THE RIGHT BOOKS

There has been some confusion,” John W. Whitehead remarks in the preface to his book The Freedom of Religious Expression in the Public High Schools (Crossway Books/ Good News Publishers, Westchester, Ill. 60153; paper, $3.95), “surrounding the rights of religious persons to express themselves in the public schools.” At the heart of this confusion, as Whitehead clearly demonstrates, is the widespread superstition, among religious people and secular humanists alike, that the courts have mandated by their decisions a nationwide policy barring religious discussion and activity from public institutions of learning. Yet such is not the fact. Rather, the most “liberal” court decisions of recent times regarding academic rights and freedoms have actually augmented earlier judicial interpretations of the First Amendment far more in harmony with the intent of its Framers.

Enough counter-revisionary work has been done over the past years that nobody should be any longer in doubt about the high esteem in which the Constitutional Convention held institutionalized religion, or about the extreme importance it attached toitasa keystone of democratic government and a free society. Plainly put, the United States was founded by religious men and dedicated, one is tempted to say after rereading the Declaration of Independence, almost to a religious purpose. (The religious fervor with which Democracy was often celebrated by nineteenth-century writers merely seals this impression.)

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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There has been some confusion,” John W. Whitehead remarks in the preface to his book The Freedom of Religious Expression in the Public High Schools (Crossway Books/ Good News Publishers, Westchester, Ill. 60153; paper, $3.95), “surrounding the rights of religious persons to express themselves in the public schools.” At the heart of this confusion, as Whitehead clearly demonstrates, is the widespread superstition, among religious people and secular humanists alike, that the courts have mandated by their decisions a nationwide policy barring religious discussion and activity from public institutions of learning. Yet such is not the fact. Rather, the most “liberal” court decisions of recent times regarding academic rights and freedoms have actually augmented earlier judicial interpretations of the First Amendment far more in harmony with the intent of its Framers.

Enough counter-revisionary work has been done over the past years that nobody should be any longer in doubt about the high esteem in which the Constitutional Convention held institutionalized religion, or about the extreme importance it attached toitasa keystone of democratic government and a free society. Plainly put, the United States was founded by religious men and dedicated, one is tempted to say after rereading the Declaration of Independence, almost to a religious purpose. (The religious fervor with which Democracy was often celebrated by nineteenth-century writers merely seals this impression.)