Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom

Authors

Gerard V. Bradley, Notre Dame Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2020

Publication Information

62 J. Church & State 740 (2020) (book review).

Abstract

Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. By Robert Louis Wilken. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. 191 pp. $26.00.

Yet the myth persists that secular philosophy rescued religious freedom from the unmerciful hands of the religious. The central ambition of Robert Wilken’s magisterial new book is to expose the myth as a false creation narrative. He shows brilliantly that religious liberty for persons and for communities has its origins in Christianity and not in the Enlightenment’s triumph over it. It might be hard to say what would constitute definitive proof of a proposition so sweeping. Wilken’s book is in any event more an episodic treatment of select, key thinkers than it is a strict argument or even an exhaustive survey of sources. It is nonetheless hard to deny that Wilken has supplied compelling evidence for his claim.

Comments

doi:10.1093/jcs/csaa007

Recommended Citation

Gerard V. Bradley, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom, 62 J. Church & State 740 (2020) (book review)..
Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1846