The Impossibility of Religious Freedom
The First Amendment is stirring second thoughts among scholars wary of the social and legal consequences of religious liberty. Herself a witness for the plaintiffs, Sullivan recounts the tangled courtroom drama in a Boca Raton case in which a group of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families unsuccessfully sought a religious exemption to city ordinances prohibiting any vertical cemetery memorials (including upright crosses, statues, candles, and Stars of David). What emerges from Sullivan's carefully documented analysis of the case is the irreducible diversity of American religions-and the profound difficulty of accommodating such a wide range of beliefs, especially when individual convictions and practices diverge from official orthodoxies. Consequently, in reluctantly ruling against the Boca Raton plaintiffs, the judge voices perplexities now all too typical of American jurists trying to balance the rights of individual conscience against the demands of public order and democratic governance.Bryce ChristensenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.