TruthBook Religious News Blog

By CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN,
Associated Press Writer
Wed Jun 20, 12:54 PM ET

"God on Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields" (Viking, 362 pages, $26.95) — Peter Irons: Combining legal analysis with good storytelling, a lawyer-professor explores church-state disputes.

Nobody talks about how it feels to be right in the middle of an ACLU lawsuit in a small, fundamentalist town. But in a new book, a Texas woman who filed such a suit does exactly that. Surprisingly, her words might even make you laugh.

"I got the word out, very loudly in the community, if they burn a cross in my yard, I'm inviting everybody over for hot dogs and marshmallows," she tells author Peter Irons. "And that stopped them. Because they want you to be scared, they thrive on that."

One of the best elements of Irons' book, "God on Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields," is a series of extended first-person statements like this, allowing real people involved in these disputes to explain themselves.

An atheist in one of these soliloquies, traces his nonbelief in part to a slap he received from a clergyman after asking an unwelcome question as a boy; and, in another personal narrative, a defender of a Christian religious display, who turns out to be Jewish, recalls his Holocaust-survivor parents' words about the danger of suppressing religious symbols.

"God on Trial" is a highly readable exploration of several church-state separation disputes that combines thoughtful analysis of the law with journalistic storytelling about the personalities and personal stakes on both sides.

Although Irons clearly has a viewpoint — he represented plaintiffs in one case he details, the longest-running church-state struggle ever, about a giant cross in a hilltop park in San Diego — he does not shortchange the positions of those who support prayer in school or Nativity scenes on the courthouse lawn.

He takes on the usual sound-bite views, for example, the notion that church-state separation is a "myth" without basis in U.S. history. In response, he notes that way back in 1785 the issue was real enough that a ban on religious taxation was taken up by Virginia's legislature.

And what about the idea that the United States is "a Christian nation"? Irons doesn't buy it, but in any event: Which Christians? He details intolerance and power-grabbing, pitting Christian sects against each other, from colonial Massachusetts to contemporary Texas.

Irons, a lawyer and emeritus political science professor, occasionally overdoes the legal detail. More often, his writing is lively, engaging and sometimes amusing. In one case where tempers are rising, a colorful judge roars: "Anyone who violates these orders, no kidding, is going to wish that he or she had died as a child."

In the end, "God on Trial" illuminates our never-ending religious battles. It shows that these cases are not all the same, that some are harder calls than others. And it suggests that if we recognize that the antagonists aren't two-dimensional, maybe we can make some progress.

Labels: ACLU, Christian, church-state, Peter Irons, religion