To an unknown God
Subtitle: religious freedom on trial
By: Garrett Epps.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 289
Subjects: Smith, Alfred Leo -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Frohnmayer, Dave.; Oregon. Employment Division -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Indians of North America -- Religion.; Freedom of religion -- United States.; Drugs of abuse -- Law and legislation -- Oregon.; Peyotism -- Oregon.
Description: "To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial chronicles the six-year duel between two men with very different visions of religious freedom and of America.".

"Al Smith, a nationally known counselor to Native people suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, wanted only to earn a living. Dave Frohnmayer, the Harvard-trained Attorney General of Oregon, was planning his campaign for governor and tending to his three desperately ill daughters. But a series of miscalculations transformed a routine unemployment dispute into a constitutional confrontation.".

"Before it was over, Frohnmayer and Smith would twice ask the United States Supreme Court to decide whether the First Amendment protects the right of Native Americans and others to seek God with the use of peyote, a form of worship some scholars believe to be more than ten thousand years old.

And the Court would finally answer no; it would say, for the first time in the history of the Constitution, that the Bill of Rights provided no protection for obscure and minority religions if the legislature chose not to recognize their needs."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-276) and index.