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“Thomas Albert Howard’s timely and ambitious book documents how secularist ideologies could be as violent as religions. Analyzing modern histories of France, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and China, it differentiates between the passive, combative, and eliminationist types of secular political systems.”—Ahmet T. Kuru, author of Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment   “The Enlightenment philosophes promised that secular politics would deliver us from faith-based communal violence.  Thomas Albert Howard demonstrates how this dream at times contributed in the twentieth century to the repression, murder, and even mass murder of religious believers all over the globe.”— Jeffrey T. Zalar, University of Cincinnati   “A superb, and badly needed, corrective to the standard account of the relationship between religion and modernity, and a cautionary tale for the future of that encounter in an increasingly agitated twenty-first century. Highly recommended.”—George Weigel, Ethics and Public Policy Center   “In a clear and concise global analysis that spans the European Enlightenment to the present, Howard reminds amnesiacs of the staggering scale of human suffering inflicted by anti-religious modern political regimes animated by combative and eliminationist secularism.  Broken Altars subverts the view that religious rather than secular ideologies have been and remain disproportionately responsible for organized violence.”—Brad S. Gregory, University of Notre Dame   “At a time when religious conservatism is increasingly associated with illiberalism, Howard’s Broken Altars is an important reminder to all sides in debates about religion and politics that secularist ideologies and regimes have sobering records of violence and coercion.  In a sweeping narrative that traverses revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and Southeast Asia, Howard assembles a chilling history of governments that defied the divine in the pursuit of social justice.  It did not work out well.”—D. G. Hart, Calvinism: A History             

Author Information

Thomas Albert Howard is professor of humanities and history and holder of the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. He is the author of many books, including The Faiths of Others: A History of Interreligious Dialogue.

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