God, Locke, and Liberty

"From the time that I knew anything," wrote John Locke at Oxford University in 1660, "I found myself in a storm which has continued to this time." The storm of which Locke spoke was the maelstrom of religious fanaticism and intolerance that sparked a bloody civil war. Thus, the storm continues in our own day: the problem of political and social violence fueled by religion is as urgent now as it was in the seventeenth century. In God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, historian Joseph Loconte explains how Locke confronted this enduring threat to freedom in his stirring defense of religious liberty. In a ground-breaking study into Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Loconte shows that Locke enlisted Christian doctrines and ideals to morally and intellectually demolish the case for coercion in matters of faith. God, Locke, and Liberty demonstrates how Locke found conceptual support for toleration in an earlier Christian reform movement, namely, the Christian humanist tradition.
Loconte offers a fresh contextual and theologically informed reading of Locke's Letter, revealing strong continuity with the Christian humanist authors whom Locke admired-even as he pushed their arguments for toleration in much more radical directions. God, Locke, and Liberty challenges the popular notion that decisive arguments for religious freedom appeared only after the decline of Christian influence in early modern Europe. "If the Gospel and the apostle may be credited," Locke wrote accusingly, "no man can be a Christian without charity, and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love." Loconte's study reveals how Locke's vision of a tolerant and pluralistic society drew great strength from a radical reinterpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus. Like no thinker before him, Locke forged an alliance between liberal political theory and a gospel of divine mercy. God, Locke, and Liberty suggests that a clearer understanding of Locke's political theology offers the best hope for calming the storms of religious fanaticism that once again threaten the peace and security of the West.