Religious Liberty after Election 2016: Where to Go from Here?
December 1, 2016 12:00 ET

"What might the election result in 2016 mean for America's first freedom -- religious liberty?

Mary Eberstadt, author most recently of It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, argues that the present moment offers religious believers and moral traditionalists several new opportunities for pushing back against the intolerance generated by years of secularist-progressive ascendency.

Her talk outlines a blueprint for defending religious liberty beyond the courts, and into the realms of education, academia, philanthropy, and the wider culture.

Contrary to its own claims, she shows, contemporary secularist progressivism is neither monolithic nor inevitable; nor is it a reliable guardian of the worst-off; and in the names of the poor and marginalized and destitute, religious believers and traditionalists can now press a new moral case in the public square about religion's paramount contribution to the public good."

Mary Eberstadt is author of several works of non-fiction including It's Dangerous to Believe (2016); How the West Really Lost God (2013); Adam and Eve after the Pill (2012); and Home-Alone America (2005); and editor of the 2007 anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. She has written for many magazines and newspapers, among them TIME, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, National Review Online, Policy Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post.

She is also author of a work of fiction, The Loser Letters, which has been adapted for stage and directed by Jeffrey Fiske, who also adapted The Screwtape Letters. Following a two-week run at Catholic University's Hartke Theater in Fall 2016, The Loser Letters is now being readied for a tour.

Mrs. Eberstadt is also founder of The Kirkpatrick Society, a literary and mentoring organization that has included hundreds of members within and beyond the nation's capital. Her previous positions include executive editor of The National Interest; managing editor of The Public Interest; and consulting editor to Policy Review. During the Reagan administration, she spent two years on the State Department Policy Planning staff as a speechwriter to former Secretary of State George Shultz; and was a special writing assistant to Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations. A four-year Telluride scholar at Cornell University and double major in philosophy and government, Mrs. Eberstadt was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Seton Hall University in 2014.

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