The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom.

• Author: Gugler, Thomas K.
• Position: Book review

The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom

By Steven D. Smith

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014, 223 pages, $39.95, ISBN: 9780674724754.

In five chapters Smith looks into the standard story of the development of religious freedom in America and proposes a revised version of it, which revolves around a "Kingdom of God in America." (p. 12) Smith's counter-narrative traces the intellectual roots of religious freedom farther back than the Enlightenment to predominantly Christian emphases on the freedom of the church and the liberty of conscience. With a re-interpretation of the First Amendment's phrase "no establishment of religion" Smith heavily criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and suggests that virtually all of America's founders expected religion to play a major role in the nation's governance.

Smith challenges the standard narrative of the Americans, as the enlightened innovators of religious freedom, by focusing on Christian elements essential to the idea of religious freedom, such as the medieval theme of libertas ecclesiae (freedom of the church from secular control, i.e. the campaign of the church against a role of kings in the selection and appointment of bishops and popes) and freedom of conscience, the inner church. Smith argues that the First Amendment basically considered religion a topic that should be dealt with by the states and "did not reflect the acceptance by Americans of any commitment to religious equality, secular government, or governmental neutrality in matters of religion." (p. 8) In Smith's revised story, religious freedom is less a product of reason, it is rather the ripe fruit of the Christian religion (p. 12) --separation of church and state and freedom of conscience are considered to be the product of the distinctive teachings of Christianity (p. 39). Indeed Christianity knows the difference between the human and divine sphere of power: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's." (Luke 20:21-26 et al.) But it is an ex post-interpretation to see here a clear commitment to secularism and it took some sanguinary religious wars to get that far. Noah Feldman wrote that America today would be divided by "values evangelicals" and "legal secularists;" and Smith terms this the "providentialist" and "secularist" interpretation of the Republic (p. 88)--raising the question whether the Republic is (secularly) religious or (religiously) secular...