The First Amendment guarantee that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" rejected the millennium-old Western policy of supporting one form of Christianity in each nation and subjugating all other faiths. The exact meaning and application of this American innovation, however, has always proved elusive. Individual states found it difficult to remove traditional laws that controlled religious doctrine, liturgy, and church life, and that discriminated against unpopular religions. They found it even harder to decide more subtle legal questions that continue to divide Americans today: Did the constitution prohibit governmental support for religion altogether, or just preferential support for some religions over others? Did it require that government remove Sabbath, blasphemy, and oath-taking laws, or could they now be justified on other grounds? Did it mean the removal of religious texts, symbols, and ceremonies from public documents and government lands, or could a democratic government represent these in ever more inclusive ways? These twelve essays stake out strong and sometimes competing positions on what "no establishment of religion" meant to the American founders and to subsequent generations of Americans, and what it might mean today.

AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroduction - John Witte, Jr.1. The Separation of Church versus Religion in the Public Square: The Contested History of the Establishment Clause - T. Jeremy Gunn2. Establishment at the Founding - Michael W. McConnell3. Disestablishing Religion and Protecting Religious Liberty in State Laws and Constitutions (1776-1833) - Mark D. McGarvie4. Roger Williams and the Puritan Background of the Establishment Clause - David Little5. Toleration and Diversity in New Netherland and the Duke's Colony: The Roots of America's First Disestablishment - Paul A. Finkelman6. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the Meaning of ''Establishment of Religion'' in Eighteenth-Century Virginia - Ralph Ketcham7. The Continental Congress and Emerging Ideas of Church-State Separation - Derek Davis8. The First Federal Congress and the Formation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment - Carl H. Esbeck9. Defining and Testing the Prohibition on Religious Establishments in the Early Republic - Daniel L. Dreisbach10. The Second Disestablishment: The Evolution of Nineteenth-Century Understandings of Separation of Church and State - Steven K. Green11. Disestablishment from Blaine to Everson: Federalism, School Wars, and the Emerging Modern State - Thomas C. Berg12. Some Reflections on Fundamental Questions About the Original Understanding of the Establishment Clause - Kent Greenawalt13. Getting Beyond the ''Myth of Christian America'' - Martin E. MartyBibliographyIndex