don't support gay marriage. For their part, "Secularist progressivism must find a way to coexist with affronts to its own orthodoxy, not suppress them.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 stars"Words used to bar other people from a place at the human table are words that are worth thinking twice about" (p. 105).
By Anthony Bosnick on July 26, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Mary Eberstadt gathers much information here on serious affronts to Christians--especially those whose work is now "counter-cultural"--as they seek to live their faith in the world. She thoroughly documents through ample citations the examples she uses. The first five chapters of her book "It's Dangerous to Believe," focus on the length to which some people have gone (OK, liberals and progressives mainly) to make life difficult for Christians who promote traditional sexual morality, and the dignity of human life. She writes of challenges to the work of Catholic Charities when they attempt to function according to Catholic moral and social teaching, to Christian schools because they are Christian, to home schooling because of the fear that parents will "indoctrinate" their children in hateful Christian teaching The commonality in all this is that when they are faithful to Christian teaching on sexual ethics, the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, Christians are bigots and a danger to young people and society.

Granted, these examples are not of Christians, at least in the United States, suffering personal violence and death as they increasingly do in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of the world, but they are affronts to religious liberty nonetheless. And for those who have suffered these attacks, they are very real.

An additional important contribution of the book is found in Chapter 6, "What is to Be Done; or, How to End a Witch Hunt." Here Eberstadt calls for a return to basic civility, of people respecting others and their beliefs and allowing these beliefs to be tested in the marketplace of ideas.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsWhat should be done? Keep pitching. Point out the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of secularists engaged in "soft persecution."
By Peter S. Bradley on June 25, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Mary Eberstadt is a first-rate writer with keen insight and an ability to clearly communicate the facts underlying the issue she is addressing. Her classic article in First Things (November, 2009) on how the Catholic sex-abuse scandal retarded the growing acceptance of pedophilia in American culture - "How Pedophilia Lost its Cool" - is a prime example of seeing a major point that everyone else has missed in the morass of facts and following up on the insight with something that everyone else has missed and following up on that insight with a merciless attention to those facts.

In this book, Eberstadt examines the modern "Kulturkampf." She canvasses the news of the last few years - often times including vignettes from a few months ago, albeit because of the publication date she barely missed the sorry proof of her thesis of the last few weeks, during which Christians have been paradoxically blamed for the mass murder of gays committed by a Muslim terrorist, registered as a Democrat, who may have been gay, if early news reports are accurate. Eberstadt provides example after example of the cultural shift in rhetoric and conduct that has resulted in Christians being shunned or treated as subversives in America. She provides examples of believing Christians being kept out of university programs because of their Christian culture and of careers destroyed because of Christian expression and of individual and public discrimination against Christians and their association because of their religion. She points out that these same examples would have been unthinkable if the word "Christian" was replaced by "gay" or "Muslim.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsA prescient work, aimed at all fair-minded citizens, not just...

It is an excellent book. A timely warning for Christians in a time of increasing secular hostility. Read more

Published 1 day ago by Michael C. Berg
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very interesting reading.

Published 2 days ago by Tony Burant
5.0 out of 5 starsGood pacing and Eberstadt keeps you engaged throughout

Very sobering read, found it to be well researched and convincing. Good pacing and Eberstadt keeps you engaged throughout.

Published 3 days ago by Bill H
5.0 out of 5 starsStating the obvious

The author states what is obvious to all sincere, Bible believing Christians in this country. The amazing reality is that her book needed to be written at all. Read more

Published 6 days ago by L. SCEARCY
5.0 out of 5 starsEberstadt provides unique analysis to explain the vitriol of...

Eberstadt provides unique analysis to explain the vitriol of secularist's war on Christianity. She describes a possible outcome where secularists and Christians are at peace... Read more

Published 12 days ago by RICHARD PASHLEY
5.0 out of 5 starsIt's a great read. I wish it weren't all true

It's a great read. I wish it weren't all true, but this is the world as it is for believers today

Published 13 days ago by Bob Beckwith
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

good transaction

Published 13 days ago by Jean D.
4.0 out of 5 starsRight Analysis. Wrong Recommendations.

Mary Eberstadt’s “It’s Dangerous To Believe” offers very clear analysis and very wrong recommendations. Read more

Published 17 days ago by Adam Wayne
5.0 out of 5 starsEberstadt is an excellent writer with an engaging style

Eberstadt is an excellent writer with an engaging style. She describes the problem of the treatment of Christians in America in a calm manner with many anecdotes documenting... Read more

Published 20 days ago by Germain Boer
1.0 out of 5 starsA bunch of whining bunk

How, exactly is religious freedom under attack here? The author whines on and on, imputing motives to non-believers that the religious have been pushing onto secularists for... Read more

Published 21 days ago by Katydid

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