Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This collection of nine articles on religion in American political culture reflects and furthers a fundamental rethinking of one area of public philosophy thought quite settled only a generation ago, namely, the appropriate constitutional boundaries between church and state and the appropriate roles of religion in our public culture. The tone of the collection is set in the first article by Carl Esbeck, who constructs a typology of six models of church-state relations held by major sectors of American religious thought--but only two of which are embodied in our dominant modes of constitutional thinking. This conceptual rethinking is extended into the issue of First Amendent "original intent" in three revisionary articles examining the writings of Madison and Jefferson. Daniel Dreisbach's article on Jefferson's five proposed bills establishing religious freedom in Virginia notes that one mandates that "every minister of the gospel," on pain of a 50 pound-fine, conduct divine services and preach sermons on "days of public fasting and humiliation, or thanksgiving," appointed by the governor. So much for Jefferson's wall. Five articles addressing contemporary issues of law and political culture complete the collection. The coherence of this fine collection results from its origin as papers at a conference that gathered scholars engaged in common critique of prevailing doctrines. It reflects in a more focused way Mark Noll's more historically oriented collection Religion and American Politics (1990)--also originating in a conference--and the wide-ranging anthology Christianity and Modern Politics, ed. by Louisa Hulett (1993). E. J. Eisenach; University of Tulsa