Luke C. Sheahan

Religious Freedom

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“John Wilsey provides an insightful guide to the central American freedom: the free exercise of religion. Rather than framing religious freedom as liberal, as so many of its defenders and detractors do, Wilsey sees religious freedom as inherently conservative, because it permits and even, in the American circumstance, promotes the practice of religion. Against the abstract conception of religious liberty advanced by a decadent liberalism and decried by an insurgent authoritarianism, Wilsey posits a humane conservatism. Like Burke, Wilsey understands that prudent statesmen and citizens pay attention to historical circumstance. Rather than cast religious liberty as license and then condemn or praise it, he looks to the American experience with religious liberty and the role it played in preserving humane democratic society. Wilsey, like Tocqueville, sees that the practice of religion is essential to a humane democracy because it directs the eyes of citizens toward the transcendent. As did Russell Kirk and Peter Viereck, Wilsey understands that American liberty is not license, an ability to break free of tradition, but an inheritance, a tradition of freely chosen moral practice. It is the American means to a life well lived. More broadly speaking, Wilsey has written a guide to mature intellectual conservatism, a real tour de force through the conservative mind.”