Stanley Fish: Is religion special?

Stanley Fish writing at The New York Times / Opinionator: “Religious organizations face a choice between altering their core beliefs or forfeiting privileges enjoyed by others. The liberal state and its institutions face a choice between being faithful to the democratic principle of open access or closing the liberal door to those who are illiberal . . . The dilemma is sharpened and even rendered poignant by the fact that liberalism very much wants to believe that it is being fair to religion, but what it calls fairness amounts to cutting religion down to liberal size . . .  the conflict between the liberal state, with its devotion to procedural rather than substantive norms, and religion, which is all substance from its doctrines to its procedures, is intractable.”