JACQUES BERLINERBLAU, professor at Georgetown University and director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, is the author of four books. He has appeared on radio, television, and print, including NPR, CNN, Al-Jazeera, The Economist, The Jerusalem Post, U.S. News and World Report and the Washington Post. He is the host of the webcast "Faith Complex," which appears on The Huffington Post and elsewhere.
"How to Be Secular serves as an important reminder that, as I have
noted in the past, we protect our rights to our personal beliefs by
preserving the rights of our neighbors to believe otherwise. I
agree wholeheartedly with Berlinerblau's argument and highly
recommend this powerful book."
--Mario M. Cuomo, Former New York State Governor "As someone whose
faith is an important part of his life, I highly recommend this
book and Berlinblau's defense of religious freedom. With great
insight and clarity, he explains why it is important to protect and
preserve secularism as a philosophy and he then lays out a twelve
step program to revive it."
--Ambassador Dennis Ross, Counselor to the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy and former U.S. peace envoy to the Middle East "In
this new look at church-state relations in America, Berlinerblau
manages to be serious and sprightly in equal measure. This is a
call to reject extremism of any sort and return to the American
genius for accommodation of our differences--even, indeed
especially, our differences over the role of religion in our public
life."
--Elliot Abrams, former Deputy National Security Advisor "This book
brought tears to my secular Jewish eyes, it was so good.
Berlinerbau is not just an astonishing secular thinker; he knows
how to turn a phrase, and he knows how to keep the pages turning.
Now put that down that tefillin and read it!"
--Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story, among
others "As the nasty strife has heated up between religious leaders
who intrude their particular values into public life on the one
side and noisy atheists who insist that religiously-inspired voices
should be banned from the public square on the other, I have looked
for a book that sorts all this out in a reasonable and convincing
manner. This is that book. Well-informed, even handed and crafted
in a readable, engaging style, it shines a clear light into the
murkiness."
--Harvey Cox, professor of divinity at Harvard and author of The
Future of Faith "This insightful book is not designed to convince
you of the non-existence of God or the afterlife; it exists to
convince both the non-theistic and the religious that if we don't
find a way to work together, we will all pay a heavy price.
Berlinerblau makes a compelling, urgent case, with rigorous regard
to history as well as a keen eye for the relevance of today's many
new variations of fundamentalism."
--Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation
of Church and State "Jacques Berlinerblau mounts a careful,
judicious, and compelling argument that America needs more
secularists--not only among nonbelievers but among believers as
well. The author's argument merits a wide hearing and will change
the way we think and talk about religious freedom."
--Randall Balmer, author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious
Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America, among others
"Passionately arguing secularism as essential for observance of the
First Amendment's religion clauses, Berlinerblau eloquently
divorces it from absolute separation and atheism, traces its
history, emphasizing the mid-twentieth-century period of its
greatest influence and the expansion of civil rights that abetted,
and advocates its revival."
--Booklist "Berlinerblau offers a solid history of secularism in
America and a defense of its virtues at a time when conservative
Christians attack it as a moral evil and advance the 'flawed' idea
that one cannot be both religious and secular...An impassioned
argument for 'a firm and dignified defense of the imperiled
secularish virtues and moderation, toleration, and
self-criticism.'"
--Kirkus Reviews "Berlinerblau succeeds in making concrete the
current threats to secularism and offers a reasoned blueprint for
an organized secular movement to regain its political power."
--Publishers Weekly
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