WP Book Review : "American Spirit"

[GOPFighter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701726.html

Written by Noah Feldman and reviewed by E.J. Dionne, a liberal Catholic.

It's a history of the church-state struggle that has led up to today's current mess.

Excerpts:

The good news, as Noah Feldman argues in this indispensable book, is that the United States has struggled with the question of religious freedom in almost every generation because Americans have always believed so powerfully in "the principle of the liberty of conscience." ... We have muddled through in a way that has allowed Americans to believe in and worship God as they choose to -- and to reject faith altogether if they are so inclined. This is a huge achievement that every generation is obligated to preserve and defend. But Feldman does an enormous service by showing that this was accomplished more by messy compromise than by metaphysical precision. And it's comforting to learn that political opportunism on religious questions is not unique to our moment.

Contemporary religious conservatives seem to think that Christian rules and assumptions pervaded everything about the early republic. They probably don't know (I didn't until I read Feldman) that when the Post Office was established Congress "legislated for seven-day mail delivery without anyone initially raising the problem of Sabbath violation." It was not until 1828, "with national religious consciousness growing," that religious leaders began complaining that post offices, "which doubled as gathering places in small towns, were diverting the faithful from attending church on Sunday." The debate went on for 84 years. Sunday delivery was finally stopped in 1912.

Feldman does especially well in tracing the rise of secularism at the end of the 19th century and the rise of fundamentalism at the beginning of the 20th. We easily forget the vigor of atheist agitation and the popularity in the 1870s and '80s of such anti-religious lecturers as Robert G. Ingersoll, who declared: "We are explaining more every day. We are understanding more every day; consequently your God is growing smaller every day." But pure secularism and atheism didn't sell well in America. The atheists and agnostics eventually joined forces with a larger group of liberals to create a more moderate "legal secularism." It did not deny God or religion but simply insisted that religion was a private matter that should be separated entirely from government.

We also forget that Protestant fundamentalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, less than a century old, and arose, as Feldman says, "not as a direct response to secularism itself, but as a response to liberal developments in Christian theology that were themselves influenced by the scientific worldview."

This review is a good read - I found it very informative. Even though I was spent a considerable time in church as a kid, I am still ignorant of the history of the church-state fight.