Relevant Issues
School Prayer: The Court, the Congress and the First Amendment. Robert S. Alley. A scholar of church and state has compiled an impressive collection of resources on the topic of prayer in public school, including excerpts from Congressional hearings conducted after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the early 1960s. If you want to have a better understanding of what the Court did, and how America responded, this volume will be enormously helpful.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow. C. Vann Woodward. Written by a renowned Yale historian, this volume may help us remember that no right is an island. Religious intolerance and persecution are part of a larger fabric that includes racial and ethnic prejudice and bigotry.
Welfare Reform & Faith-Based Organizations. Edited by Derek Davis and Barry Hankins. This book was produced by the nation’s foremost academic program devoted to religious freedom, the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church State Studies at Baylor University, and edited by its former director and a distinguished professor. It contains chapter submissions reflecting a diversity of responsible views on how public funding of religious charities has developed, and the constitutional issues and values at stake.
Fear: The History of a Political Idea. Corey Robin. Karl Rove was not the first political operator to make use of fear tactics. It is a tried and true strategy, and sadly, all too often successful. Today, fear of another terrorist attack has derailed our national commitment to freedom. A better understanding of fear, its history and utility as a political weapon is most timely and relevant.
So Help Me God. Roy Moore. The Ten Commandments judge himself, telling the story of his legal battles over posting the Ten Commandments in his court room, and on display in the Alabama Supreme Court.