We’ve had occasion to observe before in this forum that equality seems to have become the overriding, master value of our time, particularly in the ongoing contests between religious rights and other rights of sexuality and equality, and even more particularly for academics writing in the field. Still, there remains disagreement among scholars on the subject. Here is a volume published by Cambridge that gathers authors to “rethink” the “balance” among these commitments: The Conscience Wars: Rethinking the Balance Between Religion, Identity, and Equality, edited by Susanna Mancini and Michel Rosenfeld. The book is rather tilted, however, in the direction of re-weighting and re-ranking values and interests against religious conviction and in favor of equality. Reviewing the list of contributors, it is somewhat striking, though not too surprising, that in a collection of more than 18 chapters (some with multiple authors), none of the contributors is much known in prior work for ranking religion comparatively highly in these contests.

In this work, Professors Rosenfeld and Mancini have brought together an impressive group of authors to provide a comprehensive analysis on the greater demand for religions exemptions to government mandates. Traditional religious conscientious objection cases, such as refusal to salute the flag or to serve in the military during war, had a diffused effect throughout society. In sharp contrast, these authors argue that today’s most notorious objections impinge on the rights of others, targeting practices like abortion, LGTBQ adoption, and same-sex marriage. The dramatic expansion of conscientious objection claims have revolutionized the battle between religious traditionalists and secular civil libertarians, raising novel political, legal, constitutional and philosophical challenges. Highlighting the intersection between conscientious objections, religious liberty, and the equality of women and sexual minorities, this volume showcases this political debate and the principal jurisprudence from different parts of the world and emphasizes the little known international social movements that compete globally to alter the debate’s terms.

The twentieth century saw the twin expansion of constitutional rights of free speech and “substantive” due process, a symbiotic mix that was no accident. The combatants in the fight for that expansion are often thought to be the religious–and especially Christian, on the one hand, and the non- or anti-religious, on the other. And yet in this new book published by Hachette, Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics, historian of religion R. Marie Griffith argues that intra-Christian divisions were just as important in understanding the fracturing that occurred in this period.

Gay marriage, transgender rights, birth control–sex is at the heart of many of the most divisive political issues of our age. The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion. Both those who advocated for greater openness in sexual matters and those who resisted new sexual norms turned to politics to pursue their moral visions for the nation. Moral Combat is a history of how the Christian consensus on sex unraveled, and how this unraveling has made our political battles over sex so ferocious and so intractable.