God and the Founders

Did the Founding Fathers intend to build a "wall of separation" between church and state? Are public Ten Commandments displays or the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance consistent with the Founders' understandings of religious freedom? In God and the Founders, Dr. Vincent Phillip Muñoz answers these questions by providing new, comprehensive interpretations of James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. By analyzing Madison's, Washington's, and Jefferson's public documents, private writings, and political actions, Muñoz explains the Founders' competing church-state political philosophies. Muñoz explores how Madison, Washington, and Jefferson agreed and disagreed by showing how their different principles of religious freedom would decide the Supreme Court's most important First Amendment religion cases. God and the Founders answers the question, "What would the Founders do?" for the most pressing church-state issues of our time, including prayer in public schools, government support of religion, and legal burdens on individual's religious conscience.

Author: Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 08/01/2009
Pages: 254
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521515153

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2010

About the Author
Muñoz, Vincent Phillip: - Vincent Phillip Muñoz is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Massachusetts and a Faculty Affiliate at the Seattle University School of Law. He has held positions at Princeton University, New Jersey, Claremont McKenna College, California, North Carolina State University, and Pomona College, California. His writings have appeared in American Political Science Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Review of Politics, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and Claremont Review of Books. His media appearances include commentary on National Public Radio and Voice of America Radio. He has testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on legal hostility toward religious expression in the public square.