"Secular Winds"

Perry Dane has a post on the Law, Religion, and Ethics that will be of interest to our readers.

Dane concludes:

This is a legal and political — and not only a religious — blog, so there should be (I guess) a legal and political take-away.  If there is, it might go something like this, however trite:  The relation of religion and the secular state, and of religion and law, must navigate between two dangers.  One is that religion will be co-opted, which is to say that it will become “secularized,” open to being oppressed and itself oppressive.  The other danger is that religion will be entirely banished from the public realm, leaving only “howling clouds of ash.”