Faking Liberties at Religion and Diplomacy
After one publishes a book, there is always a weird moment of waiting to see what reviewers will have to say. Happily, all of the reviews of Faking Liberties that I’ve seen so far have been really positive and their critiques have been generally deserved and fair. Reviewers have also challenged some of my claims and taken issue with some of my rhetorical choices. This is certainly true of Judd Birdsall’s recent review of Faking Liberties at the Review of Faith & International Affairs.
“This connection to contemporary policy debates makes Faking Liberties an enormously
valuable read beyond the scholarly world of Japanese studies. Thomas does caution that the book “is not presentist, but it does have messages for readers today” (p. x). Many of those messages relate to the growing collaboration between government officials and academic experts in formulating and implementing policy on religion. As the director of a network (the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion & Diplomacy) that actively fosters collaboration between scholars of religious studies and policymakers, I read the book as basically an extended case study in scholar- policymaker partnership in analyzing religio-political dynamics and advancing religious liberty.”
In a generally positive review, Dr. Birdsall spent some time unpacking some of the rhetorical excesses and—I must admit—small factual errors in my Conclusion. While I certainly stand by the arguments of the book as a whole, I learned a great deal from Dr. Birdsall’s reading, and his review helped me see how some of my claims would be interpreted by religious freedom practitioners and policy makers. It was a tremendous gift to get that perspective, so I reached out to Dr. Birdsall to thank him for the commentary. Our email exchange gave birth to an interview for the website Religion & Diplomacy, which was one of the first places where I got to talk explicitly about the policy implications of the work. You can read the interview here.