Citizens, Not Outlaws

Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, by Michael J. Perry (Cambridge, 216 pp., $22)

“THE vast majority of Americans,” Pope John Paul II once observed, “are convinced that religious conviction and religiously informed moral argument have a vital role in public life.” In this new book, legal scholar Michael Perry argues persuasively and precisely that this American consensus is correct: that there is, in fact, a place in our public square for “political reliance on religiously grounded morality,” and that “neither the American constitutional ideal of nonestablishment nor the morality of liberal democracy calls for marginalizing the role of religious faith in, much less excluding it from, American politics.”

RG

About the Author

Richard W. Garnett

Richard W. Garnett is a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.

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Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, by Michael J. Perry (Cambridge, 216 pp., $22)

“THE vast majority of Americans,” Pope John Paul II once observed, “are convinced that religious conviction and religiously informed moral argument have a vital role in public life.” In this new book, legal scholar Michael Perry argues persuasively and precisely that this American consensus is correct: that there is, in fact, a place in our public square for “political reliance on religiously grounded morality,” and that “neither the American constitutional ideal of nonestablishment nor the morality of liberal democracy calls for marginalizing the role of religious faith in, much less excluding it from, American politics.”