No Establishment of Religion


Book Description

The First Amendment guarantee that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" rejected the millennium-old Western policy of supporting one form of Christianity in each nation and subjugating all other faiths. The exact meaning and application of this American innovation, however, has always proved elusive. Individual states found it difficult to remove traditional laws that controlled religious doctrine, liturgy, and church life, and that discriminated against unpopular religions. They found it even harder to decide more subtle legal questions that continue to divide Americans today: Did the constitution prohibit governmental support for religion altogether, or just preferential support for some religions over others? Did it require that government remove Sabbath, blasphemy, and oath-taking laws, or could they now be justified on other grounds? Did it mean the removal of religious texts, symbols, and ceremonies from public documents and government lands, or could a democratic government represent these in ever more inclusive ways? These twelve essays stake out strong and sometimes competing positions on what "no establishment of religion" meant to the American founders and to subsequent generations of Americans, and what it might mean today.




Tyranny Through Public Education - Revised Edition


Book Description

This book documents the inherently flawed nature of America's public school system as currently structured. Contemporary recommendations for correcting the system invariably treat symptoms rather than the inherent problem of government control over parental and religious rights. The book documents that: education is a religious endeavor and that freedom of religion is guaranteed in the United States, parents have an inalienable right to raise their children free from government constraints on education, civil government is to protect and not deprive citizens of their inalienable rights, the educational history of our country affirms that education has always had a religious function, recent interpretations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments are both misguided and opposite from their original meanings, federal control of education and education taxation is outside the legitimate authority of the U.S. Constitution, and government control of education at federal, state, and local levels is inherently tyrannical. Addressed in separate chapters, the above-mentioned issues, individually and collectively, build a compelling case for the disestablishment of government control and the return of parental control to education. To quote James Madison, government should relate to education in the same way as it does to religion-not to "intermeddle" with it.




The State of Nonprofit America


Book Description

"Examines the private nonprofit sector and the tax-exempt institutions that make up this sector providing important services and benefits to all Americans, with histories behind different institutions and the forces and developments that have buffeted them and what they have done to retain their resilience"--Provided by publisher.




The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life, Vol. 2


Book Description

School vouchers. The Pledge of Allegiance. The ban on government grants for theology students. The abundance of church and state issues brought before the Supreme Court in recent years underscores an incontrovertible truth in the American legal system: the relationship between the state and religion in this country is still fluid and changing. This, the second of two volumes by historian and legal scholar James Hitchcock, offers a complete analysis and interpretation of the Court's historical understanding of religion, explaining the revolutionary change that occurred in the 1940s. In Volume I: The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses (Princeton), Hitchcock provides the first comprehensive survey of the court cases involving the Religion Clauses, including a number that scholars have ignored. Here, Hitchcock examines how, in the early history of our country, a strict separation of church and state was sustained through the opinions of Jefferson and Madison, even though their views were those of the minority. Despite the Founding Fathers' ideas, the American polity evolved on the assumption that religion was necessary to a healthy society, and cooperation between religion and government was assumed. This view was seldom questioned until the 1940s, notes Hitchcock. Then, with the beginning of the New Deal and the appointment of justices who believed they had the freedom to apply the Constitution in new ways, the judicial climate changed. Hitchcock reveals the personal histories of these justices and describes how the nucleus of the Court after World War II was composed of men who were alienated from their own faiths and who looked at religious belief as irrational, divisive, and potentially dangerous, assumptions that became enshrined in the modern jurisprudence of the Religion Clauses. He goes on to offer a fascinating look at how the modern Court continues to grapple with the question of whether traditional religious liberty is to be upheld.




Harvard Law Review: Volume 131, Number 1 - November 2017


Book Description

The November issue is the special annual review of the U.S. Supreme Court's previous Term. Each year, the Supreme Court issue is introduced by noteworthy and extensive contributions from recognized scholars. In this issue, for the 2016 Term, articles include: • Foreword: "1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege," by Gillian E. Metzger • Essay: "Unprecedented? Judicial Confirmation Battles and the Search for a Usable Past," by Josh Chafetz • Comment: "Churches, Playgrounds, Government Dollars — and Schools?," by Douglas Laycock • Comment: "Equality, Sovereignty, and the Family in Morales-Santana," by Kristin A. Collins In addition, the first issue of each new volume provides an extensive summary of the important cases of the previous Supreme Court docket, covering a wide range of legal, political, and constitutional subjects. Student commentary is thus provided on eighteen of the Leading Cases of the 2016 Term, including such subjects as racial gerrymandering, freedom of speech, regulatory takings, right to effective counsel, equal protection, appellate jurisdiction, fair housing, immigration law, insider trading, venue in patent cases, and remedies for constitutional violations. Complete statistical graphs and tables of the Court's actions and results during the Term are included; these summaries and statistics, including voting patterns of individual Justices, have long been considered very useful to scholars of the Court in law and political science. Finally, the issue includes a linked Index of Cases and citations for the discussed opinions. The Harvard Law Review is offered in a quality digital edition, featuring active Contents, linked footnotes, active URLs, legible tables, and proper ebook and Bluebook formatting. This current issue of the Review is November 2017, the first issue of academic year 2017-2018 (Volume 131). The Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. It comes out monthly from November through June and has roughly 2500 pages per volume. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions.




Culture Wars


Book Description

A riveting account of how Christian fundamentalists, Orthodox Jews, and conservative Catholics have joined forces in a battle against their progressive counterparts for control of American secular culture.




The Other School Reformers


Book Description

The idea that American education has been steered by progressivism is accepted as fact by liberals and conservatives alike. Adam Laats shows that this belief is wrong. Calling to center stage conservatives who shaped America’s classrooms, he shows that in the long march of American public education, progressive reform has been a beleaguered dream.




History, Education, and the Schools


Book Description

Please note this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title. Stock of this book requires shipment from an overseas supplier. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. This book grapples with two basic questions. What is history? And How can history help illuminate contemporary concerns about the nature and character of America's schools? From antiquity to the postmodern present, history has served multiple purposes, including a basic human need to learn from what came before. Americans have long invested considerable time, energy, and emotion in their schools, both private and public, and a knowledge of history helps explain why.




Handbook of Religion and Society


Book Description

The Handbook of Religion and Society is the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of a vital force in the world today. It is an indispensable resource for scholars, students, policy makers, and other professionals seeking to understand the role of religion in society. This includes both the social forces that shape religion and the social consequences of religion. This handbook captures the breadth and depth of contemporary work in the field, and shows readers important future directions for scholarship. Among the emerging topics covered in the handbook are biological functioning, organizational innovation, digital religion, spirituality, atheism, and transnationalism. The relationship of religion to other significant social institutions like work and entrepreneurship, science, and sport is also analyzed. Specific attention is paid, where appropriate, to international issues as well as to race, class, sexuality, and gender differences. This handbook includes 27 chapters by a distinguished, diverse, and international collection of experts, organized into 6 major sections: religion and social institutions; religious organization; family, life course, and individual change; difference and inequality; political and legal processes; and globalization and transnationalism.