The Church and State in American History, Third Edition

by John F. Wilson, Donald L. Drakeman

Is America “one nation under God”? We encounter controversies every day that concern prayer in schools and stadiums, school vouchers, religious symbols in public spaces, and tax support for faith-based social initiatives as well as arguments among advocates of pro-choice and pro-life positions. These and other issues are at the center of an ongoing search for a means to delineate the interactions among religious and political authorities-- initially in the United States but increasingly in the rest of the world as well. This updated volume presents chronologically-organized chapters that include selections from documents like colonial charters, opinions of the Supreme Court and salient legislation, along with contemporary commentary, and incisive interpretations of the issues by modern scholars. Figures as divergent as John Winthrop, John F. Kennedy, and Sandra Day O’Connor speak from these pages as directly as Paul Blanshard, Leon Higginbotham, John Courtney Murray, and Robert Bellah. Church and State in American History addresses the difficult relationships among the political and religious structures of our society and the emergence of an American solution to the church-state problem.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion

448 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John Frederick Wilson joined Princeton University in 1960, was named the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion in 1977, and served from 1994-2002 as Dean of the Graduate School. He retired in June, 2004. As a scholar he specialized in American religious history. Among early publications were Pulpit in Parliament and Public Religion in American Culture. With Paul Ramsey he edited The Study of Religion in American Colleges and Universities. He later published a critical edition of A History of the Work of Redemption for the Yale Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Among other activities he directed a long-term project on Church and State in American History that published two bibliographical volumes and a number of specialized studies. He has continued to write and publish especially in this subject area.

Reviews

[Cate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of Supreme Court decisions on the relationship between church and state. It is rather surprising to actually see the degree to which religion has been supported in the courts.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

great anthology and compendium of historical docs