Mahablog: Religion and Liberalism

I’ve been struggling with an essay by Stanley Fish in the behind-the-firewall New York Times. Fish seems to be arguing that liberalism and religion are incompatible and that liberal society requires the diminution of religion.

Liberalism is in no way incompatible with my religion. However, I’m not going to dismiss Fish’s argument out of hand, even though I think he has several blind spots.

First, I want to repeat the point made by Mark Lilla in his recent New York Times essay, “The Politics of God,” that I blogged about here: Separating political authority from religious revelation made modern liberal society possible.