The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity

“Steven Smith is the greatest law and religion scholar of his generation. Every book he writes is illuminating, and this one is no exception. The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity is far and away the most insightful, balanced, and convincing account of the religion clauses to appear in the last five years at least.” —Marc O. DeGirolami, author of The Tragedy of Religious Freedom

“This book highlights the enormity, complexity, resilience, danger, disenchantment and importance that accompany matters of conscience, which in turn are inextricably connected to the relationship between law, religion and the state. It offers a novel and convincing defence of conscience as understood both in the context of the pre-modern West and by religious communities and traditions in the modern era.” –International Journal for Religious Freedom

“Appearing in the Notre Dame series “Catholic Ideas for a Secular World,” the basic disposition of Smith’s book will not surprise readers. He has long grappled with the challenge of faithfully adjusting Christian conviction to a political and legal regime once friendly but increasingly hostile. To those, like the present reviewer, sympathetic to this project, his books are trenchant and compelling. Those less sympathetic would also do well to read them as judicious but uncompromising challenges to the regnant academic pieties of the moment.” —Review of Politics

Steven D. Smith, winner of the 2022 Religious Liberty Initiative Scholarship Award, is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Religion, and the co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is the author of numerous books including Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021).