Recommended Reading

No Place to Hide. Robert O’Harrow, Jr. Washington Post reporter “provides an authoritative and vivid account of the emergence of a “security industrial complex” and the far reaching consequences for ordinary Americans…an alarming vision of the future uncannily reminiscent of the world imagined by Orwell in 1984.” Can’t wait to read it!

Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic. Chalmers Johnson. The latest from the author of Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. While Adventists will disagree with the predicted demise of the United States, Chalmers is part of “The American Empire Project,” by a group of lefties, that eerily charts what many Adventists will see as prophetic trends in the development of the U.S. from being “lamb-like” to speaking “as a dragon.” See Rev. 13:11, 12.

Politics and Prophecy: The Battle for Religious Liberty and the Authentic Gospel. Christa Reinach and Alan J. Reinach, Esq., editors. Chalk this one up to the “shameless commerce” division of the Church State Council, but we are big believers in our own book. We produced this in order to meet a need: a single volume to convey a unique integration of Protestant theology with current issues. It has been edited especially with the general reader in mind. You won’t get bogged down in these stimulating and inspiring chapters. Check it out!

Church – State Matters: Fighting for Religious Liberty in our Nation’s Capital. J. Brent Walker. The author served as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the nation’s oldest Baptist public policy organization. He writes about the issues and battles he was engaged in while serving for many years in Washington, D.C. as one of the foremost watchdogs on religious liberty issues.

Religious Liberty in America: Political Safeguards. Louis Fisher. The author is a scholar at the Library of Congress. Unlike many books that focus on legal developments, this book focuses on the politics of defending religious freedom. A refreshing and valuable approach.

Christianity and the State. R.J. Rushdoony. This is perhaps the briefest work by the founder of modern Christian Reconstructionism, a movement seeking to reshape American law and culture on the basis of biblical norms. It provides the best introduction to this school of thought.

The Separation of Church and State. Forrest Church. A prominent Unitarian minister and religious liberty advocate has collected some prominent colonial American writings pertaining to the subject. This is a marvelous introduction to the likes of Patrick Henry, Sam Adams [not the founder of a brewery], Isaac Backus, George Mason, and of course, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. A very helpful collection.

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Kevin Phillips. I admit it. I’m a big fan of Kevin Phillips. I think he is dead on target on all three fronts: religion, oil politics and bad money. This book predated the economic meltdown that followed, almost presciently so. His critique of American policy in the mid-east, and the hazards of American religion deserve serious consideration.

Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament, How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America. Randall Balmer. Our list includes a number of volumes from what we have dubbed the “anti-theocrats.” Balmer’s is perhaps the best written and most important. He is himself a prominent evangelical, an associate editor at Christianity Today, and a professor of American Religious History at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson. America’s foremost conservative columnist and a founder of the Christian Coalition teamed up to issue this 1999 admission that the battle for the soul of America was a lost cause. This is a critique of the Christian political movement from two who have defected from the pinnacle of its leadership.

Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape our Culture. Tom Minnery. Our reading list includes plenty of volumes that are critical of the Religious Right. Here is one in defense of the political agenda. Tom Minnery has been a leader at Focus on the Family for many years, at the heart of this movement to mobilize grassroots support.

Tempting Faith: An inside story of Political Seduction. David Kuo. An evangelical and staffer inside the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiative wrote this “tell-all” critique of how this program was shaped by politics, rather than the desire to truly shape the delivery of social services.

Statecraft as Soulcraft. George F. Will. Our reading list includes both liberals and conservatives. Will is among the most thoughtful and prominent of conservative voices addressing these issues today.

Power Religion: the Selling Out of the Evangelical Church. Michael Horton, editor. This is a collection of articles by prominent evangelicals critical of the cult and covetousness of power within the church. Contributors include: John H. Armstrong, Charles W. Colson, J.I. Packer, and R.C. Sproul.

A Christian Manifesto. Francis A. Schaeffer. The author is the spiritual father of the Religious Right, and this is the volume that mobilized a generation of Christian political activists, whether or not that was the intent. Read it for yourself, and see what you think.

The Second American Revolution. John W. Whitehead. The author served as attorney for Francis Schaeffer, and wrote this book in 1982. It was one of the early calls to arms for Christians in politics. The author has since disavowed much of this philosophy, but his early work remains an important one to understand the development and perspectives of the Religious Right.

The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us. Rabbi James Rudin. The author is a renowned Jewish leader in interfaith circles, and has a good grasp of his subject. His concerns about the Religious Right may offend some evangelicals, but the Jewish perspective on current Christian religion/political trends deserves a fair hearing.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. Michelle Goldberg. This represents one of the better secular critiques of the Religious Right, although it is shrill and anti-religious at times. It certainly gives a bird’s eye view into how the secular left views the religious right.

Deadly Detours: Seven Noble Causes that Keep Christians from Changing the World. Bob Briner. A concerned evangelical pastor writes from his heart about the need to eschew politics and return to the gospel. His causes include: Squabbling over Prayer in Public Schools, Making Jesus a Right Winger, Shutting Down the Abortion Clinic, and Fighting for Family Values.

God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government. Gary Scott Smith, ed. This is a collection of scholarly articles on the application of Reformed theology to the relationship between church and state.

Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence. Alan Dershowitz. The articulate, arrogant and accomplished Harvard law professor has been an ardent advocate of the separation of church and state. This volume is one of many critical of the political activism of the religious right. Dershowitz represents a liberal segment that has taken separation of church and state to a point of practical hostility to religious freedom. Many of his criticisms, however, deserve consideration. Christian conservatives do well to confront the criticism with a humble and teachable spirit, as a learning opportunity. Of course, that does not mean accepting the criticism uncritically. This book will make some angry, others applaud, and everyone will find it easy to read.

Kingdoms in Conflict: An insider’s challenging view of politics, power, and the pulpit. Charles Colson. An early volume by one of the leaders of the Religious Right, in which he clearly sees some dangers of seeking to build public policy, and especially foreign policy, on biblical and prophetic interpretation. Classic Colson.

The First Liberty. William Lee Miller. This is perhaps the best single volume telling the story of our founding fathers and the development of religious freedom in the colonial era, by a scholar from the University of Virginia, birthplace of so much history.

The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment. Leonard W. Levy. This volume is a favorite to understand the meaning of the Establishment Clause to the ones who drafted it. What were the issues in colonial America that the First Amendment was intended to address? Whether or not you believe in arguments about “the intent of the framers” or “original intent,” it is instructive to recover an authentic colonial perspective. This book will surprise many in its analysis and conclusions.

Church and State in America. Edwin S. Gaustad. This is part of a 17 volume series from Oxford University Press on Religion in American Life. It is a superb basic overview of two centuries of history and law.

American Gospel. Jon Meacham. Rarely does a book about religion in America make it to the NY Times bestseller list. It helps if you are the editor of Newsweek. Jon Meacham has written a very readable, historically balanced and valuable book about religion in the new republic, and religious liberty. This is a great place to start your studies and reading. It also has a marvelous appendix of important documents in the history of religious liberty.

Neither King nor Prelate: Religion and the New Nation 1776 – 1826. Edwin S. Gaustad. Gaustad is very readable and accurate in recounting essential history of the colonial period.

Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America. Edwin S. Gaustad. Roger Williams is the one who originated the concept and language about a wall or hedge of protection between church and state. The founder of Rhode Island, the life and thought of Williams is crucial to the development of religious freedom in America, and highlights the profound role played by Protestant theology.

The Search for Christian America. Mark A, Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden. These prominent evangelical and Catholic scholars have teamed up to provide a readable discussion of the historical record pertaining to the Christian nation debate. Both advocates and critics of the Christian nation enterprise will find things to love and hate about the book. But it is readable and helpful.

The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment. Thomas J. Curry. A valuable resource in many respects, although it reflects a bias in favor of non preferential aid to religion, an unsurprising bias given the author’s Catholic background.

Night. Elie Wiesel. This author and humanitarian is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Among his most gripping books is this very short, poignant autobiographical narrative about his experience as a young man in the Nazi concentration camps. We cannot afford to forget what inhumanity man has produced. This book is a great place to start remembering. It is deeply moving.

Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment. John Witte, Jr. The reviewers quoted on the back cover give this book high marks. The author is director of the law and religion program at Emory University, Atlanta, and a specialist in legal history and religious liberty.

The Story of Religion in America. William Warren Sweet. A classic, first published in 1930.

Adventism and the American Republic: The Public Involvement of a Major Apocalyptic Movement. Douglas Morgan. A Seventh-day Adventist historian examines the role of his own church in public policy issues.

The Catholic Church and the Holocaust. Michael Phayer. The Catholic Church has had a difficult relationship with the Jewish community over a very long period of time. Repeated offenses by the church have deeply alienated Jews. To understand the divide between Jews and Christians, one must begin to grapple with the history, including the troubling subject of this book.

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty. John M. Barry. A revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America. For four hundred years, Americans have wrestled with and fought over two concepts that define the nature of the nation: the proper relation between church and state and between a free individual and the state. Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of the man who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. The story is essential to the continuing debate over how we define the role of religion and political power in modern American life.

The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. The Godless Constitution is a ringing rebuke to the religious right’s attempts, fueled by misguided and inaccurate interpretations of American history, to dismantle the wall between church and state erected by the country’s founders. The authors, both distinguished scholars, revisit the historical roots of American religious freedom, paying particular attention to such figures as John Locke, Roger Williams, and especially Thomas Jefferson, and examine the controversies, up to the present day, over the proper place of religion in our political life. 

Dateline: Sunday, U.S.A.: The Story of Three and a Half Centuries of Sunday-law Battles in America. Warren L. Johns. A well-documented study into the history and growth of the Sunday laws in the United States.

Liberty In the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. Robert Louis Wilken. From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke. 

American Apocalypse. Dwight K. Nelson. Is America superior to the rest of the world? Pastor Dwight K. Nelson says no. And it is into this tension—that America is exceptional but not superior—that this book steps. In these pages, readers will examine a troubling piece of the Apocalypse. Many scholars conclude that this apocalyptic scenario is a cryptic depiction of American exceptionalism turned tragic. Is there hope for America?Lay down the saga of this nation beside the unblinking eye of divine prophecy to find answers. Where is America’s help and America’s hope? How can a divided nation regain the Lord’s favor? Find out in The American Apocalypse.

Separation of Church and State:  A History. Steven K. Green.  Prof. Green is a constitutional lawyer and historian, and long time advocate of church state separation. Thi is as good an overview of the rise and fall of separationism as anyone has written, and it is readable. 

Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry.  This is a study by sociologists, not a critical take down.  Folks on both sides of the debate will find useful, objective analysis here of just what constitutes Christian Nationalism, and who.  

The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.  Katherine Stewart. A lot has happened since this was published in 2019, but it remains one of the most insightful explorations from the inside, by a journalist who has worn out shoe leather in attending church services, and political rallies, and conducting interviews day in and day out, and getting to the heart of this religious/ political movement. 

The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Tim Alberta. The author is a preacher’s kid who was raised in the church and became a prominent journalist. This is both a highly personal, and insightful account by someone who understands from the inside what is happening with the evangelical wing of Christianity. It is very readable, and a must read for those interested in the influence of evangelical politics in America. 

Original Intent: Chief Justice Rehnquist and the Course of American Church/State Relations. Derek Davis. We hear a great deal about “original intent” these days, and how the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution according to what the founding fathers intended. Derek Davis is one of the foremost American scholars of church/state law and history, having served as the director of the church state studies program at Baylor University. Davis does an excellent job of explaining the significant impact that Rehnquist has had on the development of constitutional law of church/state relations.

The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education and Parental Rights. Shawn Francis Peters. One of the high marks for the free exercise of religion in the Supreme Court was its decision exempting Amish children from compulsory attendance at high school. This book recounts the story of that amazing case.

Why Churches Should Not Pay Taxes. Dean M. Kelley. The author was one of the towering figures in the interfaith and religious freedom community during his lifetime. Today, as secular scholars increasingly question various religious tax exemptions, this book remains a classic defense of a basic part of the separation of church and state, protecting the independence and autonomy of religious bodies.

Battleground: One Mother’s Crusade, the Religious Right, and the Struggle for our Schools. Stephen Bates. What happens when a mother wants to exempt her children from reading books in public school that she believes are Satanic, and in conflict with her religious beliefs and values? What happens when a community is torn apart by conflict over its schools, a conflict that rages in the courts in a small town in Tennessee? Bates does a marvelous job of telling the story.

Church Discipline and the Courts. Lynn Buzzard and Thomas S. Brandon, Jr. The issue of church discipline can be explosive, and is certainly quite sensitive. How a church handles discipline issues, the conflicting rights of individual church members to privacy and to avoid reputational injury as against a church’s associational rights and right to exercise discipline provide a fascinating and difficult area for the law to address. The authors are lawyers and experts in the field.

Mere Creatures of the State? A View from the Courtroom. William Bentley Ball. One of the most prominent lawyers handling religious liberty cases gives a highly readable account of cases, with his perspective on the crucial religious liberty issues at stake.

The Federalist Papers. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay. This should be at the top of our reading lists today. What does it mean for the U.S. to have a republican form of government? Why does it matter? What were our founding fathers really thinking, when they gave us this dysfunctional mess of a Federal government with the three branches. This book is as relevant as ever, maybe more so today.

Money, Lies and God. Katherine Stewart. Inside the movement to destroy American Democracy. This is, indeed, an inside look at the evangelical church in America today, by a critic who has been an outsider looking in for many years.  This is investigative reporting on what this reporter is seeing and hearing and witnessing, first hand, not some advocate’s crafted take down of an opposition viewpoint. Those who care about how the church is viewed by those outside need to understand, because we the church have made Jesus irrelevant and the enemy of those outside the church.

The Violent Take it By Force.  Matthew D. Taylor. The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy. Taylor is a Christian who analyzes and comprehends the political significance of the spiritual developments within a radical wing of the Pentecostal movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. This little known movement is a global phenonomen, boasting hundreds of millions of adherents, hundreds of Apostles and Thousands of Prophets.  You ignore its beliefs, its power and influence and its goals at the peril of our democracy.   

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.