116 - An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights

An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights

Edited by Ronald C. White, Jr. and Albright G. Zimmerman

Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1990. 185 Pp. $14.95.

An Unsettled Arena brings together essays initially delivered as lectures at Rider College and Princeton Theological Seminary. With support from the New Jersey Committee for the Humanities and the New Jersey Historical Commission, distinguished authors reflected on various aspects of religion and law and their relationship in our national history. Taken together the essays underscore how complex that relationship has been and how problematic rights pertaining to religion prove to be. The net

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effect is to make readily available stimulating position papers that will both challenge thought and inform discussion rather than offer a synthetic resolution of this vexing subject.

Some of the basic issues highlighted by these authors are: questions concerning the highly complex founding period, and the relation of religion and culture in the new nation (Wilson Carey McWilliams); the changing place of religion in the society across two centuries, and the problem of its common values (Robert T. Handy and Ronald C. White); the establishment clause as interpreted by the modern Court (Leo Pfeffer); the status of rights in the American polity (Max Stackhouse); and finally, the troublesome issue of religion's influence (Harvey Cox). These chapters are framed by a helpful introduction and an epilogue (Albright Zimmerman).

An Unsettled Arena ought to have wide use to inform discussion of this ever-changing, yet ever-important, subject.

John F. Wilson, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.