The Second Disestablishment
Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America
Steven Green
Reviews and Awards
"The Second Disestablishment illuminates much that has gone unexplained about the progressive separation of church and state, not only from American politics, but also from law itself.... The author has brought the nineteenth century into a historiography that has largely ignored it."--Church History
"In this important book Green centers the debate about American church-state relations in the neglected but crucial arena of nineteenth-century state judiciary actions. States by 1900 generally endorsed Jefferson's principle of church-state separation, but only after a long series of legal disputes about a purported religious basis of the common law. Blasphemy and Sabbath statutes, religious oath requirements and a Protestant public school system all have a place in Green's fascinating account." --R. Laurence Moore, co-author of The Godless Constitution
"The Second Disestablishment is one of the most penetrating books to have been written in recent years on the American ideal of the separation of church and state. Those who have argued that the 'Christian Nation' rhetoric of the nineteenth century contravenes and even trumps the separationist ideals of the Founding Era and modern Supreme Court jurisprudence will hereafter have to deal with Green's powerful counterargument." -- Derek H. Davis, author of Religion and the Continental Congress
"Antidisestablishmentarianism is long, awful word. Steven Green has given us a long, wonderful look at the 100 year wilderness in which our nation wandered around that concept. Warring camps, nearly everyone, fights for secularization or sacralization of society. 'Separation of church and state' is up for grabs. It is not complete, not neat, yet, not obsolete. Green offers fresh thinking on a perennial topic." --James M. Dunn, Professor of Christianity and Public Policy, The Divinity School at Wake Forest University