Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem--and What We Should Do About It [Hardcover]

Noah Feldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2005

A brilliant and urgent appraisal of one of the most profound conflicts of our time

Even before George W. Bush gained reelection by wooing religiously devout "values voters," it was clear that church-state matters in the United States had reached a crisis. With Divided by God, Noah Feldman shows that the crisis is as old as this country--and looks to our nation's past to show how it might be resolved.

Today more than ever, ours is a religiously diverse society: Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist as well as Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. And yet more than ever, committed Christians are making themselves felt in politics and culture.

What are the implications of this paradox? To answer this question, Feldman makes clear that again and again in our nation's history diversity has forced us to redraw the lines in the church-state divide. In vivid, dramatic chapters, he describes how we as a people have resolved conflicts over the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the teaching of evolution through appeals to shared values of liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience. And he proposes a brilliant solution to our current crisis, one that honors our religious diversity while respecting the long-held conviction that religion and state should not mix.

Divided by God speaks to the headlines, even as it tells the story of a long-running conflict that has made the American people who we are.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Divided By God, Noah Feldman examines the unique, fascinating balance the United States has pursued for well over 200 years now -- the attempt at democratic government by the people in a country made up of many religions, and many highly religious people. The novel principle enshrined to help make this a success was strong separation of church from state. The strain on the system has never been greater as polarization grows over the many hot-button topics of our day. Feldman also observes how the stakes have been raised in the last 50 years as the forces of secularism have fought a largely successful battle to remove religious symbolism from the public sphere, while at the same time the growing tide of religious conservatism has managed to forge a surprisingly close church-state relationship through government funding of religious priorities (faith-based initiatives and school vouchers, for example.)

Feldman, a law professor at New York University, delivers a timely book that attempts to move the discussion past rhetoric, by a careful examination of the history of church-state separation. The book's lively, conversational writing makes for a fascinating journey, starting with a precise analysis of exactly why our founding fathers debated and finally agreed to formally separate church and state, and then tracking the tests and challenges that separation has stood over the last two centuries. Perhaps the most refreshing current throughout is Feldman's lack of partisan bias, and his respect and understanding of the values, fears and goals that successive generations have brought to all sides of this never-ending debate.

It is that lack of partisanship that makes his conclusion all the more powerful -- a call to move beyond a battlefield where the secular and religious forces aggressively pursue their own mutually exclusive goals, and instead to seek a deeper understanding of what values we all hold in common, and to recognize the importance of engaging in constructive debate in order to find and define that commonality together. --Ed Dobeas

From Publishers Weekly

Feldman, a legal rising star and author of After Jihad (a look at democracy and Islam), turns his attention to America's battle over law and religious values in this lucid and careful study. Those Feldman calls "legal secularists" want the state wholly cleansed of religion, while "values evangelicals" want American government to endorse the Christianity on which they say its authority rests. Feldman thinks both positions too narrow for America's tastes and needs. Much of his volume shows how those needs have changed. James Madison and his friends, Feldman writes, hoped to "protect religion from government, not the other way round." Debates in the 19th century focused on public schools, whose culture of "nonsectarian Christianity" (really Protestantism) created dilemmas for Catholics, and in the 20th century faced challenges from secularists and evangelicals—the former won in the courts until very recently; the latter, often enough, won public opinion. Feldman proposes a compromise: that government "[allow] greater space for public manifestations of religion" while preventing government from linking itself with "religious institutions" (by funding them, for example). The "values" controversy, as Feldman shows, concerns electoral clout, not just legal reasoning. His patient historical chapters will leave readers on all sides far more informed as matters like stem-cell research and the Supreme Court's forthcoming 10 Commandments decision take the headlines.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (June 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281319
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281311
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,075,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noah Feldman is currently Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard University. Esquire named him among 75 influential figures for the 21st century and New York magazine designated him as one of three top "influentials in ideas." In 2003, he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of an interim constitution. Feldman is the author of four previous books: The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (2008); Divided By God (2005); What We Owe Iraq (2004); and After Jihad (2003); as well as numerous articles for The New York Times Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good accessible overview of the subject, April 13, 2006

By 

Michael White (Saint Louis, MO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem--and What We Should Do About It (Hardcover)

Feldman's book is an intelligently written discussion of both the history of church-state law in the U.S. and the current debates that engage our society. Feldman works his way from the founding to the latest Supreme Court decisions of the last 15 years which have reshaped the interpretation of the Establishment Clause; the result is a fascinating overview of the legal and cultural evolution of America's ideas about church and state.

The great strength of this book is its focus on ideas and their development. Feldman does an excellent job laying out the reasoning used by various sides of the church-state debates over the last 200 years; he also frequently critiques these historical arguments, not as a partisan, but as more of a guide to these debates.

There are two larger issues that were problematic for me in this book:

First, I think Feldman's discussion of the church-state arguments made by the framers of the Constitution is too cursory and somewhat oversimplified. The Founding-era debates were arguably the most sophisticated and philosophically complex of all in American church-state history, and a bulkier, more rigorous chapter would have been better. After having read such great historical studies on this era as "The Sacred Fire of Liberty," "Original Meanings," and "The Founding Fathers and The Place of Religion in America," I was disappointed in this part of Feldman's book.

Second, I think Feldman overemphasizes the partisan divide over church and state in our contemporary culture. This sentence captures Feldman's outlook:

"...no single, unified theory or logical reason can explain the arrangements we now have. They are the product of an ongoing battle. The field has changed, some objectives have been captured and others lost, and disorder reigns."

Probably only the most active players and partisans would view the current status as an 'ongoing battle' where 'some objectives have been captured.' Most reasonable Americans are likely to find many of the recent Supreme Court decisions relying on Justice O'Connor's 'endorsement test' a fair compromise in tune with the deeper principle motivating the First Amendment. At the very least, I doubt that most Americans fall neatly into either of the two warring camps Feldman describes, although there are activist groups that certainly do fit.

This is a great book - one of best books on the subject I have read covering the specific legal and cultural arguments over all of American history and not just a specific era. I highly recommend it.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well written history, January 27, 2006

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Idea Lover (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem--and What We Should Do About It (Hardcover)

While I find Mr. Feldman solution to the Church-State problem overly simplistic and probably unworkable, I found the book in general to be very useful. It helps one to understand the series of events that have brought the United States to today's church/state quagmire. The history leading up to a situation is always useful in understanding that situation (and possibly finding solutions and compromises to solve problems.)

The majority of Mr. Feldman's book deals with the history of how we arrived at where we are today. It is readable, not overly verbose and easy to follow and understand. Mr. Feldman has written with little or no editorial content in describing the history of the church/state problem. He is to be congratulated for this effort and his book read in the context of the clear concise history he presents.

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, interesting study of church-state issues, August 4, 2005

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news4fan - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem--and What We Should Do About It (Hardcover)

In Divided by God, Noah Feldman has crafted an important book that explores the history of the separation between church and state and from that history, proposes what we should do about this issue in the future. What helps Feldman with the book not only is that he is fairly neutral, but he also is not afriad to interject his opinion when necessary (he favors reasonable public symbolic religion, but not public financing of religion). This allows for an approach that is captivating.

Don't worry if you're afraid you won't share Feldman's opinions, though. The history takes up at least 3/4 of the book, with the rest focusing on the present and the future. Feldman louds and critcizes both sides of the debate--but it the end, the background information is what helps form the reader's opinion the most. From what really happened when the framers drafted the constitution all the way to the formation of what we call evangelicalism and secularism today, Feldman fills in the blanks of what we already know. The background and the answers aren't clear-cut, but this book helps shine light in the dark places of the issue.