The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom by John T. Noonan, Jr. (review)

480BOOK REVIEWS despotism. The new situation, brought about by the two alliances, turned loose the terms with surprising results. By the 1780's, for example, different factions within Congregationalism were attempting to tar each other with the "Romanist " label—conservatives saw liberals as embracing a Catholic view of open church membership while liberals attacked conservatives for upholding a Catholic view of oppressive authority. While such accusations still played on hereditary Protestant antagonisms, Hanson can nonetheless show that once "anti-Catholicism, like Catholicism itself, had been divorced from its familiar meaning" (p. 175), toleration was not far behind. Hanson also concludes that, as a result of this ideological history, when Boston's first Roman Catholic parish was established in 1788, it had an easier course than would otherwise have been the case. The one doubt that lingers about Hanson's argument is whether his very useful interpretation of reactions to the Canadian and French alliances as fully explains broader moves within New England's religious history as he suggests.Yet even if those reactions carried less motive power than this book contends, it remains a very useful extension of Mary Augustina Ray's still valuable American Opinion ofRoman Catholicism in the Eighteenth Century (1936) and a substantial contribution to debates over the image of Catholicism in eighteenthcentury Anglo-American societies triggered by such other important recent books as Linda Colley's Britons (1992). Mark A. Noll Wheaton College The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience ofReligious Freedom. ByJohn T. Noonanjr. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 436. $35.00.) In recent decades, widespread interest in American church-state polity has generated significant studies of the First Amendment and its interpretation. This superb book by John Noonan, a distinguished legal scholar and a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ranks among the very best.While celebrating religious free exercise as an "American invention" (p. 2), Noonan carefully analyzes the forces that have conditioned and sometimes limited its full implementation. His work focuses on the history of religious liberty in the United States, the problems and conflicts that have surfaced over its application , and the influence of our experience abroad. For Noonan, the free exercise phrase (not clause) controls the discussion of the First Amendment. One of this book's most attractive aspects is the author's willingness to explore the experiences that inform his own perspective. By way of prologue, Noonan opens with a warmly personal memoir of his early life, intellectual formation , and legal education. Watching Boston Cardinal William Henry O'Con- BOOK REVIEWS481 nell's political maneuvers provided his first exposure to church-state relations. After studying at Harvard and a stint at Cambridge University, graduate studies at the Catholic University of America offered the opportunity to examine the Catholic theory of church and state and meet John Courtney Murray just as he was engaged in reformulating the Catholic position. Then, as a young lawyer elected to a redevelopment agency in Boston, Noonan became sensitized to the religious textures of local politics. Noonan further engages the reader's interest by composing each of the thirteen chapters in a fresh voice. He writes one, for example, in a catechetical style; another offers a fictional person's narrative; and still another presents its subject as an oral history report. The book is divided into three parts. The first, "History," reviews the struggle for religious freedom, starting with the persecution of the Quakers in colonial Massachusetts. Among the founding generation, Madison ranks highest in Noonan's estimation, not only for his astute political judgment, but because his commitment to religious liberty flowed from his belief in God. Despite the separation Madison espoused, church and state remained inexorably entwined in America with liberal support for religion from the states and Federal Government. Pluralism brought toleration, even freedom; but not separation. And religion helped bring on Civil War. Noonan's historical section concludes with a stunning chapter on the legal tribulations of Edna Ballard and the "I Am" movement. For most of its history, the Court has offered only feeble support for free exercise when it involved marginal or suspect groups. Part two, "Problems," unveils the...