Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism.

• Author: Ledewitz, Bruce
• Position: Book review

Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism

By Bruce Ledewitz

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, 282 pages, ISBN 9780253356345.

The United States supposedly is premised on "separation of church and state," which means the American government should be neutral regarding religion. But is that really true? The author, a law professor and committed secularist, has strong opinions on this matter. Particularly since the 2004 presidential election that returned George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency for a second term, Ledewitz has been concerned that American secularism--both as an individual choice and a stance on the part of government--is under threat. Although the proportion of secular Americans has been growing rapidly in the twenty-first century, the successful marriage of religion and conservative politics in the U.S. might be inhibiting secularism from full acceptance as a valid alternative to religious commitment. After completing two earlier books on secularism in the U.S., Ledewitz reached the rather specific conclusion "that American constitutional law stood in the way of any serious engagement of secularism with religion" (p. xiii, emphasis mine). Thus, he sets forth in Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism to accomplish two tasks. First, he aims to detail how and why he feels current interpretation of "church-state separation" by the U.S. Supreme Court is problematic. Second, he endeavors to construct an alternative legal approach that would put religious people on common ground with secularists before the eyes of American law.

Ledewitz's anxieties revolve around two crises he sees as plaguing contemporary American society. The first of these crises concerns the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" and which (for all intents and purposes) prohibits any one faith from being promoted as superior, or somehow preferable, by any government entity. Over the last two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has been moving away from a strictly separationist approach to Establishment issues (the approach that, for example, removed prayer from public schools in 1962) toward a more accommodationist approach; the Court today tends to be somewhat more permissive of public religious displays and practices (such as the national motto "In God We Trust," the swearing of oaths on Bibles, or the public display of the Ten Commandments) so long as...