Joseph Loconte is associate professor of history at The King’s College in New York City. He is the author of The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt and the editor of The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm.

In God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, Joseph Loconte, associate professor of history at The King’s College in New York CIty, has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of where religious freedom came from and how we can help renew it. God, Locke, and Liberty traces the history of religious freedom’s emergence in the early modern period. Loconte deftly combines intellectual, religious, and political history to weave a story that will keep you reading. ... This is a wonderful book that laypeople and scholars alike will benefit from reading. At a time when the foundations of our freedom strain under the weight of both religious and secular forms of fanaticism, Loconte points us back to the simple yet powerful idea that Locke expressed so eloquently: 'The toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion is so agreeable to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind as not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it.' Monstrous as it may seem, religious and irreligious people are once again growing blind to the rights of their neighbors. This book will help reopen eyes.

• Introduction: A ‘Secret Stream’ of Toleration: Christian Humanism and the Crisis of the WestChapter 1: A Thing Called Liberty: The Great Debate over Freedom of Conscience Chapter 2: Bright Enough for All Our Purposes: Locke and the English Reformers Chapter 3: The Heirs of Erasmus: Locke and the Dutch Reformers Chapter 4: The Captain of Our Salvation: Toleration and the Politics of JesusConclusion: Let Us Not Devour Each Other: The Lockean Vision of a Just Society Bibliography