Yes, free exercise matters
A new book takes us back to the roots of the free exercise of religion, but punts on pressing challenges
One of the things I enjoy most about being a college professor is reviewing books. In addition to publishing original research articles, academic journals will often share reviews of recent books. These reviews are typically authored by academics with an expertise on the topic, and are usually both summative and critical — that is, they give readers an idea of what the book is about, what the book does well, and where the book comes up short.
I recently had a chance to review a book for the Journal of Church and State, which publishes articles on the history, tensions, and dynamics of church-state relations, in the United States and beyond. The book I reviewed was Jack Rakove’s Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion. Rakove is a historian at Stanford, whose expertise draws on the American founding era and Constitutional history. Needless to say, this book is directly in his wheelhouse.
Here are some excerpts of my review. While I think this book does an admirable job of reminding readers why the free exercise of religion is essential to American civil liberties, it doesn’t adequately address today’s many challenges and tensions involving religious expression.
On the purpose of the book:
Jack Rakove’s Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience commendably tries to turn down the temperature on this fiery debate. Rakove digs deeply into the historical context of free exercise, from its philosophical underpinnings in Europe to its doctrinal development via the US Constitution. He argues that this context must inform our contemporary interpretation of religious freedom, one that is not reactive to the latest culture war conflicts but rather reflective of a uniquely American idea.
On the book’s focus on Jefferson and Madison:
If there are main characters in Rakove’s book, they are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison…. Rakove also contrasts the men’s fascination with free exercise and religious disestablishment. He suggests that while Madison’s interest was mostly philosophical, Jefferson hoped that free exercise “would gradually turn Americans—or at least the predominant Protestants—into Unitarians,” a belief system more in line with his own views (p. 97).
On the book’s treatment of religious disestablishment:
Rakove goes on to explain how the country’s experiment with disestablishment and protections for conscience led to the emergence of a “booming spiritual marketplace that defined nineteenth-century American religiosity” (p. 102).
On the book’s primary shortcoming:
[Rakove] cannot account for the myriad complexities at the heart of the country’s tensions involving free exercise and, say, LGBTQ nondiscrimination. Moreover, Rakove seems to assume the “wall of separation” paradigm as necessary for disestablishment, when there are other perspectives open to treating religion as a public good while still opposed to religious establishment.
You can read the whole review here.