Author: Emma Long Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1441111441 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment governs the relationship between the institutions of the church and those of the state; the Supreme Court, as arbiter of the Constitution, has, since 1947, sought to determine where the line between the two should be drawn. This book shows how and why the Court drew the line in particular cases and how and why the lines that were drawn by the Court had an impact on the relationship between institutions of government and the Church, shaping US politics and society. Using the Supreme Court's cases as a framework, the book shows how the constitutional underpinnings of church-state debates shaped the political, economic, and social debate on the issue, and explores broader debates about religion and American society. This book maintains that the Court cases cannot be understood separately from the context from which they arose and that legal factors are only part of a broader picture for a historical understanding of the Court and Establishment Clause cases.
Author: Philip HAMBURGER Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674038185 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 529
Book Description
In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later. Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.
Author: Stephen V. Monsma Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers ISBN: Category : Church and state Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Increasingly the Supreme Court's strict separationist, no-aid-to-religion doctrine that was in favor during the 1970s and 1980s is being challenged by a new approach aimed at equal treatment or neutrality. In Church-State Relations in Crisis, political scientist Stephen V. Monsma explores the neutrality principle and arguments for and against it. Monsma uses the Supreme Court's Mitchell v. Helms decision as the starting point for his discussion and argues that Mitchell v. Helms more directly than any other decision was based on this new idea of neutrality in Church-State relations. Monsma examines the three, strongly worded opinions of the court, and presents ten diverse essays by leading scholars analyzing the opinions and their impact on the establishment clause interpretation and public policy. Designed specifically for students of the law and religion and politics, Church-State Relations in Crisis is a well-balanced collection and an outstanding source for debate on the future of government and religion in the United States.
Author: Daniel Dreisbach Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813189969 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
The church-state debate currently alive in our courts and legislatures is strikingly similar to that of the 1830s. A secular drift in American culture and the role of religion in a pluralistic society were concerns that dominated the controversy then, as now. In Religion and Politics in the Early Republic, Daniel L. Dreisbach compellingly argues that the issues in our current debate were framed in earlier centuries by documents crucial to an understanding of church-state relations, the First Amendment, and our present concern with the constitutional role of religion in American public life. Reflection on this national discussion of more than 150 years ago casts light on both past and future relations between church and state in America. In an 1833 sermon, "The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States," the Reverend Jasper Adams of Charleston, South Carolina, an eminent educator and moral philosopher, offered valuable insight into the social and political forces that shaped church-state relations in his time. Adams argued that the Christian religion is indis-pensable to social order and national prosperity. Although he opposed the establishment of a state church, he believed that a Christian ethic should inform all civil, legal, and political institutions. Adams's remarkably prescient discourse anticipated the emergence of a dominant secular culture and its inevitable conflict with the formerly ascendant religious establishment. His treatise was the first major work from the embattled religious traditionalists controverting Thomas Jefferson's vision of a secular polity and strict church-state separation. Eager to confirm his analysis, Adams sent copies of the sermon to scores of leading intellectuals and public figures of his day. In this volume, Dreisbach brings together for the first time Adams's sermon, a critical review of the treatise, and transcripts of previously unpublished letters written in response to it by James Madison, John Marshall, Joseph Story, and J.S. Richardson. These letters provide a rare glimpse into the minds of several influential statesmen and jurists who were central in shaping the republic and its institutions. The Story and Madison letters are among their authors1 final and most perceptive pronouncements on church-state relations. The documents that Dreisbach has assembled in this edition provide a vivid portrait of early nineteenth-century thought on the constitutional role of religion in public life. Our ongoing national discussion of this topic is illuminated by the debate encapsulated in these pages.
Author: Erwin Chemerinsky Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0190699736 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
"The relationship between the government and religion is deeply divisive. With the recent changes in the composition of the Supreme Court, the First Amendment law concerning religion is likely to change dramatically in the years ahead. The Court can be expected to reject the idea of a wall separating church and state and permit much more religious involvement in government and government support for religion. The Court is also likely to expand the rights of religious people to ignore legal obligations that others have to follow, such laws that require the provision of health care benefits to employees and prohibit businesses from discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation. This book argues for the opposite and the need for separating church and state. After carefully explaining all the major approaches to the meaning of the Constitution's religion clauses, the book argues that the best approaches are for the government to be strictly secular and for there to be no special exemptions for religious people from neutral and general laws that others must obey. The book argues that this separationist approach is most consistent with the concerns of the founders who drafted the Constitution and with the needs of a religiously pluralistic society in the 21st century"--
Author: Noah Feldman Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374708150 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
A brilliant and urgent appraisal of one of the most profound conflicts of our time Even before George W. Bush gained reelection by wooing religiously devout "values voters," it was clear that church-state matters in the United States had reached a crisis. With Divided by God, Noah Feldman shows that the crisis is as old as this country--and looks to our nation's past to show how it might be resolved. Today more than ever, ours is a religiously diverse society: Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist as well as Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. And yet more than ever, committed Christians are making themselves felt in politics and culture. What are the implications of this paradox? To answer this question, Feldman makes clear that again and again in our nation's history diversity has forced us to redraw the lines in the church-state divide. In vivid, dramatic chapters, he describes how we as a people have resolved conflicts over the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the teaching of evolution through appeals to shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience. And he proposes a brilliant solution to our current crisis, one that honors our religious diversity while respecting the long-held conviction that religion and state should not mix. Divided by God speaks to the headlines, even as it tells the story of a long-running conflict that has made the American people who we are.
Author: Emma Long
Author: Philip HAMBURGER
Author: Kathiann M. Kowalski
Author: Stephen V. Monsma
Author: Daniel Dreisbach
Author: Jay Mechling
Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
Author: Robert L. Cord
Author: Noah Feldman
Author: Jay Mechling