Journal of Church and State articles from March 2003

Journal of Church and State archives from March 2003

Thoughts on the separation of church and state under the administration of President George W. Bush. .(Editorial)
March 22, 2003... The separation of church and state has always been a controversial doctrine in American life. But usually it is the Congress or Supreme Court whose activities draw into question the location of the line dividing church and state; rarely are...

Intelligent design: scientific theory or religious conviction?
March 22, 2003... In the culture war over how to teach life's development in public schools, the focus of opponents of standard evolutionary accounts has shifted in the past decade to the theory of intelligent design. Most adherents to the neo-Darwinian theory...

Public schools and religious expression: the diversity of school districts' policies regarding religious expression.
March 22, 2003... During the summer of 1998, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a series of hearings across the country to determine whether or not schools were acting in accordance with the requirements of Supreme Court precedents, the Equal Access Act,...

In pursuit of a politics of holiness: reconciling Hellenic and Hebraic political wisdom in the Acts of the Apostles.
March 22, 2003... It is not difficult to understand how Saint Augustine's adaptation of Plato's thought in The City of God could have been used to support the charge that the Bishop of Hippo Christianized the Republic. (1) But does Augustine actually merit such...

Under God and anti-communist: how the Pledge of Allegiance got religion in Cold-War America.
March 22, 2003... In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the American flag became ubiquitous--in stores, on cars, at work, in neighborhoods, in churches, and on t-shirts and other assorted articles of clothing. Over a year later, the Stars...

Piety and politics in African Christianity: the roles of the church and the democratization process.
March 22, 2003... Christianity has never departed Africa. (1) In some ways, the church is now returning to its African roots. (2) Christianity originated in the near East, but it is clear that the church was stronger in North Africa in the first one thousand...

Not blaming the Pope: the roots of the crisis in Brazilian base communities.
March 22, 2003... During the 1970s and early 1980s, people in both religious and academic circles began to give attention to a new phenomenon within the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America: the base ecclesial communities, or CEBs. These are grassroots groups...

The Faith: A History of Christianity.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Brian Moynahan. New York: Doubleday, 2002. 806 pp. $40.00. Christianity was made malleable through its profound interaction of the human with the divine, leading to individual and corporate justifications for both noble and malevolent...

International Perspectives on Freedom and Equality of Religious Belief.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Derek H. Davis and Gerhard Besier. Waco, Tex.: J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, 2002. 220 pp. $17.95 paper. The panorama of religious freedom and belief is entangled by the realities of government...

Communication and Reconciliation: Challenges Facing the 21st Century.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Philip Lee. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2001. 96 pp. $9.95 paper. For over two thousand years, people have searched for an ideal and harmonious society. However, "our world has been repeatedly broken" (p. vii) by military wars and...

Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2002. 240 pp. $20.00 paper. Moe-Lobeda's book responds to an unprecedented contemporary moral crisis. The prevailing neo-liberal, free-market system of economic globalization...

An Examination of Church-State Relations in the Byzantine and Russian Empires with an Emphasis on Ideology and Models of Interaction.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Nikolas K. Gvosdev. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. $89.95. Nikolas Gvosdev has provided the world with the opportunity to explore the unique political ideology that has been the basis for Eastern European models for the...

Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Timothy A. Byrnes. Lanham, Md.: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. 192 pp. $68.00 cloth; $25.95 paper. Byrnes's book is an impressionistic survey of the Catholic Church's political activities and potential role in Eastern Europe. He...

The English Civil War: The Essential Readings.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Peter Gaunt. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 350 pp. $69.95 cloth; $29.95 paper. This volume is part of a worthy series produced by Blackwell Publishers that deals with notable historical topics. This series has contributed...

The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Diarmid MacCulloch. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin's Press, 1999. 285 pp. $27.95. Diarmid MacCulloch has crafted a thoroughly absorbing study of the most Protestant monarch England ever produced; and, significantly, he brings all the...

Islam in Asia: Changing Political Realities.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Jason F. Isaacson and Colin Rubenstein. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002. 232 pages. $44.95. This work was published in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee and edited by prominent members of the...

Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Marc Gopin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 288 pp. $29.95. Marc Gopin's 228-page book, Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East, presents a detailed analysis of the religio-political dynamics...

Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By John L. Esposito. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 208 pp. $25.00 John Esposito has keenly surveyed the Islamic world for many years from a Western scholar's perspective in his position as director of the Center for...

Catholic Power vs. American Freedom.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By George La Piana & John W. Swomley. Edited by Herbert F. Vetter. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003. 286 pp. $34.00. This book is a collection of the writings of George La Piana, a Catholic scholar and priest who lived in both Italy...

Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Mark Newman. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2001. xii + 292 pp. $39.95. Mark Newman's book on the struggles among Southern Baptists over the civil rights movement and racial desegregation in the latter half of the...

American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Deirdre M. Moloney. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 267 pp. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Deirdre Moloney, an historian at St. Francis University, Loretto, Pennsylvania, has given us a fine introduction to the...

Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives and American Culture.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Barry Hankins. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2002. 344 pp. $34.95. Barry Hankins has produced the best scholarly account of the late-twentieth century conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to...

On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish and Brethren.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Donald B. Kraybill and Carl F. Bowman. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 330 pp. $29.95. This book is a study of four religious communities that flourish as exceptions within their own larger communities of faith...

The Americanization of Religious Minorities: Confronting the Constitutional Order.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Eric Michael Mazur. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 224 pp. $42.95. "Thoughtful" and "insightful" are words often overworked in reviewing academic books, but in the case of Eric Mazur's The Americanization of...

Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Daniel L. Dreisbach. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 282 pp. $42.00. In his most recent book, Daniel Dreisbach claims that no substantial, critical investigation into the history and meaning of Jefferson's famous "wall of...

September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Ian Markham and Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi'. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002. xi + 292 pp. $25.95 paper. Since September 2001, numerous books have appeared concerning the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and western...

Legislating Morality: Pluralism and Religious Identity in Lawmaking.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... By Lucinda Peach. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 218 pp. $35.00. Do you want to start a debate? If so, why not talk about legislating morality! Lucinda Peach has jumped into an area of public policy on everyone's mind. This...

Notes on church-state affairs.
March 22, 2003... BULGARIA The Bulgarian parliament on 20 December passed a law that defines Orthodox Christianity as the "traditional religion in Bulgaria" and says that it "plays a historic role in Bulgarian statehood." It requires all other religious...