Mary Eberstadt, "one of the most acute and creative social observers of our time," (Francis Fukuyama) shines a much-needed spotlight on a disturbing trend in American society: a growing threat to religious liberty and discrimination against traditional religious belief and believers, who are being aggressively pushed out of public life by the concerted efforts of militant secularists.

In It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith-especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs-face widespread discrimination and what she calls the new intolerance in today's increasingly secular society. Eberstadt details how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere threaten believers who fear losing their jobs, their communities, and their basic freedoms solely because of their convictions. They fear that their religious universities and colleges will capitulate to aggressive secularist demands. They fear that they and their families will be ostracized or will have to lose their religion because of mounting social and financial penalties for believing. They fear they won't be able to maintain charitable operations that help the sick and feed the hungry.

Is this what we want for our country?

Religious freedom is a fundamental right, enshrined in the First Amendment. With It's Dangerous to Believe Eberstadt calls attention to this growing bigotry and seeks to open the minds of secular liberals whose otherwise good intentions in the modern culture wars are transforming them into modern inquisitors. Not until these progressives live up to their own standards of tolerance and diversity, she reminds us, can we build the inclusive society America was meant to be.

This essential book on the First Amendment and its place in our secular society reveals the forces threatening our first liberty:

• The Anatomy of a Witch Hunt: Eberstadt documents the alarming rise of a new secularist inquisition that punishes people of faith for their traditional beliefs on campus, in the workplace, and in public life.
• First Amendment Under Fire: An unflinching look at how recent laws and court decisions are eroding America's first liberty, creating a climate of fear for believers who simply wish to live by their convictions.
• The Cost to Christian Charity: Discover how ideological lawsuits and political pressure threaten to shut down faith-based services for the sick, the hungry, and the poor.
• A Challenge to Liberal Tolerance: A powerful call for progressives to live up to their own standards of diversity and inclusion before well-intentioned activism permanently damages the fabric of a free society.

Religious freedom is under assault today as never before. A country founded on freedom of speech and religious belief is being changed from within by activists hostile to both. Is this what we want America to be?

Religious freedom is a fundamental right, enshrined in the First Amendment. In It’s Dangerous to Believe, author and critic Mary Eberstadt documents how those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs—especially Christians—face widespread discrimination in today’s increasingly secular society.

For holding “wrong” opinions on flashpoint issues like birth control, abortion, and same-sex marriage, people of faith are being publicly attacked and demonized by aggressive anti-religious activists in an effort to drive them out of public life and cripple their institutions. Examples from across the country and elsewhere of self-appointed adversaries undermining believers in the workplace, intervening in faith-based charity efforts, and interfering in religious education reveal nothing less than a targeted assault on faith itself. Eberstadt writes to call attention to this underreported campaign and argues that it is a classic moral panic reminiscent of the Salem witch trials and the McCarthyism Red Scare of the 1950s.

Eberstadt reveals how recent laws, court decisions, and intimidation on campuses and elsewhere increasingly threaten believers’ freedoms of speech and action. They fear losing their livelihoods, their communities, and their basic constitutional liberties solely because of their convictions. They fear that their religious universities and colleges will capitulate to aggressive secularist demands. They fear that they and their families will be ostracized and that they won’t be able to maintain charitable operations that help the sick and feed the hungry.

In this spirited and powerfully argued manifesto, Eberstadt calls attention to today’s growing bigotry—and seeks to open the minds of secularists and progressives to the injustices being committed against believers by ideologues turned modern inquisitors. Citing titans of authority ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King Jr. and other eminent defenders of the open society, she builds the case that America will become truly inclusive if and only if the antagonists of religious faith live up to their own standards of tolerance and diversity. The "cultured despisers of religion" are now the cultured despisers of religious freedom, too. In her terrific new book It's Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt exposes these tin pot Torquemadas. She has given friends of religious liberty and the rights of conscience a powerful new manifesto.