Salman Rushdie, in a recent opinion piece says:

… The simple truth is that, wherever religions get into society’s driving seat, tyranny results. The Inquisition results, or the Taliban.And yet, religions continue to insist that they provide special access to ethical truths and consequently deserve special treatment and protection. And they continue to emerge from the world of private life — where they belong, like so many other things that are acceptable when done in private between consenting adults but unacceptable in the town square — and to bid for power.

Rushdie sounds like a secularized modern American. The values and ethos of modernity are clearly of controlling value for him. Of course he has experienced the negative consequences of bad public religion – death threats for irreligious writing. But surely murder and complete privatization aren’t the only options.