Exploring secularity and the church-state divide
This last episode of “To the Best of Our Knowledge” featured what sounds like a great book on secularism. The main point for everyone from atheists to Christian fundamentalists is that secularism is in place to protect religious freedom, not to stifle it. It does this by protecting against state-level establishment of a particular religion. Interestingly, the author, Berlinerbau, also points out that an absolute separation of religion and state is also not desirable. He points to the Soviet Union as an example of the type of state it would take to attempt such absolutism. Because, at least in the interview (I haven’t read the book), he provides a balanced approach, his work seems worth checking out for those interested in matters of “church and state.”
