"Sacred Liberty offers a dramatic, sweeping survey of how America built a unique model of religious freedom, perhaps the nation's "greatest invention." Steven Waldman, the bestselling author of Founding Faith, shows how early ideas about religious liberty were tested and refined amidst the brutal persecution of Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Quakers, African slaves, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses. American leaders drove religious...

"Recent events have shown that, for many on the far right, nothing-no matter how offensive, immoral, or even illegal-is impermissible in pursuit of power. But the left is not immune to such policies and tactics, often against itself. Such transgressive social rule-breaking, argues Finbarr Curtis, is particularly amenable to the analytical tools of religious studies. Religion itself is about rules, about what is sacred and what is profane, a contested...