A book review from The Movie Snob.

The American Myth of Religious Freedom, by Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr. (Spence Publishing 1999). The Supreme Court's jurisprudence regarding the religion clauses of the First Amendment is upsetting to many on the religious right. In their view, the clauses were intended to protect religion from the power of the overbearing state, and not to crowd religious viewpoints out of the public square. Not so, argues Craycraft. In persuasive analyses of the writings of Jefferson and Madison, as well as their political godfather John Locke, Craycraft argues that the true intent of the authors of the First Amendment was to protect the state from the power of the churches, and to found a regime in which religion's influence would gradually be eroded and marginalized. I thought this part of the book was more compelling and interesting than the last couple of chapters, in which Craycraft develops an alternative theory of religious liberty based on Catholic sources such as political philosopher John Courtney Murray and the documents of the Second Vatican Council.