Are You Truly Free?

Some of us feel that without religious rules in our lives, we are free. It turns out that often it’s exactly the opposite.

My new book, No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments, gives a fresh perspective on the Ten Commandments, showing how communal religious practices can give us spiritual strength and liberate us from the silent laws of our dominant culture. (Center Street/ Hachette, 2018)

Many of us in Western societies today have a complicated relationship with the rules and gods of traditional religion. But secular society has its own hidden rules that we follow and gods that we worship just as obsequiously – of money, social approval, personal comfort, brands, convenience, appearances, Facebook likes, and of the eternal spectacle served up on our screens. When we think we have found freedom in our post-religious world, we underestimate the tremendous, invisible power of our culture – the addictive pull of producing and consuming and the massive pressure to conform to social norms. And likewise we underestimate the power of religion to break us free.

My mission is to help people find a real, deep, spiritual liberation – to take back our power and claim our dignity as beings made in the divine image. No Other Gods delves deeply into the Ten Commandments as modern practices of such liberation.