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Historians Isaac Kramnick and Larry Moore contend that the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to be a secular document. That is the primary conclusion of their recently published book, "The Godless Constitution," copies of which the publisher sent to members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch.

Although I suspect the pejorative term "godless" (which was used by critics of the Constitution when it was newly minted) carries more negative connotations than the founders intended, still on this point the authors' arguments are persuasive. Also convincing is their claim that some of the language and assertions of the Religious Right regarding America as a Christian nation have been inaccurate and intemperate. Americans of all political and religious persuasions will find the evidence the authors present in support of these interpretations well worth studying.

In spite of these strengths, "The Godless Constitution" leaves this reader more than a little uneasy. For one thing, the authors' criticisms of the Religious Right are at times too vague and full of innuendo. In contrast to the small and virtually unknown group called "theonomists," made up of Christians who want to establish a theocratic state based on the Bible, the Christian Right, with few exceptions, is committed to maintaining religious freedom for all Americans. Whatever Kramnick and Moore may imply, it is by no means obvious that members of the Religious Right are more willing to impose their beliefs and values on others than are political liberals.

Take the case of abortion. The Religious Right's opposition to abortion stems from the belief that the baby in the womb is a human being and thus worthy of the protection of the state. That this stance is grounded in part in religious beliefs is no more significant than the fact that support for abortion rights is usually grounded in secular metaphysical and moral beliefs. Neither position can be warranted in any religiously neutral or nonideological sense. When Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in his recent book "Political Liberalism," attempts to justify abortion rights within his narrow framework of public reason, he fails dismally. And had not the Supreme Court in an act of judicial imperialism short-circuited democratic debate over abortion in our state legislatures, it is likely that the issue would be far less divisive today than it is.

Kramnick and Moore present a confusing picture of how religion should relate to politics and the public square. On the one hand, they note that "Lockean liberalism wisely and prudently responded [to the fact of religious pluralism] by dissociating religion and politics in order to keep the peace." In a subsequent passage, on the other hand, they grant that it is not illegitimate for religious Americans to let their beliefs and values affect their political actions. And what are we to make of the authors' statement that in America's founding, we see "the privatization of religion, its removal from the public realm, and its transfer to the private world of individual freedom of conscience, belief, and practice"? This claim seems to indicate that the authors share the common liberal assumption that the realm of government and the public realm are coterminous, a view that totally overlooks the nature of a broad range of nongovernmental, but still essentially public, institutions--schools, churches, business associations, public interest environmental groups, and others.

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August 12 1996, Vol. 40, No. 9