REV. MICHAEL ORSI
Waldman, Steven
and windmills and solar panels. Lovins’s influence is outsized; he is almost singularly responsible for California’s refusal to build any new power plants during the 1990s, even though demand kept...
...Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington all agreed on the importance of religion to a healthy democracy...
...Indeed, to grasp fully the clause and its implications for religious freedom, it is essential to explore the views of a much wider group, including the members of the committee that drafted the Bill of Rights as well as the congressional ratifiers...
...Such contradictions underscore why it matters who sits on the Court...
...If anything, he says, the opposite is true...
...His view reflected his disgust with the European model of national churches, the history of which ultimately proved damaging to religion and an impediment to the freedom of conscience that was sacred to all the Founders...
...In fact, there isn’t a single entry marked “Libertarianism” to consult...
...He was previously manager of editorial services for the Cato Institute...
...It’s hard to imagine encyclopedias of conservatism, fascism, feminism, or Buddhism that didn’t contain entries on…conservatism, fascism, feminism, or Buddhism...
...According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Americans are overwhelmingly religious...
...Some states, like Virginia, had prohibited funding of the Anglican Church as early as 1776, while Massachusetts continued to support the Congregationalist Church until 1833...
...The input and votes of all these men were vital in bringing the document to its final form and passage...
...My guess is, a workable consensus definition couldn’t be found...
...He presents the religious, philosophical, and political beliefs held by the authors and promoters of In Founding Faith, Steven Waldman presents the religious, philosophical, and political beliefs held by the authors and promoters of the Bill of Rights, when the First Amendment was drafted...
...and answers, “This question is much more difficult and profound than one might at first suppose...
...History also shows how the nation has profited from religion...
...as well as the General Introduction...
...But because Catholic hospitals are the recipients of public funds, channeled through various state and federal programs, they must abide by government conditions...
...Constitutional originalists hold to a strict interpretation of this text...
...And while this highly readable trip back to the clause’s roots doesn’t necessarily resolve the conundrum that religion presents in our civic life, it can help us to discern and more fully grasp the rev...
...Difficult, maybe, but profound seems a bit of a pat on the back...
...And the leadership in the civil rights movement was provided by religious figures...
...Tucker eviscerates Lovins for peddling a doctrine that conveniently ignores elemental facts about where we get our energy from and what we use it for...
...It effectively accomplished “incorporation” of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) into the constitutions of all the states, subjecting state governments to the same restriction under which the federal government had to operate...
...Some 78 percent identified themselves as Christians (with The Establishment Clause has served religion in America well, from the time of the Founders, right up to today...
...Waldman finds no indication of government hostility toward religion in America...
...Faith of Our Fathers T he place of religion in america is a problem as old as our republic...
...It has been a flash point of debate between liberals and conservatives on a wide range of issues—such as aid to parochial schools, prayer at civic gathFounding Faith: Providence, erings, nativity scenes on Politics, and the Birth of public property, governReligious Freedom in America ment assistance to faithBy Steven Waldman based organizations, and (random House, 205 pages, $26) many other concerns...
...Yet Tucker exposes Friedman as fundamentally unserious for his abrupt dismissal of nuclear power...
...This book is an invaluable historical resource, but more so, a tool for enlightened debate on church-state issues as they continue to confront our nation...
...4.7 percent belonging to religions other than Christianity), while 92 percent claimed to believe in some sort of universal spirit...
...Tucker addresses those worries, noting the heroic reforms undertaken by the nuclear industry to instill a culture of safety after TMI (a not-very-serious accident that served as a dramatic wake-up call...
...Especially as The Encyclopedia has entries on three of those four topics— four entries total when you add in “Conservative Critique of Libertarianism...
...He visits coal plants in Ohio as well as nuclear reactors in France (a country that produces 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power...
...The “L” Word W hat is libertarianism, and who, exactly, counts as a libertarian...
...he is almost singularly responsible for California’s refusal to build any new power plants during the 1990s, even though demand kept rising...
...The locus of the problem is inter reviewed by rev...
...At first pass, that seems a glaring omission...
...Liberty in the Ancient World...
...The account is hilarious, as is Tucker’s chance meeting with celebrity New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman...
...However, the Introduction does tell us that libertarianism is big—huge...
...Like most writers who delve into the First Amendment, Waldman explores the thinking of the great figures behind the Constitution, in particular the “Big Five”—Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington—that small circle generally thought of as the key Founding Fathers...
...An example is the 1971 Pennsylvania case Lemon v. Kurtzman, in which the Supreme Court found that state aid to parochial schools (most of which were Catholic) for teacher salaries, textbooks, and educational materials in non-religious subjects was unconstitutional...
...2) the primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion...
...michael orsi is chaplain and research fellow in law and religion at the Ave Maria School of Law...
...Clearly there are thresholds below which the body’s defenses can deal with an environmental insult...
...Waldman sees the ongoing tension regarding the reach of the First Amendment as a good thing...
...On the other hand, proponents of a dynamic Constitution contend that what the phrase really means is that a strict separation must be maintained between the state and all religion in any form...
...All to some degree believed that God intervened in the lives of men, and had chosen America for special blessing (the idea often referred to as American exceptionalism...
...State-established churches were now unconstitutional, and subsequent legal history has seen a seemingly endless series of churchstate disputes...
...December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 91 arguments made by both sides in the ongoing churchstate debate...
...Despite the evident benefits of nuclear power, it’s the downside that has made Americans hesitant since Three Mile Island (TMI) and Chernobyl...
...Now they have a whole foot-breaking reference book to help remind them of those old, tender memories...
...Writing for the editors, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Stephen Davies lays out five different ways that one could analyze the “major ideologies of modernity” and dances around a concrete definition of libertarianism...
...B ut waldman makes the important point that constitutional study has tended to focus too narrowly on the thinking of the “Big Five...
...This is where Terrestrial Energy takes on a “Roger and Me” quality, as Lovins won’t talk to him and is conveniently absent when Tucker treks all the way to his Snowmass, Colorado, home...
...and (3) it must not result in government entanglement with religion...
...Liberalism,German”;“Liberty, Presumption of...
...Other studies, such as those done by sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (see The Churching of America, 1776–1992), demonstrate unequivocally the extent to which churches in America have proliferated...
...and “Locke, John...
...He held a strong desire for a strict separation between church and state, because he believed that government presented the greatest potential obstacle to its flourishing...
...94 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009...
...That the First Amendment emerged from the framing process as it did reflects the fact that the Founders were, first and foremost, politicians willing and able to compromise in order to accomplish what was doable under the circumstances...
...In other words, the First Amendment was intended only to prohibit a federally sponsored religion...
...Many of America’s social justice concerns were motivated by religious sentiment, for example, the call for an end to slavery...
...Pressure from Jefferson and Madison certainly provided encouragement to Virginia’s disestablishment law, while the views of Massachusetts’s John Adams and Fisher Ames, who considered government support for religion essential, had an effect in their state...
...The public (and our politicians) is slowly coming to the conclusion that we should build new nuclear power plants to address our energy and climate change challenges...
...This post–Civil War amendment sought to 92 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009 guarantee due process of law in order to secure the rights of former slaves...
...And as Waldman wisely emphasizes, they all had their personal preferences regarding church-state relations, and moreover, represented states with widely divergent approaches to the concept of religious establishment...
...He also calls out extremist environmentalist claims that any amount of radiation is dangerous...
...His journalistic sense of fairness leads him to seek an interview with Lovins...
...It is “a major feature of Jeremy lott is author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency (Thomas Nelson...
...michael orsi preting the Establishment Clause of the U.S...
...Why not just come out and say what libertarianism is, gentlemen...
...Individual states could make their own laws...
...What’s that old Jewish saying...
...Many conservative jurists believe Lemon went beyond the original intent of the First Amendment (and even superseded the 14th), but the justices left application of their decision to lower courts, which has resulted in a farrago of interpretation and enforcement in the various circuit courts...
...Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington all agreed on the importance of religion to a healthy democracy...
...Readers will just have to make do with entries on the “Liberal Critique of Libertarianism...
...That included Jefferson, whom Waldman presents as the least conventional of the five in his religious sensibilities...
...He notes a bottomline fact: the “Big Five” were decidedly pro-religion, and not at all the vague, quasi-secular, hands-off-God deists they are often represented as being...
...Four libertarians, five opinions...
...The rolling blackouts in 2000 and 2001 that made California a laughingstock and helped bounce governor Gray Davis...
...Waldman explores the ways in which the culture and denominational composition of each state, as well as the politicians’ personal beliefs, influenced how the Establishment Clause was understood...
...That decision introduced what has been called the “three-pronged test” by which state involvement in religion-related activities may be deemed permissible: (1) it must have a secular purpose...
...The General Introduction asks, “In what does libertarianism consist...
...For years, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, teenyarchists, Randroids, and assorted laissez-faire true believers have fought pitched battles over these vexing questions of ideology and identity...
...The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (The Encyclopedia hereafter) doesn’t seek to give definitive answers where none exist...
...Madison, whom Waldman paints as the most traditionally pious of the group, was the prime agent behind the First Amendment...
...As much as Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington believed in God and His providential care (both for human beings and for our country) and agreed on the importance of religion in buttressing public morality, Waldman insists that their personal opinions are not the only standard by which the words of the Establishment Clause are to be understood...
...If swallowing 100 aspirins will kill 100 out of 100 people,” Tucker notes, “that does not mean taking two aspirin will kill two people...
...The author of several bestselling books on global economic trends, Friedman holds con siderable sway on energy and environmental topics...
...Interestingly, in another case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the Supreme Court upheld a Cleveland program that gave low-income, inner-city parents vouchers they could use to send their children to non-public schools, including religious schools...
...Liberalism, Classical...
...He believes in the reasonableness of the American people and in the courts’ ability to compromise when prudent and necessary...
...Faith has always played a role in the public square, with generally positive effect...
...com, investigates the genesis of the Establishment Clause...
...The Founders’ real concern was determining how religion could flourish The “Big Five” were decidedly pro-religion, and not at all the vague, quasi-secular, hands-off-God deists they are often represented as being...
...the Bill of Rights, when the First Amendment was drafted...
...Result...
...Constitution’s First Amendment (1791), which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion...
...best in America...
...H ow far this history of First Amendment reinterpretation has brought us is evident in the recent passage by the Michigan state House of a bill requiring Catholic hospital staffers to inform rape victims about emergency contraceptives and to make those items available...
...The Establishment Clause has served religion in America well, from the time of the Founders, right up to today...
...In Founding Faith, Steven Waldman, editor in chief of the popular online religion journal Beliefnet...
...Kudos to Tucker for showing why we can, and why we should...
...Such a demand clearly contravenes Catholic moral teaching...
...A thorough Journalist, Tucker travels the globe to get to the bottom of the 21st-century energy story...
...Unless this legislation is reversed by the courts, all faith-based organizations receiving December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 93 government monies run the very real and imminent risk that their mission and identity will be destroyed...
...Participation by men of such conflicting outlooks in the constitutional process argues forcefully that a narrow reading of the agreed-upon amendment is the only fair assessment that can be made...
...They contend that when the First Amendment was ratified it simply prohibited the federal government from declaring itself in support of a national religion or acting in favor of a particular faith...
...But if that minimalist perspective reflects how the Constitution’s authors understood the First Amendment, passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 opened the door to much broader interpretation...
Vol. 41 • January 2009 • No. 10
