I've been fortunate that reviews, even in popular media, have generally been favorable , and that the most unfavorable reviews have been confined to right-wing rags, which hardly merit a response.   But a misleading review in Political Theory by Mendus, a political theorist now emerita at the University of York, does merit a response, which I'll put below the fold for anyone who is interested.

Mendus begins, fairly enough, by summarizing (somewhat accurately) the main conclusions of the book.  She then writes:

In denying the special character of religion, and in opposing the granting of exemptions, Leiter sets himself in opposition to most (if not all) Western liberal democracies.  Additionally, he sets himself in opposition to some very significant modern philosophers, not least his colleague Martha Nussbaum who, in her 2008 book, Liberty of Conscience:  In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality, argues vigorously that the claims of religion are of the greatest significance and that, for that reason, exemptions are sometimes necessary in order to secure equal treatment for religious believers.

Authors sometimes complain that a reviewer didn't read their book (or read it carefully).  But an author knows he is in real trouble when the reviewer invokes near the start of her review a related book–which the reviewer obviously didn't read, or read carefully!  In fact, Nussbaum does not argue that the "claims of religion are of the greatest significance," she argues that the faculty of conscience is significant and special, and that it is in virtue of the respect owed to the faculty of conscience that religious claims of conscience are entitled to exemptions from generally applicable laws.   With regard to one of the two crucial theses in my book, Nussbaum and I are in full agreement:  religious claims of conscience do not have a unique claim on legal protection, and thus are not special.  (Nussbaum doesn't make much of this, because her focus is the American law of religious liberty, where the issue has been settled by constitutional fiat, as it were.)  On a different thesis, we do disagree:  I view toleration as the moral grounds of liberty of conscience, Nussbaum views respect as its moral basis, and that is crucial to her argument for exemptions.  I devote an entire chapter (Chapter 4) to arguing against Nussbaum's view.   Mendus is entirely silent on the arguments in that chapter.

There's an obvious rhetorical strategy at work in Mendus's misrepresentation of Nussbaum's book:  it aims to suggest that I am defending an astonishing (indeed, outlandish) view in arguing that religious conscience is not more important than other conscientious claims.  In fact, that view is not astonishing:  it is Nussbaum's actual view; it is the conclusion of the Rawlsian argument for liberty of conscience in A Theory of Justice (as I discuss in Chapter III–again, Mendus is silent); and it is the argument of Eisgruber & Sager's 2007 book interpreting the religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution (their view is the real challenge to Nussbaum's on this score–I think she has the better of the constitutional argument).   My view on exemptions is less common (the actual view is that there should be no burden-shifting exemptions to genuinely neutral laws that promote the general welfare, and that non-burden-shifting exemptions should be available to all, regardless of whether they have a religious foundation), but it is defended as well by Brian Barry in one of his last books, and it was essentially the view adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990.

So the opening rhetorical posturing is both inaccurate and misleading, but it signalled to me that I was in trouble with this reviewer!  And, indeed, things quickly get worse.

In order to answer the question whether religious conscience deserves special treatment as against other claims of conscience, it is necessary to have some characterization of what marks a claim of conscience as a religious one.  I propose three characteristics (Mendus only ever mentions two of them); here's my official characterization of the second element (the one on which Mendus focuses) at pp. 33-34:

On my proposed account, for all religions, there are at least some beliefs central to the religion that….(2) do not answer ultimately (or at the limit) to evidence and reasons, as these are understood in other domains concerned with knowledge of the world.  Religious beliefs, in virtue of being based on "faith," are insulated from ordinary standards of evidence and rational justification, the ones we employ in both common sense and the sciences.

Mendus says this "initial[]…articulation…is unobjectionable" and she agrees that "religious belief is indeed grounded in faith" (767).  So far, so good.  She also says, in the same paragraph that "[m]uch of [Leiter's] case against exemption depends upon the latter feature" (767), which is false.  None of the arguments against exemptions from neutral laws that promote the general welfare turn on this feature.  The arguments for that conclusion (in Chapter 5, about which Mendus is again silent) appeal to the practical difficulties of granting universal exemptions for claims of conscience and to the costs to promoting the general welfare in a just society of according some exemptions.   That some religious beliefs are insulated from reasons and evidence (in the sense noted) and held on faith is only a key part of the argument for why the moral reasons for "principled toleration" (as I call it–Mendus manages to say nothing about my conception of toleration in the review!) would not single out only religious claims of conscience.  (That argument is developed in Chapter 3–again, Mendus is silent about the actual argument.)

At this point, however, the review really goes off the rails; Mendus claims that my "unobjectionable point" about some religious beliefs being insulated from reasons and evidence…

…attains a life of its own and develops into a full-frontal attack on religious belief as irrational and even "unhinged."  To see how quickly the position escalates, consider the following stages:  on p. 34, Leiter tells us that religious beliefs are insulated from "ordinary standards of evidence and rational justification." Fair enough, but a mere five pages later, this has morphed into the claim that a religious frame of mind involves "believing something notwithstanding the evidence and reasons that fail to support it."  Already, the largely innocuous claim that religious belief is not entirely grounded in "ordinary" evidence has somehow been converted into the claim that it persists in the teeth of (all?) counter evidence.  On p. 40, Leiter goes yet further and tells us that religious beliefs are "insulated from revision in the light of evidence."  Now it seems that evidence is a complete irrelevant to religious believers.  And by p. 76 he is denouncing much religious belief as "culpably false" or even "perniciously false."  (767-768)

Mendus then has the audacity to declare all this "indecently hasty."   There has, indeed, been indecent haste, but not by this author.  The giveaway–I imagine alert readers of the review will notice this–is that Mendus cherry picks short quotes and phrases spread across 42 pages (and two chapters) without once discussing the dialectical context for any of them!  Aggrieved authors are tiresome, I know, but this is sufficiently irresponsible that it deserves to be exposed with some care (if only as a warning to book review editors elsewhere):

1.  Mendus claims that I claim religious belief is "unhinged."  She pairs that with the doubts I raise in Chapter 4 about whether all religious beliefs are rationally warranted (I take the familiar view that some of them are not–more on that in a moment).  The pairing is meant to suggest that in allegedly calling religious belief "unhinged" I am suggesting religious believers are nuts or crazy.  But the actual phrase I use is that some religious beliefs are "unhinged from reasons and evidence" which is just an alternative formulation of the point that some religious beliefs are "insulated" from reasons and evidence, which Mendus deemed "unobjectionable" and, in fact, correct!  Only by lifting "unhinged" out of context does she make it sound like an insult.

2.  I do not know why Mendus thinks that the claim that (a) some religious beliefs are "insulated from ordinary standards of evidence and rational justification, the ones we employ in both common sense and the sciences" (p. 34)–which she deemed "unobjectionable"–is not equivalent to the claim that (b) some religious beliefs are accepted "notwithstanding the evidence and reasons" incompatible with them.  If my belief that P is insulated from ordinary reasons and evidence bearing on P, then, necessarily, that belief is held notwitstanding ordinary reasons and evidence incompatible with believing that P.  There is no "escalating" of the original claim here.

3.  The third formulation on p. 40 to which Mendus objects (some religious beliefs are "insulated from revision in light of the evidence") is offered in the context of my considering a wide array of counter-examples to my tripartite analysis of what is distinctive of religious claims of conscience.  (Mendus is, again, silent on the details of the analysis.)  One such possible counter-example is represented by intellectualist traditions in religious thought (e.g., Paley).  I point out that it is never the upshot of the intellectualist traditions that the fundamental commitments of faith are ever actually "revised in light of new evidence" (p. 40), which leads to the formulation Mendus quotes.  (In a footnote to that formulation, I discuss some complications.)  Since Mendus does not respond to, indeed doesn't even acknowledge, the evidence for my formulation, it is unclear what her point is.  She then outrageously glosses all this as my saying that "evidence is a complete irrelevance to religious believers," which is the opposite of what I say at various places in the book (e.g., pp. 40-41, where I discuss the relevance of testimonial evidence to some religiouss beliefs, but then raise questions about epistemic weight and its role in these beliefs; or the long note 16 on p. 148, where I discuss the many different ways in which ordinary reasons and evidence figure in religious claims of conscience ). 

4.  Mendus then jumps 36 pages (and a whole chapter!) ahead to report that I am now "denouncing much religious belief as 'culpably false' or even 'perniciously false.'"   She omits the fact that the claim that "religious belief is perniciously false belief" is offered only as a possible interpretation of an argument of Simon Blackburn's, an interpretation (and a claim) which I then reject!  I go on to suggest that what Blackburn is getting at is that some religious beliefs are both false and that those who accept them are epistemically culpable for holding them (77-80).  Mendus omits "epistemically," perhaps to make it sound like I think those who hold false religious beliefs are wicked.  But it is not wicked to be epistemically culpable, and I say nothing to suggest otherwise.  But if some religious beliefs are false and their adherents epistemically culpable for holding them (I give some reasons why one might think this) that is relevant to the question actually under discussion, namely, whether religious belief per se is a proper object of what Stephen Darwall famously called appraisal respect.  None of the actual dialectical context is even mentioned by Mendus. 

Things go down hill from here.  Mendus points out that Darwin's theory caused consternation for many religious believers.  That's, of course, true, but irrelevant unless my claim were that all religious beliefs are always insulated from reasons and evidence.  But that wasn't my claim, as I state repeatedly throughout the book–both in the original formulation at pp. 33-34, quoted above, and then again at p. 39 ("all [major religions] countenance at least some central beliefs that are not ultimately answerable to evidence and reasons…."), p. 40, p. 81, and so on.  Existential and universal quantifiers are lost on Mendus, alas, as she accuses me of claiming that the "religious frame of mind" simpliciter is indifferent to evidence and of "relying on sweeping generalisations" (768).  (The irony of that last charge is by now apparent.)  She even asserts that I do "not consider the possibility that the concept of evidence is itself is problematic" (768), even though the concept of evidence, and what it means, or might mean, is the subject of pp. 40-42, 56-58, 77-82, 86-90,  148 n. 16, 149 n. 18, 150 n. 24, 151 n. 27-28, 153-154 n. 6, and 158 n. 22.  Once again cherry-picking, she quotes the conclusion (768-769) of a section on Thomist arguments for why belief in God is, in fact, rationally obligatory without saying anything about my actual argument against the Thomist view in question.

To add final insult to injury, Mendus concludes that Leiter "all too often implies that religious believers are not only stupid, but wilfully stupid" (769).  Of course, Mendus has to deem this an implication, since I nowhere say anything like that.  Lots of religious readers have reviewed the book without taking away this alleged "implication."  But surely the conclusion of Chapter IV might have given her pause (on the assumption she read Chapter IV–as noted, it's unclear):

It bears emphasizing that the argument of this chapter–that religious conscience per se is not a proper object of [what Darwall called] appraisal respect–is in no way an argument for any other propositions with which it might be confused on a superficial reading–for example, that no particular religion might be a proper object of appraisal respect; or that religious belief per se deserves disrespect (e.g., intolerance).  The last pernicious conclusion is one that is no part of the argument of the book:  I have adopted throughout what seems to me the clearly correct Nietzschean posture-namely, that the falsity of beliefs and/or their lack of epistemic warrant are not necessarily objections to those beliefs; indeed, false or unwarranted beliefs are almost certainly, as Nietzsche so often says, necessary conditions of life itself, and so of considerable value, and certainly enough value to warrant toleration.  (pp. 90-91)

Richard Dawkins may think religious believers are wilfully stupid; I do not (since it's absurd on its face), and I go out of my way to emphasize that the epistemic status of some class of beliefs does not settle any interesting issues about their value or about the demands of principled toleration.  (And not just at pp. 90-91:  see, e.g., p. 60, discussing, contra "New Atheists" like Dawkins, the "morally salutary effects of religious belief and practice.")

In the end, I am just puzzled.  Obviously, something about the book rubbed her the wrong way, but I am not sure what.  Professor Mendus has written a lot about toleration, and I have read much of it.  I confess I did not cite any of it in this book.  I have gotten many sound and serious objections to the arguments in Why Tolerate Religion? in workshops and in reviews; I am sorry that not a single sound or serious objection is articulated here that would explain the review's hostility. 

UPDATE:  A member of the editorial board of Political Theory sent me a very funny e-mail about the preceding:  "I read your response.   On internal evidence, it sounds to me as though she is an idiot.  To hell with her!!  So long as she spells your name right, as they say."  "Idiot" is a tad strong, to be sure!

ANOTHER:  I am reminded of the very different review by David Gordon, a philosopher at the Mises Institute, in particular this:

Those familiar with Leiter’s frequent battles on his influential website with the “Texas Taliban” may anticipate an all-out assault on the special position of religion, but Leiter has a surprise in store. Following Nietzsche, his favorite philosopher, he holds that false beliefs can be necessary for life: the falsity of religious beliefs does not for Leiter settle the issue of the public status of religion. “I have adopted throughout what seems to me the clearly correct Nietzschean posture—namely that the falsity of beliefs and/or their lack of epistemic warrant are not necessarily objections to those beliefs; indeed, false or unwarranted beliefs are almost certainly, as Nietzsche so often says, necessary conditions of life itself, and so of considerable value, and certainly enough value to warrant toleration.” (p.91, emphasis in original) Those who favor active measures to diminish the influence of religion in public life might appeal to the bad consequences of belief: what of all those massacred in the name of religion? Leiter in response says, “there is no reason to think that beliefs unhinged from reason and evidence and that issue in categorical demands on action are especially likely to issue in ‘harm’ to others.”(p.83)

If Leiter does not favor the public crusade against religion one might have anticipated from him, he by no means supports granting religion a special place in the law. He argues, on both deontological and consequentialist grounds, that people’s beliefs and practices should be tolerated. People are normally entitled to freedom of conscience.

Gordon, unsurprisingly, does take issue with my view about exemptions (and about state power more broadly), and fairly so.