God Vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law by Marci A. Hamilton
“Religion is under assault by secularism in America.”
You’ve heard it so often that it even sounds true to many liberals. However, like so much the Right says these days, it is just rhetorical covering fire for a political manuever with exactly the opposite objective.
In reality, politicians are far to eager to give religious activity and organizations special treatment not afforded to others. Our political institutions have been so solicitous of religion, that they have put in place a formidable array of legal protections and exemptions for religious practice and organization without questioning whether the general welfare is harmed thereby.
Like any other human endeavor, religion, when unshackled from a common social contract and protected from the consequences of behavior, can become destructive to the common welfare. Marci Hamilton’s book explores exactly what has gone wrong in the American legal system’s handling of religious activity and organizations that impose costs and cause harm to others. She finds that religious organizations have systematically freed themselves from the social contract under the banner of religious freedom. The catalog of abuses her book records is long and ranges from the distortion of local land use laws that protect the heath and welfare of our families, to the lawless response of the Catholic church to predatory abuse of our children.
