2 of 3
Conversely, government prayers and religious displays, which Feldman would allow, raise significant concerns about the integrity of independent religious institutions and ideas. The government selects one or two religious messages or symbols it favors, usually watered-down versions based on majority sentiment. Official prayers are reduced to vague commonalities between differing faiths; municipal crèches are surrounded by plastic reindeer and are used to further the commercialization of Christmas.
Feldman's compromise might also fail in its own goal of reducing religious controversy. Voucher programs do potentially create disputes—for example, is a school's teaching so anti-social that it should be ineligible?—but banning religious-school funding pushes everyone (except the wealthy!) into a single set of institutions, the public schools, where people then seek to impose their (inconsistent and incompatible) values. The results are emotional disputes over prayers, Christmas carols, intelligent design, sex education, and countless other issues. By contrast, school choice programs allow families to send their children to schools that more closely reflect their varying views.
To fellow Christians, I would argue that issues such as Ten Commandments displays in the courthouse and prayers at football games should not receive near the emphasis they do today. We do far more to preserve the vigor and independence of faith-based activity by fighting for strong rights under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause—an issue Feldman's book sidesteps—and by assuring that the state does not discourage families from the choice of a religious school by denying them otherwise-available education assistance.
Thomas C. Berg is professor of law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota. He is the author of Religion and the Constitution (with Michael McConnell and John Garvey, Aspen Publishers, 2d ed., forthcoming 2006); The State and Religion in a Nutshell (West Publishing, 2d ed., 2004); and more than 50 journal articles on religion, law, and society, as well as nearly 30 briefs in religious freedom cases in the Supreme Court and lower courts. In 1996 he received the Religious Liberty Defender of the Year award from the Christian Legal Society. A longer version of this review will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Christian Lawyer magazine, published by the Christian Legal Society.
Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem—And What We Should Do About It is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.
More information is available from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
More about author Noah Feldman is available from his page at New York University School of Law.
More CT articles on church/state issues are available from our Politics & Law page as well as our Ten Commandments page.
For book lovers, our 2005 CT book awards are available online, along with our book awards for 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1997, as well as our Books of the Twentieth Century. For other coverage or reviews, see our Books archive and the weekly Books & Culture Corner.
Books & Culture Corner and Books & Culture's Book of the Week, from Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture: A Christian Review (want a free trial issue?), appears regularly on Tuesdays at Christianity Today. Earlier editions include:
Poet with Three Heads Talks with King Solomon | Conversation touches on Hebrew parallelism, marriage, and the making of many books. (Aug. 30, 2005)
share this page
RSS Feed
