American Religion, American Politics: An Anthology ed. by Joseph Kip Kosek (review)

Thomas Jefferson lauded the "wall of separation between Church & State," but that barrier has never been as impermeable as he suggested when he assured the Danbury Baptists of their religious liberty in 1802. Indeed, Americans have struggled since the colonial era to define the proper relationship between the religious and political spheres. In American Religion, American Politics, Joseph Kip Kosek has compiled thirty-four documents that trace some major currents of debate. At a time when religion and politics collide constantly, a volume like this is sorely needed, especially for classroom use. But this book, while valuable, leaves the reader wondering about the potential of a more comprehensive collection.

Kosek organizes the volume around the wide and shifting middle ground between religion and politics, broadly construed. As he points out, religion need not concern "believers only," nor should politics exclude those who function outside the "official operations of government" (2). The collection accordingly includes writings from politicians, ministers, activists, laws, court cases, and other sources. Kosek has chosen sources that speak to three intertwining themes. First, they reflect ongoing debates about the proper extent of religious liberty from the colonial era to the present, including arguments in favour of extending liberty along with critiques of the limits of toleration. Second, the documents reflect religious rhetoric as it has concerned ethical and moral questions in public life, including the religious arguments for and against slavery, civil rights, marriage equality, and other important societal issues. These debates shine a spotlight on the public implications of private behaviour, and the ways in which religion has transected both. Finally, Kosek has chosen documents that speak to the interwoven religious and political understandings of the nation's character—whether Americans have understood the United States as Christian, godly, or entirely secular. The public discourse of religion and how it has contributed to the United States' triumphs and failings speaks to competing ideas of nationhood, providence, and destiny. Kosek is especially effective at framing the documents in this volume with contextual introductions, and he includes both bibliographic information about the sources and suggestions for related readings. These features will prove helpful for readers and should make this volume useful in a classroom.

Taken together, however, the collection is quite limited. Editors who compile volumes like this one have to make difficult choices; the final selection will necessarily leave gaps. But the particular gaps in this volume render it less useful than it might otherwise have been. Early American history gets especially short shrift, with the colonial and revolutionary periods crammed into one chapter (containing five documents) and the early republic and antebellum period reduced to just two documents that address the debate over slavery. All of these sources are well chosen, even essential. But there is little on religious politics in the colonies (beyond some founding documents of Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania), nothing on religious perspectives on the American Revolution or the providentialism of American civil religion, nor is there any attention to the fear of Catholic tyranny in the early republic, the religious defence of Manifest Destiny, the spiritual clashes between white Americans and Indigenous peoples, or the religious politics of antebellum reform (besides abolitionism). Not a single document speaks to religious conflict in the American West. The twentieth century gets more detailed attention, but the volume nonetheless leaves out any mention of 100% Americanism during the 1910s and 1920s (and its attendant anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism), and ignores battlegrounds like prayer or science education in schools. The book pays only minimal attention to the religious politics of immigrant communities (with one statement by an American Muslim), and leaves out religious debates over environmentalism and recent legal conflicts over land and resources of spiritual significance to Indigenous peoples in America. Kosek explains the limited scope by suggesting that most documents pertinent to religion and politics were produced by an elite set; he observes that such debates have largely taken place among those...