The Wall Came Tumbling Down

Over the Wall: Protecting Religious Expression in the Public Square

by Frank Guliuzza III

State University of New York Press, 288 pages

Even a casual observer of American politics would be hard pressed to say that religion is marginalized these days. Fleets of ministers pass through the White House to pray with Bill Clinton. Bill Bradley may not say where he goes on Sunday, but he's happy to declare his opposition to gay marriage because it's a "religious sacrament as well as a legal state." Men of the left like Christopher Hitchens and Nat Hentoff concur that the religious case against abortion should be, well, taken seriously; the squarely liberal magazine The American Prospect ran a cover story about the importance of religion in political life. One presidential candidate after another professes life change after a born-again experience, and, of course, we've heard that Christ is George W.'s favorite philosopher.

In such a climate, would it be so hard to imagine the president of the United States justifying a major expansion of foreign aid on the grounds that "God allows America to flourish" because "America is a giving nation"? "There is no crisis in the world," says the president in this hypothetical scenario, "which finds us unready to feed the hungry, give drink to those who thirst, clothe the naked, and do our level best to set the captives free." If we stop doing those things, "then, I tell you, I fear God will be finished with America!"

Frank Guliuzza III, the author of this bit of speechifying, spins it as farfetched. Religious arguments, Guliuzza contends, are "trivialized and often demonized by the so-called cultural and intellectual elites," who give religious expression "short shrift in the public square." For some reason Americans -- especially those pesky intellectuals -- seem more interested in geopolitical arguments than simple declarations of faith!

Guliuzza's new book, "Over the Wall: Protecting Religious Expression in the Public Square." claims that "many academic and cultural elites dismiss religious-based argument from dialogic politics," and that as a result, "religious expression...[is] unwelcome in the marketplace of ideas." Nominally focused on Supreme Court rulings in freedom of religion cases, the book manages to be pedantic yet hyperbolic at the same time.

Guliuzza believes that the legal doctrine of separation of church and state is a thinly veiled attack on political activity among the faithful. Trotting out some shaky history, he attempts to prove that the separation doctrine is really "a vehicle for secularization." To top it off, he implies that the American Humanist Association -- an admittedly bizarre organization that seems to do little but put out odd community newspapers -- might somehow be behind the whole thing. Guliuzza tends towards what Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style," complete with all the "experts, study groups, monographs, bibliographies and footnotes" beloved by the John Birchers.

Continued on page 2: »