Journal of Church and State articles from June 1997

Journal of Church and State archives from June 1997

Law, morals, and civil religion in America.(Editorial)
June 22, 1997... The existence of a civil religion in America is now widely accepted. While its specific content is still debated, most agree that civil religion is essentially about those public rituals and myths that express for most Americans the nexus of...

Griffin v. Coughlin: mandated AA meetings and the Establishment Clause.
June 22, 1997... Since 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has become the most prominent and, arguably, the most successful substance abuse program in the United States. Created during the Great Depression and in the immediate aftermath of prohibition, AA is an...

"Sowing useful truths and principles": the Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the "wall of separation."
June 22, 1997... On New Year's Day, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. In this letter he used the celebrated "wall of separation" metaphor to describe the constitutionally-prescribed relationship...

The Shinto shrine issue in Korean Christianity under Japanese colonialism.
June 22, 1997... The main theme of this essay focuses upon the different responses given by the churches to the Shinto shrine issue in Korea under Japanese colonialism. As the editors of The International Review of Missions recorded in the special issues for...

Religion and politics in Israel and Utah.
June 22, 1997... There are today a number of mysteries associated with religious practice in Western nations. Perhaps the greatest mystery of modern religious faith is its continued strength and appeal two centuries after the Enlightenment and the French...

Richard Sampson, his "Oratio," and Henry VIII's royal supremacy.
June 22, 1997... Recently there has surfaced some notable scholarship investigating the royal supremacy of Henry VIII and its associated apologies.(1) Paul O'Grady in particular has ably demonstrated the influence of Marsilius of Padua on such Henrician...

Jewry's prophetic challenge to Soviet and other totalitarian regimes according to Hans J. Morgenthau.
June 22, 1997... The struggle of Soviet Jewish dissidents to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel, or at the very least to be permitted to practice their religion freely in the Soviet Union, marshalled the energies and resources of many supporters in the...

The Ethics of Violence: The Study of a Fractured World.
June 22, 1997... By George H. Faust. New York: University Press of America, 1994. 207 pp. $34.50. In a monograph which covers an immense range of material, this book by George H. Faust treats the reader to a rare combination of world history survey and...

Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in Politics.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by David Westerlund. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. 428 pp. $40.00. In a global climate strongly influenced by Western values, it is not surprising that the concept of a "secular state," at least in its liberal form, has become...

Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By George Weigel. Washington, D.C.: Ethics & Public Policy Center/William Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1996. 206 pp. $18.00 paper. The pontificate of John Paul II has inspired much enthusiasm among Catholic neo-conservatives. They warm...

The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by Richard P. McBrien. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. 1349 pp. $45.00. In the introduction to this book, McBrien writes, "The purpose of this encyclopedia is to provide a convenient and reliable source of...

Politics of the Theological: Beyond the Piety and Power of a World Come of Age.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Barry Harvey. New York: Peter Lang, 1995, 266 pp. $46.95. Baptists' traditional passion has been for issues of conscience, freedom, religion, and their political implications. Sharing this, Barry Harvey is a traditional Baptist...

The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jurgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Arne Rasmusson. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. 418 pp. $39.95. Within Jurgen Moltmann's effort to construct a political theology, Rasmusson discovers a significant tension. It is a tension, at one level, between...

Learning to Speak: The Church's Voice in Public Affairs.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Keith Clements. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, Ltd., 1995. 240 pp. $19.95 paper. Relatively few people doubt that religion is, among other things, a way of saying serious things. There is less agreement, however, about how particular...

Martyrdom and Rome.
June 22, 1997... By G.W. Bowersock. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 106 pp. $24.95. Unlike W.H.C. Frend, who concluded that "without Maccabees and without Daniel a Christian theology of martyrdom would scarcely have been thinkable" (Martyrdom...

Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna.
June 22, 1997... By Nicholas Terpstra. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 251pp. $59.95. This monograph successfully analyzes the complex and changing relationships between the religious, political, and social roles of fifteenth- and...

Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell. New York: Routledge, 1996. 215 pp. $59.95 cloth; $17.95 paper. This volume contains almost fifty contemporary sources that reveal aspects of the state of the English church between the 1520s and...

Piety and Poverty: Working Class Religion in Berlin, London and New York, 1870-1914.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Hugh McLeod. New York/London: Holmes & Meier, 1996. 264 pp. $45.00. Is the religious crisis of the urban working-class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a result of the displacement of their piety by secular ideas?...

The Revolution of the Candles: Christians in the Revolution of the German Democratic Republic.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by Jorg Swoboda and Richard V. Pierard. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996. 203 pp. $22.95 paper. Although the title implies an examination of the activities of the German Lutheran church in the democratic transformation of...

The War of the Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Michael Lowy. New York: Verso, 1996. 163 pp. $59.95 cloth; $17.95 paper. War of the Gods focuses readers' attention on the conflict of liberation theology and rival religious projects in Latin America. As part of a larger British...

Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By William B. Taylor. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. 868 pp. $75.00. "Monumental" and "magisterial" are terms one might expect a press to include on a dust-jacket, but in the case of Taylor's new book, the terms are well...

A Concise History of Christianity in Canada.
June 22, 1997... Edited by Terrence Murphy and Roberto Perin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 456 pp. $27.95 Well-researched and carefully wrought, this collaborative work represents the first study of its kind since the publication in 1972 of the...

Religion and American Culture: A Reader.
June 22, 1997... Edited by David G. Hackett. New York: Routledge, 1995. 518 pp. $65.00. This volume reflects the momentous shift in the study of American religion from "an older, European American, male, middle-class, northeastern, Protestant narrative...

Religious Higher Education in the United States: A Source Book.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by Thomas C. Hunt and James C. Carper. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1996. 635 pp. $95.00. This text is essentially a revision of the 1988 work from the same editorial team, Religious Colleges and Universities in America: A...

Jews and the New American Scene.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. 239 pp. $22.95. In this thoroughly researched, elegantly written book, the authors combine their social science skills and extensive experience in the...

The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Martha F. Lee. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996. 144 PP. $14.95 paper. Originally published in 1988, this book analyzes the Nation of Islam within a broader framework of millenarian movements. Drawing on analytical...

And Still We Rise: An Introduction to Black Liberation Theology.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Diana L. Hayes. New York: Paulist Press, 1996. 219 pp. $12.95 paper. The purpose of this book is to introduce the major issues, ideas, concerns, and proponents of black liberation theology and to provide resources for further exploration...

A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African American Religious History.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Albert J. Raboteau. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1995. 224 pp. $23.00. Raboteau offers a short but powerful book laden with insightful wisdom and history. The title suggests as much. In using "A Fire in the Bones," the author chooses a...

"You Have Stept out of Your Place": A History of Women and Religion in America.
June 22, 1997... By Susan Hill Lindley. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996. 500 pp. $35.00. In You Have Stept out of Your Place, Susan Hill Lindley, professor of religion at St. Olaf College, provides general readers and academics with an...

Of "Good Laws" and "Good Men": Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710.
June 22, 1997... By William M. Offutt, Jr. Urbana: Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1995. 340 pp. $39.95. William Penn desired a society where "good laws" and "good men" held sway. Quakers such as Penn had good reason for these sentiments, since the rule...

Baptists on the American Frontier: A History of Ten Baptist Churches of Which the Author Has Been Alternately a Member.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By John Taylor. Edited by Chester Raymond Young. Macon, Gal: Mercer University Press, 1995. 416 pp. $39.95. A preacher, farmer, and land speculator, John Taylor was a significant figure among Baptists on the Kentucky frontier. Born in the...

The New Crusades, the New Holy Land: Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1969-1991.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By David T. Morgan. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 1996. 246 pp. $24.95 paper. This book joins the growing number of works focusing on the thirty-year struggle in America's largest evangelical denomination--over sixty...

Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America.
June 22, 1997... By D.G. Hart. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. 227 pp. $35.00. Although not Darrell Hart's thesis, from a church-state perspective J. Gresham Machen may be the most interesting person in twentieth-century American...

Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom: The Enduring Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Henry B. Clark. Cleveland, Oh.: The Pilgrim Press, 1994. 223 pp. $19.95 paper. Henry Clark is a student of Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) who has refined his mentor's message through his own distinguished career of teaching and writing....

The United States: A Christian Nation, Reprint ed.
June 22, 1997... By David J. Brewer. Philadelphia, Penn.: John C. Winston, Co., 1905; reprint Atlanta, Ga. American Vision, 1996. 89 pp. $8.95 paper. Few judicial utterances have provoked more controversy than Justice Brewer's famous declaration in Church of...

Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Clyde Wilcox. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996. 180 pp. $45.00 cloth; $13.95 paper. One of the most interesting developments in contemporary American politics is the emergence during the past decade of the Religious Right as an...

Family, Freedom, and Faith: Building Community Today.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Paula M. Cooey. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996. 143 pp. $12.99 paper. This is an important book about family values. Cooey relies on scripture, theology, and literature to challenge many contemporary myths about...

In Washington But Not of It: The Prophetic Politics of Religious Lobbyists.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Daniel J.B. Hofrenning. Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 1995. 246 pp. $49.95 cloth; $18.95 paper. In this delightfully readable book, Daniel Hofrenning takes his readers inside the world of Washington religious lobbyists....

Rethinking Abortion: Equal Choice, the Constitution, and Reproductive Politics.
June 22, 1997... By Mark A. Graber. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. 244 pp. $29.95. In this book, Mark Graber examines the history of abortion law in practice to argue that the only defensible, constitutional approach to the issue is to...

Abortion Politics in American States.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... Edited by Mary C. Segers and Timothy A. Byrnes. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. 288 pp. $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. If, as the old adage goes, all politics is local, then it is fair to say that all politics is state level as well. State...

The Perot Voters and the Future of American Politics.(Brief Article)
June 22, 1997... By Albert J. Menendez. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996. 277 pp. $24.95. This is not a book about Ross Perot. In fact, Albert J. Menendez gives a detailed analysis of who the Perot voters were in 1992, but scarcely mentions the...