Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion Out of Politics - Hardcover

Attended Hay Festival 2011 Baroness Warnock's book is an excellent antidote to religious complacency.--John Hbgood "The American Spectator " 'This sentinel of a secular state again takes up her post ... should give a minister, or a Miliband, plenty of piquant food for thought.' --Sanford Lakoff 'A fascinating contribution to one of the great debates of the day' --Sanford Lakoff 'It is the patient accumulation of cases, histories and arguments in this book that is eventually more impressive than any mere polemic. We are shown the sovereignty of careful, compassionate, rich moral thought over law, over politics, and even, as Plato saw, over religion. In the end it is indeed dishonest - even dishonest to God - to think otherwise.' --Sanford Lakoff 'Mary Warnock is one of the best-known philosophers in Britain. Few people could read this book without admiration for her style and scholarship.' --Sanford Lakoff 'An excellent antidote to religious complacency.' --Sanford Lakoff 'This is a swashbuckling and iconoclastic book: Mary Warnock at her best.'--Sanford Lakoff 'This is a wide-ranging book that covers the most diverse of subjects from philosophy and theology to music and church architecture written by someone who has reflected deeply and systematically on these issues over the course of a long life.'--Sanford Lakoff 'Plenty of Christian readers will find Dishonest to God" challenging, but it deserves a close reading for its subtle appreciation of the complexities in the issues it tackles.'--Sanford Lakoff

This is a powerful argument that religious and theological issues should have no place in issues of public morality, covering issues relating to euthanasia, assisted suicide, and abortion. Here is a pugnacious book by a philosopher who often hits the headlines. The book reflects on the nature of religion and how it relates or ought to relate to the rest of life. Many people today are totally indifferent to religion but religion is far from dead. Indeed religions are intensely defended and aggressively pursued. Religion is a cause for dissension and death. This is beyond dispute. Mary Warnock is concerned with Christianity. She argues that to value religion as the essential foundation of morality is a profound and probably dangerous mistake. Warnock's overriding concern is to argue that religions and morality must be prised apart, however close they may both have been in the past. Judges for example are constantly being asked to pass judgement on moral issues in court. "Because of The Human Rights Act", the law perforce is involved. Morality is therefore increasingly a public and not just a private matter. This book tries to clarify the foundation of morality in a society largely indifferent to and ignorant of religion.