Glendon: We have misunderstood religious freedom and separation of church and state

The freedom-protecting and flourishing-enabling distinction between religious and political authority has long and rightly been an important goal in the constitutional history of the West. Now, however, it is confused with a “wall of separation” between “religion” and “politics,” between the “public” and the “private.” And the “free exercise” of religion is seen as a function less of the moral limits on state action than of the extent to which private “conscience” can be accommodated without too much cost or inconvenience to the political authority and its projects. This diagnosis was and remains sound.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10506/?utm_source=RTA+Garnett+Glendon+Religious+Freedom&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email