The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism

Instead of the move towards secularization predicted by many social thinkers, the closing decades of the twentieth century witnessed a major upsurge in religion – followed by a resurgence of religious fanaticism and global religious terrorism. Was the "secularization thesis" really such a dismal failure? And, perhaps more importantly, how should we react to the spiritual and ideological challenges that radical religious movements pose to Western liberal democracies?

Using a variety of though...