School vouchers. The Pledge of Allegiance. The ban on government
grants for theology students. The abundance of church and state
issues brought before the Supreme Court in recent years underscores
an incontrovertible truth in the American legal system: the
relationship between the state and religion in this country is
still fluid and changing.
This, the second of two volumes by historian and legal scholar
James Hitchcock, offers a complete analysis and interpretation of
the Court's historical understanding of religion, explaining the
revolutionary change that occurred in the 1940s. In "Volume I: The
Odyssey of the Religion Clauses" (Princeton), Hitchcock provides
the first comprehensive survey of the court cases involving the
Religion Clauses, including a number that scholars have
ignored.
Here, Hitchcock examines how, in the early history of our
country, a strict separation of church and state was sustained
through the opinions of Jefferson and Madison, even though their
views were those of the minority. Despite the Founding Fathers'
ideas, the American polity evolved on the assumption that religion
was necessary to a healthy society, and cooperation between
religion and government was assumed.
This view was seldom questioned until the 1940s, notes
Hitchcock. Then, with the beginning of the New Deal and the
appointment of justices who believed they had the freedom to apply
the Constitution in new ways, the judicial climate changed.
Hitchcock reveals the personal histories of these justices and
describes how the nucleus of the Court after World War II was
composed of men who were alienated from their own faiths and who
looked at religious belief as irrational, divisive, and potentially
dangerous, assumptions that became enshrined in the modern
jurisprudence of the Religion Clauses. He goes on to offer a
fascinating look at how the modern Court continues to grapple with
the question of whether traditional religious liberty is to be
upheld.
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