Includes bibliographical references.

"Religion's place in American public life has never been fixed. As new communities have arrived, as old traditions have fractured and reformed, as cultural norms have been shaped by shifting economic structures and the advance of science ... the claims posited by religious traditions--and the respect such claims may demand--have been subjects of near-constant change. [The author] pushes against the widely held (and often unexamined) notion that unbounded tolerance must and should be accorded to claims forwarded on the basis of religious belief in a society increasingly characterized by religious pluralism. Pressing at the distinction between tolerance and respect, Levinovitz seeks to offer a set of guideposts by which a democratic society could identify and observe limits beyond which religiously grounded claims may legitimately be denied the expectation of unqualified non-interference."--publisher