{"id":142540,"date":"2026-01-12T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T17:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142540"},"modified":"2026-01-12T18:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:20:25","slug":"church-times-xenia-dennenreviews-broken-altars-secularist-violence-in-modern-history-by-thomas-albert-howard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142540","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) Xenia Dennenreviews &#8216;Broken Altars: Secularist violence in modern history&#8217;\u00a0by Thomas Albert Howard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Religion rather than secular society is often blamed for using violence to achieve its aims. Professor Howard in\u00a0<em>Broken Altars: Secularist violence in modern history<\/em>, in contrast, demonstrates convincingly how violence has been used more often by secular regimes against religion. He seeks in this book to \u201cbring needed nuance and perspective to a complex, often fraught topic\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He sets out three definitions of secularism: passive secularism, combative secularism, and eliminationist secularism, and focuses in his book on the latter two, describing as passive secularism what we in the West would consider to be characteristic of a tolerant political regime with liberal principles \u2014 church-state separation, freedom of conscience, and freedom of the press \u2014 all vital ingredients of a democratic system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He presents, as examples of combative secularism, three case studies of early 20th-century modernisation: Mexico, Spain, and Turkey.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2026\/9-january\/books-arts\/book-reviews\/book-review-broken-altars-secularist-violence-in-modern-history-by-thomas-albert-howard\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Xenia Dennen reviews a study of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/secularism?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#secularism<\/a> in its aggressive forms &#x1f4da; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/books?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#books<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/bookreviews?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#bookreviews<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/o2xDU7RWds\">https:\/\/t.co\/o2xDU7RWds<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Church Times (@ChurchTimes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChurchTimes\/status\/2010300785599406301?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 11, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Religion rather than secular society is often blamed for using violence to achieve its aims. Professor Howard in\u00a0Broken Altars: Secularist violence in modern history, in contrast, demonstrates convincingly how violence has been used more often by secular regimes against religion.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142540\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,133,424,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-secularism","category-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142540"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142543,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142540\/revisions\/142543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}