The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity

"Os Guinness consistently tackles salient and difficult issues and, while giving due recognition to their complexity, analyzes them in clear argument and expounds them in lucid prose. In The Global Public Square, he does so again. Contemporary problems of diversity and religious freedom are massive, urgent and growing, but our deep differences are seldom addressed in other than a shallow way. This short but wide-ranging and eloquent defense of freedom of religion and conscience, and civility and plurality--which the author summarizes as 'soul freedom'--provides much-needed insight and guidance in our common future."--Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and coauthor of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide
"This is a closely reasoned and eloquent defense of religious freedom (Guinness calls it 'soul freedom, ' because it refers to the rights of secularists as well as people of faith). This is not just one right among many, but a fundamental right rooted in the dignity of every human being. But it is also a right essential to the maintenance of a public space in which people with widely diverse worldviews can live together with civility. This is a book that should be read by everyone concerned with freedom of conscience, not only in the face of murderous persecution as still exists in many places, but also with the more subtle threats by political orthodoxies in Western democracies."--Peter L. Berger, professor emeritus, Boston University
"Os Guinness is a prolific writer and commentator and in his latest book he also takes on the mantle of prophet, a point noted by William Inboden in his support for the book. Indeed, Guinness issues a powerful prophetic statement: that the freedom of conscience, belief, religion and thought on which modern democracies and international human rights covenants are built are increasingly being eroded, if not destroyed, and that it is in the interests of both the religious and non-religious to protect those vital freedoms. This effort is a massive undertaking for any group of people willing to operate in the media-driven, hate-filled alarmist culture wars, let alone the often-violent relationships between religious, ethnic, and political identities prevalent throughout the world. But we should make no mistake, Guinness argues; all interested in justice and human dignity must explicitly protect these freedoms. This is an important book and it makes a vital contribution to the field. It is characterized by Guinness' deep concern for civility that runs along that sharp edge between liberal and conservative, religious and secular."--Nicholas Kerton-Johnson, Christian Scholar's Review, Summer 2014