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Church, State, and Original Intent

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Church, State, and Original IntentThis book provides a clear understanding of how historical analysis of the thinking behind the wall of separation between church and state occurred through Supreme Court decisions over the last sixty-five years. Drakeman documents the opinions and the influence various historians had upon the thinking of Supreme Court justices. It is a fascinating book that provides insight as to the broad interpretation that has followed a Constitutional protection that the founding fathers intended to ban a government mandated religion while providing the individual rights to practice religion as he or she felt was proper. Drakeman traces the erosion of this right over a series of Supreme Court decisions and suggests that we find ourselves in an increasingly restricted interpretation as to what role government can play in support of religious practice without interfering with individual rights to exercise secular humanism, if that is their choice. What started as an attempt, sparked by the Virginia delegation of Jefferson and Madison, to protect the new republic from being subjected to a government dictated religious practice, similar to the Church of England at the time, has grown into a series of restrictions barring prayer in public school settings, displays of religious observance at holidays, and removal of items as the Ten Commandments from public government settings, such as schoolhouses and courthouses. Drakeman presents a cogent, engaging and well documented attack on these opinions, citing the case for misinterpretation of the founding father's goals resulting in restrictions never contemplated by our Constitution. This is a must read for anyone interested in religious freedoms or erosion of Constitutional freedoms.

Exhaustively researched, meticulously footnoted, clearly and cogently written, Don Drakeman's book accomplishes the extremely difficult and seldom accomplished feat of thoroughly exploring what is both an extremely esoteric and inherently controversial nook in the cluttered closet of American jurisprudential historiography without dragging along his own ponderous axe desperately in need of grinding. In other words, actually the words of Sgt. Friday, - "Just the facts, ma'am." As has been often said, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. This book details how the historical background of the Separation Clause have been bent, twisted, ignored, inflated, conflated and confounded in two hundred years of judicial decisions and parochial (in several senses) scholarship. At the end of the day, Mr. Drakeman's combination of rigorous scholarship and all too uncommon common-sense analysis decisively undercuts any future attempts to build church/state separation edifices on a historical foundation of strawless bricks.

Not a light summer read, for sure, but a book worthy of the effort required to comprehend it.