The Godless Constitution

This is the name of a book I read yesterday by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. The full title is "The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State", which is an updated version of a book they wrote in 1996. Which makes sense; it's not like these issues have gone away.

As we are moving into the Christmas season, the time when the Bill O'Rielly's of the world are going to insist that liberals are destroying Christmas, I wanted to read a book that covered Church and State issues. Plus, this website usually shuts down over holidays, and I didn't want to do that this time; rather we will do a sharply focused series of articles about this book and the issues it raises.

I do want to be careful not to simply summarize the book; it's really quite good and you should read it yourself.

I should comment on my biases before jumping into this particular subject. For those of you who do not know, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; A Mormon. My religious heritage will naturally inform my discussion of this subject. My father was something of a church history buff and I have also been interested in the history of the church, so I have a strong sense of Mormon history.

Mormons believe, and I believe, that the Constitution was divinely inspired. What will be clear, however, is that I believe that the separation of Church and State, the Godless-ness that the authors reference, is, in a paradoxical way, divinely inspired.

So that's the agenda for the next couple of days. Hope you enjoy.