Sociology > Education > Book Review: One Nation Under Law: America's Early National Struggles to Separate Church and State
| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"buckeye" |
| Date: |
13 Dec 2007 05:02:16 AM |
| Object: |
Book Review: One Nation Under Law: America's Early National Struggles to Separate Church and State |
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/110.4/br_57.html
Book Review
Canada and the United States
Mark Douglas McGarvie. One Nation Under Law: America's Early National
Struggles to Separate Church and State. DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 256. $38.00.
Debates about religious disestablishment in America have frequently
centered on the meaning of the first amendment's establishment clause:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Thomas Jefferson, for example, insisted that the first amendment had
erected a "wall of separation between church and state." Mark Douglas
McGarvie agrees that the Constitution constructed a wall, but he finds its
chief masonry in the contracts clause of article one, which was, he
suggests, "absolutely crucial to the resolution of the church-state
relationship" (p. 12). Moreover, McGarvie ascribes to the Supreme Court's
Dartmouth College case (1819) the kind of disestablishing force typically
reserved for twentieth-century cases proscribing state aid to religious
institutions. There, the Court interpreted the contracts clause to
invalidate New Hampshire's attempt to seize control of a private, religious
college. By characterizing Dartmouth College as a private institution,
according to McGarvie, the Court laid the framework for divorcing religious
institutions such as churches and schools from their public role as
providers of necessary social services. This divorce inexorably led to
separation between religious institutions and government. The Dartmouth
College decision thus "privatized religion" and "secularized and expanded
the public realm" (p. 188). . . .
There are about 561 more words in this article.
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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