Journal of Church and State articles from September 2003

Journal of Church and State archives from September 2003

The Pledge of Allegiance and American values.(Editorial)
September 22, 2003... The Pledge of Allegiance, recited daily by most schoolchildren across America, has become a topic of considerable controversy since a challenge to the phrase "under God," which was added to the pledge in 1954, was recently held by a California...

Protection of religious communities by blasphemy and religious hatred laws: a comparison of English and Indian laws.
September 22, 2003... "Globalization" is broadly a process of "opening up" not just economic markets but entire societies and cultures. In a globalized world, it is rarely possible to find a single homogenous country. Whereas some countries like India have...

Faith and the founding: the influence of religion on the politics of James Madison.
September 22, 2003... A 22-year-old James Madison, on a jaunt through his native Virginia, visited a jail that held half a dozen Baptist preachers, arrested simply for publishing their religious views. It was a common scene in the Virginia of Madison's youth. State...

Preserving the moral compass: House of Worship Speech Protection Act is defeated.
September 22, 2003... Religion's right to influence American public policy is currently protected at all levels. In Walz v. Tax Commission (1970), the Supreme Court proclaimed, "Adherence of particular faiths and individual churches frequently take strong positions...

Subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty: Christian reflections on the size, shape and scope of government.
September 22, 2003... In the last century and a half, the shape of Christian political theory has been re-thought, both in Catholic and in Reformed (1) circles. Fears of excessive centralization have led to attempts to identify theologically grounded principles...

Restrictions on religious training and exposure in child custody and visitation orders: do they protect or harm the child?
September 22, 2003... It is universally accepted that the "best interest of the child" is the legal standard governing all child custody cases. (1) At the same time, almost every democratic nation provides constitutional guarantees for the protection of religious...

South Carolina Catholics before Roman discipline, 1670-1820.
September 22, 2003... Despite its celebrated reputation for following only an inner compass, the Roman Catholic Church has never lived in isolation from the great trends that shaped the world beyond its oval authority. The Reformation and the international rivalry...

From Charity to Social Justice: The Emergence of Communal Institutions for the Support of the Poor in Ancient Judaism.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Frank M. Loewenberg. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2001. 222 pp. The author utilizes documents from the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and other post-biblical Jewish writings to accomplish a twofold aim: both to trace the...

Daughters of Abraham: Feminist Thought in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... Edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, with a foreword by Karen Armstrong. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2001. 162 pp. $24.95. Daughters of Abraham is a slim but engaging introduction into how gender and...

Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. x + 309 pp. np. Antisemitism, the "longest hatred" in human history, remains as strong as ever today in some quarters. Christians have usually been the source...

Holy War: The Rise of Militant Christian, Jewish and Islamic Fundamentalism.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By David S. New. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2002. 233 pp. $35.00. This is a most ambitious book in the sense that its author believes that not two but three monotheistic ideologies--militant Christian, Jewish,...

The Church as the Bulwark Against Authoritarianism: Development of Church and State in Kenya with Particular Reference to the Years After Political Independence, 1963-1992.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Gideon Gichuhi Githiga. Oxford: Regnum, 2001. np. The author, now a bishop of the Anglican Church in Kenya, weaves together a large amount of material taken from newspapers, magazines, church papers, presidential speeches, and interviews...

Church, State and Society in Kenya: From Mediation to Opposition, 1963-1993.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Galia Sahar. Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2002. np. The purpose of this book is to investigate and analyze both the basics of the Anglican Church's power in Kenya and the shifting complexities of its relationship with the Kenyan state and...

Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905-1946.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Edward E. Roslof. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2002. xiv + 259 pp. np. Russian Orthodoxy arrived at the Revolution of 1917 divided and discordant. The complex...

Anglo-Irish Relations: 1798-1922.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Nick Pelling. London: Routledge, 2003. 129 pp. $11.95. This book is part of a series entitled Questions and Analysis in History. The series's audience according to the publisher, consists of "students aiming to achieve the top grades in...

Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By James A. Morone. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. 575 pp. $35.00. James Morone's polemical and impressive Hellfire Nation offers itself as nothing less than an interpretive key to unlock the puzzle of American politics and...

Blessed are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America a Better Place.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Mark Ellingsen. Grand Rapids, Mich: Brazos Press, 2003. 208 pp. $23.99. In a society inundated with religious and secular manuals on how one can improve his or her life through optimism, action, and self-affirmation, Mark Ellingsen...

The Faiths of Our Fathers: What America's Founders Really Believed.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Alf Mapp, Jr. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003. 205 pp. $24.95. Religion and its role in the creation of the American Republic have often been ignored in the standard histories of the founding era. Biographers of...

Forgotten Features of the Founding: The Recovery of Religious Themes in the Early American Republic.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By James Hutson. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003. 208 pp. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper. In 1998, James H. Hutson, chief of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, published Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,...

James Madison and the Future of Limited Government.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... Edited by John Samples. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002. 224 pp. $19.95 paper. James Madison is by all accounts the most "neglected" of the "founding fathers" of the United States Constitution. This benign neglect was partly atoned...

Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Tona J. Hangen. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 232 pp. $18.95. Tona Hangen's study provides a major contribution to scholarship on twentieth-century evangelism and the mass media. Focusing on radio's...

The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Bryan F. Le Beau. New York: New York University Press, 2003. 386 pp. np. On 17 June 1963, the United States Supreme court delivered its joint decision on two similar cases challenging the constitutionality of prayer in public schools....

Robert E. Speer: Prophet of the American Church.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By John F. Piper, Jr. Louisville, Ky.: Geneva Press, 2000. xxi + 538 pp. $34.95. The connection between Christian missions and the movement for church unity has been shown by many authors, particularly Richey Hogg (1954) and C. Howard...

The Lost Soul of American Protestantism.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By D.G. Hart. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002. 197 pp. $37.50. Good historical writing calls our attention to something and allows us to ponder it. It may or may not offer a guide for change or summon us to...

God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... Edited by Neil A. Manson. New York: Routledge, 2003. 376 pp. $80.00 cloth, $25.95 paper. This edited collection of nineteen essays with a helpful introduction provides a near state-of-the-art discussion, pro and con, of recent developments...

Three Approaches to Abortion: A Thoughtful and Compassionate Guide to Today's Most Controversial Issue.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Peter Kreeft. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2002. 133 pp. $9.95 paper. This volume is authored by one of Christendom's most gifted writers, Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College. A defense of the prolife...

Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery and Women's Political Identity.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Susan Zaeske. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 272 pp. $19.95 paper. Susan Zaeske recaptures the underdeveloped history of women involved in politics as she chronologically illustrates their political...