Debating religious liberty and discrimination

Abstract

The book is organized as follows. Each side begins with an opening essay. Corvino’s essay explores the worry that religious liberty is today morphing into religious privilege, favoring not only religious citizens over their secular counterparts but also certain kinds of (usually conservative Christian) religion over others. He sees this trend as a repeat of the Puritan mistake, in which religious liberty means liberty to do things according to the dictates of preferred religious traditions. Afer determining that the best reason for religious accommodations and exemptions is religion’s historical tendency to be a site of conflict, he argues that religious liberty should not be used as a license to discriminate. He also raises a number of questions about the moral and legal consistency of current approaches, and he explores the meaning and rhetorical function of accusations of bigotry.