Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Divided by God

That's the title of a 2005 book by Noah Feldman, Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem — and What We Should Do About It. Inspired by Adam Miller's chapter-by-chapter discussion at T&S of Jim Faulconer's recent book Faith, Philosophy, Scripture, I am going to try a similar series with Divided by God. Feldman is a law professor at Harvard; the book is largely a historical review of the emergence and evolution of church-state law in the United States. That history and the present state of church-state law is often misrepresented, so this seems like a helpful discussion.

Who Owns That Church?

There's always an owner, of course -- there are few concepts more disfavored in the law than real property without an owner. But when it comes to chapels and church buildings, the question of just who owns them can get messy. The latest example: a congregation in Orange County that is trying to leave the Episcopal fold and take its building with it. The congregation just lost the latest round in a fight with the national Episcopal Church and its Los Angeles Diocese over who owns the congregation's building. [Hat tip: the Religion Clause; see also the Orange County Register story or, for all the legal details, the full appellate court decision.] This story raises a couple of interesting questions for Mormon readers.

American Gospel

Just finished Jon Meacham's American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (Random House, 2006). It is an extended essay on how American presidents from Washington to Reagan have practiced and supported public religion. The author takes on the task of defending the middle ground against two extremes. From the right are those who portray America as a Christian nation, which misrepresents public religion as a form of sectarian religion. From the left are those who, relying on Jefferson's metaphor of The Wall (separating Church and State), would like to banish any hint of religious discourse from the public sphere, making no distinction between public religion and sectarian religion. Meacham supports his reasonable middle position with a pleasantly readable sampling of American political history and a wide variety of presidential quotes.

Church and State

Edwin Gaustad posted a short essay entitled Roger Williams & Church-State Separation over at the Oxford University Press Blog (which any discriminating blogger will immediately add to their blogroll — where else will you find posts like The Year in Geography?). Roger Williams often gets overlooked in the bubbling pageant of American religious history, especially by Mormon readers who often have a hard time seeing anything of consequence in the historical record before 1830. Gaustad's essay (he also authored a recent biography of Williams) reminds us what a courageous figure was Williams, truly a man before his time. I'm also going to use this to resurrect my dormant online essay of the week feature.

Oral Arguments on Newdow

I posted my comments on Elk Grove ISD v. Newdow (the Pledge Case) over at Northern Lights. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday.

This is the second major religion case to come to the Court this term from the Ninth Circuit. The other one was Locke v. Davey; my comments here on that one.