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xi Preface Sandwiched between the sprawling city limits of Los Angeles and the city of Pasadena—famous for its annual Tournament of Roses Parade—is the city of South Pasadena, a quiet little burg that has somehow managed to fend off freeways, high rise buildings, and the other encroachments of metropolitan life. Along a quarter-mile stretch of Fremont Avenue, which runs just parallel to a proposed extension of Interstate 710, is the town’s “church row.” Without breaking a sweat, one can walk by Grace Brethren Church, Calvary Presbyterian Church, St. James Episcopal Church, Holy Family Catholic Church, and South Pasadena Chinese Baptist Church; and just around the corner is a United Methodist Church. South Pasadena looks very much like a small midwestern town transported into the middle of Los Angeles. What is so remarkable about this seemingly unremarkable scene— repeated in countless small towns across America—is the fact that all these different denominations exist side by side, in peace, and in cooperation. Like Garrison Keillor’s semi-mythical Lake Wobegon, it is a place where Lutherans, Catholics, and Presbyterians all rub shoulders at the local “chatterbox cafe”; they are civil to one another, and the local pastors even meet periodically with the priest. It wasn’t always this way. Religious strife was very much a fact of life in seventeenth-century Europe and America. The first colonists in New England came to escape religious persecution in England and on the Continent. Ironically, they themselves often became persecutors of religious dissidents, suspected witches, and especially “Papists,” who they feared would undermine the Protestant Reformation and impose the supremacy of Rome upon the shores of America. An early Colonial American would walk down a church row today in amazement or even shock: Where have all the Puritans gone? Why does the Baptist Church have Chinese writing on it? And who let the Catholics in? One of the early New England colonists, Roger Williams, spoke out loudly for an end to the strife and the “rivers of blood” that had drenched Europe during the Protestant Reformation, the Counter Reformation, and xii | Preface the religious struggles in England that led to its Civil War. Williams called for complete religious freedom—even for Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Williams’ radical ideas resulted in his banishment from the Massachusetts Colony. So he moved next door and founded Rhode Island as a “haven for the cause of conscience.” A century and a half later, Williams’ aspirations were more fully realized in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution , which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .” Broadly speaking, these words translate into religious liberty. But the contours of this liberty—its shape, limits, and boundaries—are still in the process of being defined. Debate over the meaning of the First Amendment has intensified during the past sixty years since the Supreme Court began enforcing a “separation of church and state” doctrine, as discussed in chapter 7. This book takes a glance at the more than 200-year history of the First Amendment and attempts to distill the volumes of debate, background, and case law into seven chapters. Current issues, such as controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance—with the phrase “under God”—the Ten Commandments , religion in public schools, and Faith-Based Initiatives, are given particular emphasis. Just two miles away from peaceful church row in South Pasadena, the church district in the city of Pasadena was the center of recent controversy: The All Saints Episcopal Church made national headlines when the Internal Revenue Service launched an investigation into the church because of alleged political content in a sermon given by the Rev. George Regas, the church’s rector emeritus. On the eve of the 2004 presidential election, Regas delivered the sermon titled “If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush,” in which Regas imagines Jesus admonishing Bush: “Mr. President, your doctrine of pre-emptive war is a failed doctrine.” In response to publicity regarding the sermon, the IRS sent a letter to the church, warning it that tax-exempt organizations “are expressly prohibited from intervening in any political campaign for public office.” More than two years later, in September 2007, the IRS concluded its examination, stating that the church had “intervened in the 2004 presidential election campaign” in violation of IRS code. But, the IRS noted, the incident “appears to be a one-time occurrence ,” and therefore the church’s tax-exempt...

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