Religious Freedom and Conservatism in America: Interview with John D. Wilsey

“This is a book that considers how to think about and maintain a uniquely American tradition: the harmony between liberty and religion that each generation has received as an inheritance from the generations preceding it.” 

With this declaration John D. Wilsey opens his new book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (Eerdmans, 2025). But the book is about more than what the title readily suggests. Wilsey is deeply concerned about the state of conservatism in America and the erosion of an interest in virtues. The two, he is convinced, are connected. And so, the book is equal parts history and equal parts call to action. Yes, there is something beautiful to preserve in this country, just as the Founders believed. But it also requires those doing the work of preserving to be virtuous people.

John D. Wilsey is Professor of Church History and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Church History and Historical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of four other books, including God’s Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles (Eerdmans, 2021).

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Daniel K. Williams: Why did you write this book? What is its central argument? And why is it important for us to read this book at this particular moment?

John D. Wilsey: This book has been in the works since 2011. My original intention was to produce an anthology of readings in the history of religious freedom, but after gathering about forty readings and writing introductions to each of them, I found that no publisher was interested. After finishing my biography of John Foster Dulles for Eerdmans in 2021, I asked my editor, Dave Bratt, if he thought Eerdmans might like to have it. He turned me down, too, but suggested I just write a book on the subject. I learned quickly that Dave is a man who gives excellent advice, and I’m glad to say I took it.

The main argument of the book is that religious freedom is a cardinal tradition in America, and it is worth conserving. Furthermore, conservatives are in the best position to maintain the tradition of religious freedom, and to prepare to hand it down to new generations just as we received it from those who went before us. Conservatism is a term that has been overly politicized in American life over the past forty or so years, so I wanted to set the record straight on what being a conservative means and entails. That is why the book is called a “primer.” It seeks to chart a way forward for understanding conservatism as a pre-political aspiration, and a way to think about religious freedom as a sacred trust.

I wrote the book primarily for young people, the young men and women who belong to my children’s generation. I hope that they see that conservatism should not be understood in terms of who they voted for, but what kind of persons they aspire to be. And I hope to show them that the best American traditions are meant to be conserved. It is young people who have the most to gain from the conservation of American tradition, and the most to lose if our good and great traditions are lost.

Daniel K. Williams: What historically has been the relationship between religious freedom and religion in the United States? Why is it important to preserve religious freedom?

John D. Wilsey: I find Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic, Democracy in America, a worthy frame of reference for thinking about religious freedom as a conservative. First, Tocqueville was a young man in his twenties when he came to America in 1831. So, he was just a bit older than my oldest daughter when he came here and wrote his book. Second, he observed that Americans were able to maintain harmony between what he called “the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty” even though they had undergone a revolution. His fellow Frenchmen were unable to maintain that harmony, but Americans did so because they understood that religion was necessary to freedom.

Tocqueville noted that religion informed the cultural habits and presuppositions of Americans, and that those habits formed the basis for the laws of the land. Religion secured a number of societal goods. For one, it set people’s attention on the needs of others in addition to their individual needs. It also gave people something greater than themselves on which to set their affections. And it reminded people that this life is temporary, but eternity beckons. Religion gets people out of their comfort zones and out of selfish ambitions. Religion helps us look beyond ourselves to the good of the whole society.

Everyone benefits from religious freedom, even non-religious people. For example, everyone has the freedom to live by the dictates of their consciences. So, religious people can live out their beliefs in private and in public without fear of persecution. And non-religious people can do the same. The state has neither the power to compel my conscience, nor has it the power to compel the conscience of someone of another faith, or no faith at all.

This is a general statement on the benefits of religious freedom, and there are practical considerations that are more complicated. But the tradition of religious freedom as a broad category is the necessary place to start if we are to enjoy the other freedoms of the First Amendment—freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and petition. It is the basis for all five freedoms in the First Amendment.

Daniel K. Williams: In your book, you position yourself against both postliberalism and the identity politics of the left. What is wrong, in your view, with each of these approaches? What do proponents of either of these approaches misunderstand about America and American history?

John D. Wilsey: Postliberals on the right and expressive individualists on the left actually seem to be in agreement on the idea that the American constitutional project is a failure. Postliberals believe that “liberalism has failed” because the philosophy of classical liberalism coming out of the Revolutionary tradition ultimately gave us drag queen story hour and sexual licentiousness. Expressive individualists obsessed with personal identities based on sexuality, gender, and race see America as conceived in the wickedness of race prejudice, colonialism, genocide, and mass injustice toward minorities and women. 

While the concerns of both groups are legitimate, I content that the solution is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Postliberals seek to retrieve strong visions of Catholic or Protestant political theology and apply them to America. Those visions entail establishing a particular church and setting up a monarchy. Expressive individualists want to reimagine American history by casting it as an irredeemable experiment in guilt and stain. Thus, the extreme left seeks revolution while the extreme right seeks counter-revolution, and both sides are attracted to authoritarians and even violence when necessary. 

In upholding a good and worthy tradition like religious freedom, conservatives also uphold American patriotism. A healthy love of country is a form of neighbor-love. America has never been perfect, but America is a great nation because the trajectory of American history has been directed toward the expansion of freedom, not contraction. The ideals of the American project have been, on the whole, of enormous benefit to humanity, even though Americans have often been guilty of great wrongs. We can acknowledge those wrongs with honesty without fear while at the same time loving our country and conserving the best of its traditions.

Retrieval is necessary, but the retrieval we need is the retrieval of American constitutional order. It is that order that makes and keeps us free.

Daniel K. Williams: Your book argues that conservatism preserves what is best about America and that conservatism, when properly understood, is essential for maintaining both the nation and the idea of religious freedom. How do you define conservatism? Why have you chosen to use the term “conservatism” rather than “classical liberalism”? And what is the connection between conservatism and religious freedom?

John D. Wilsey: One of my favorite conservative writers is Peter Viereck (1916-2006). In his 1949 book, Conservatism Revisited, he described conservatism in this way: “The conservative principles par excellence are proportion and measure; self-expression through self-restraint; preservation through reform; humanism and classical balance; a fruitful nostalgia for the permanent beneath the flux; and a fruitful obsession for unbroken historical continuity. These principles together create freedom, a freedom built not on the quicksand of adolescent defiance but on the bedrock of ethics and law.”

I love Viereck’s definition, especially his idea of “a fruitful nostalgia for the permanent beneath the flux.” One way to understand the disposition of conservatism is to consider the reality of change. Many think that conservatives want to resist change, but that isn’t true. Conservatives are realists; thus they know that change is inevitable. But conservatives do not see change as an inherent good. Because human nature is fallen, change must be managed and directed with the help of the guardrails of what Russell Kirk called “the permanent things.” Tradition, just law, prescription, and morality are those guardrails that channel change in a healthy direction and keep society from careening off the cliff toward anarchy—or crashing into the canyon wall of tyranny. 

Conservatism is humanistic, in that conservatives are concerned most about the flourishing of human persons in individual and communal terms. Private interests are legitimate and valid, but so are public interests. Conservatives seek balance and harmony between private and public goods.

Conservatism is aspirational, in that conservatives seek the highest goods of persons. Recognizing that some goods are unattainable in ideal form, nevertheless, the pursuit of individual and societal goods is always worthy. Conservatives aren’t sticks in the mud. They are optimistic but realistic. And conservatism itself is an aspiration. As a conservative, I aspire to more consistent conservatism. There are no pure conservatives, but all conservatives are on the path toward something higher and more noble.

Daniel K. Williams: Your book is about an approach to thinking about history, freedom, and politics, but it is also about becoming a particular type of person, with a particular type of imagination, a particular set of virtues, and a particular way of seeing the world. In some ways, your book is a profoundly optimistic book in the midst of a pessimistic world—and it is optimistic not because you expect external circumstances to change for the better, but because you hope to inspire your readers to be better people, with a more transcendent vision. Can you say more about that? What sort of people do you want to inspire your readers to be? And what do you think should sustain our hope or our imagination even in the midst of uncertain, deeply politically polarizing times?

John D. Wilsey: The highest pursuit of the human person is toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. Western and American traditions, while flawed, are traditions that point persons toward those “Transcendentals.” Ultimately, the question of our times cannot be, “What is wrong with you?” The question of our times is “What is wrong with me?” Injustice in the world is found first in the human heart, and correcting injustice starts there. Injustice does exist in external systems and structures, but injustice will never be corrected by concentrating on reforming externals without attention to directing the inner person toward the true, the good, and the beautiful.

If we find failure in America, we must then ask—what kind of nation do we want? That question cannot be answered without first confronting this question—what kind of person do I want to be? The American nation is made up of persons, not abstractions. American tradition—informed by imagination, nationality, ordered liberty, history, and religion—is a sacred trust that we have received from those who went before us. Will we steward those life-giving traditions responsibly and hand them down to our children and grandchildren unsullied, so that they will have them to enjoy and steward? Or will we jettison those good traditions in favor of revolutionary or counter-revolutionary utopian abstractions that have never been tested? I pray the former.