ISAAC KRAMNICK AND R. LAURENCE MOOREThe Godless ConstitutionThe Case Against Religious CorrectnessAn urgent reexamination of the roots of church-state separation and a ringing rebuke to the religious right. In recent years the religious right has made increasingly vigorous attempts to dismantle the wall between church and state erected by the framers of the Constitution. Utterly mistaken claims have been made that America was founded as a Christian nation. In this important polemic two distinguished scholars refute this dangerous attempt to introduce what they call "religious correctness" into our politics by reminding us that the absence of any mention of God was a conscious action on the framers part, intended to prevent the bloody religious controversies that so marked European history. In both revisiting the roots of American religious freedom and examining the agenda of the religious right for its distortions of fact and hazards to our system of governance, The Godless Constitution offers a bracing return to the first principles of American government. "Here is a splendidly calm and devastating counterattack on the political fundamentals of the religious right. . . . To read The Godless Constitution is to recall what James Madison and his colleagues had in mind."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University Isaac Kramnick is Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. R. Laurence Moore is a professor of history at Cornell and author of several books on American religious history. 1997 / paperback / ISBN 0-393-31524-X / 192 pages / current events | |||||
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