Recent Reads

The Long Truce : How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit, by A.J. Conyers. Conyers, a professor at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, examines the development of the western doctrine of religious toleration. He seems predisposed to find pragmatic, if not wholly cynical, reasons underlying this doctrine, and bemoans the creation of a so-called "bi-polar society in which the isolated citizen confronts the unmediated power of the state."

I will admit to skimming large portions of the book, as I found his ideas both unconvincing and unappealing. Would the prospects of an individual "confronting the unmediated power of the state" be helped or harmed by adding religious persecution to the weapons which the latter brings to bear against him?