Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem (And What We Should Do About It) by Noah Feldman

The title of this book is a bit misleading. Or perhaps more than a bit. It's not really about the solutions to the problem, but rather a long exposition on the historical basis of the problem, including a detailed legal history and examination of the issue and its changes over the years. The solutions he proposes amount to about a paragraph's worth of words. Don't get me wrong, that's not really a bad thing, especially since it seems like neither side likes the approach he takes. More on that later.

More than anything else, I think the best reason to read this book is the history it gives of the entire church-state issue. Many people on either side have some interpretation to give of what the Framers meant when they wrote Freedom of Religion into the Constitution, variously informing us that the Framers intended either the enshrining of Christianity in our government or that the Framers meant that government shouldn't even recognize religion or accord it any special status. Feldman debunks both popular views by going back to the pre-Constitutional writings of Madison and Jefferson, arguably two of the most influential men involved in the actual writing of the Constitution. What he discovers (or rather, uncovers from the layers of history that have been put on top), is that "freedom of religion" is meant to protect the individual from the tyranny of a state religion. Many people probably don't connect the wording of that amendment with the fact that in most countries established at the time (all European ones), the church and state were inseperably intertwined. The choice was either Protestant or Catholic, and for the commoner, their religion was that of their ruler. At the time, religion wasn't seen as the threat, it was the government! So the Framers wrote two parts to eliminate that problem; the government could not establish a state church, and the government could not prohibit other churches.

Now how that turned into the situation of today is not in the purview of a simple book review, but it provides the substance of the majority of the rest of the book. And it's a fascinating story, including information about how Protestants used the separation clause to keep from funding Catholic schools (while forcing Catholics to fund Protestant-oriented public schools). And of how it was seen as acceptable to fund religious charity organizations, such as Catholic orphanages. There's also the story of why polygamy ended up being illegal, which of course deals with why government governs marriages at all.

One of the things I learned from this book that I hadn't really seen discussed before was how in the past, the argument really came down to what kind of values people wanted inculcated in American children. The people who espoused religion in school weren't necessarily pushing it because they believed we needed religion in schools, but because they wanted schools to teach the children values, and their values came from their religion. Of course you can see the problem with that immediately, but at one time, the Protestant majority of this country had no problem marginalizing everyone else (and many of them still don't have a problem with that).

Anyway, those are just some of the topics covered in this book. He really gives you an in-depth treatment. The history and historical background to current events that he provides are invaluable, and definitely the most succinct and balanced treatment you'll probably be able to find. Where he goes a little wrong though, is in boiling the debate down to two camps, the "legal secularists" and the "values evangelicals". Essentially a legal secularist is one who wishes to see any and all religious thought banished from the realm of political debate. That is, a Christian shouldn't be allowed to bring their Christian values into any debate (so they have to argue abortion or "under God" in the Pledge based on something else). A values evangelical would be one who thinks that our government and laws should be based on common, shared values. Not that his names are wrong, or that such parties don't exist, but they are by far the minority of people.

I don't think most people who believe religion has no place in government believe that because they think values have no place in government. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's not true. We all have some kind of values we want in place. It's just that for some of us, it's important not to have values written in to law that by their very nature discriminate against people who don't share those values. On the other hand, according to Feldman, the values evangelicals believe that we can write values into law without being exclusive. This supposedly can be seen in the fact that Christians and Jews (and perhaps other religions too) can come together on moral stances such as the death penalty and gay marriage. Theoretically it's not because they want to enforce their beliefs on us, but rather because they want to preserve the national character that they see as historically having shaped this nation into what it is today.

Obviously we can see some problems with these characterizations right away. As I said about the legal secularists, it's not that these people don't want values, it's that they don't think we ought to be deciding how other people live. And for a good many values evangelicals, that's exactly what they want. I think Feldman's simplifications are a little too abstract. There are certainly people exactly like he describes them, but that's not the majority of people. I've read others say that those two viewpoints represent the extreme end of spectrum, but I don't think that's true either. I think those are more side-branches than extremists, because both points of view are entirely too rational for extremists.

At the end of the book, Feldman gives an ending with a solution that seems like he only realized he needed to fulfill the second part of the book's title at the last minute. Seriously, it's just a few pages long, and in it he basically says to give the values evangelicals the symbols of religion that they want but to end any kind of funding of private schools (by school vouchers) and that in any debate over issues, the legal secularists shouldn't exclude values evangelicals' religious rationale, but rather only argue on the merits of any proposed law using logic and expect to win.

Really, it's not much longer than that. While I have criticism for the proposed solution itself, I'll save that for later and merely say for now that the ending is just too short to do any good even if he did have a good point.

As for writing style, Feldman isn't boring, but still not as lively as Michael Pollan. More non-fiction authors need to take cues from him! He does make the history that he writes about interesting, and by making it relevant to other well-known aspects of history, he succeeds in bringing it from the abstract to the real. Furthermore, he delves into some history that is very important but little talked about: what people think it means to be American, and our reasons for making laws the way we do. If more people knew that stuff, I'm sure they'd be less puzzled by our politics today.

Anyway, good book but far from being perfect. This is a great history book and does succeed admirably in continuing the story into the present day, but only in general terms. While he talks about the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, he only mentions them as part of the general movement towards fundamentalism, and not how they have specifically interacted with politics in the last twenty years. As a short study, this book is fine, but it could definitely have been the beginning of a much larger work that I'm sure would be highly valuable. The end, as I said before, really isn't worth much. Overall, I still say read it because it's not that long, but be prepared to get no more than a pretty good history lesson.