The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America. By Sarah Barringer Gordon. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. x + 316 pp. $29.95 cloth.

摘要

Sarah Barringer Gordon is a wonderful storyteller. In this book, she offers anhistory of law and religion in the twentieth-century United States from then“ground up,” organized around five elegantly constructed stories, full of richnand illuminating detail. Her narrative hinges on a crucial distinction betweenntechnical and popular constitutionalism. Her main characters are notnSupreme Court justices and their often contradictory (and much maligned)ndecisions, but instead a remarkably diverse array of religious actors whondeployed their own understandings of constitutional meaning and ofnreligious freedom to remodel the legal landscape. Through this work,nGordon aims to bring together the narratives of U.S. legal and religiousnhistory, demonstrating persuasively how law and religion have shaped eachnother in often surprising and unexpected ways. Her compelling narrativenmakes it difficult to maintain that law and religion have ever been separatenin the United States.