Justice Black's Bigotry Gets Misread as Jefferson's Belief: Scholars Challenge the Theory of Separation of Church and State as a Mid-20th Century Myth Concocted by Ideologues. (Constitutional Law)
Witham, Larry, Insight on the News
New research on Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" between church and state shows that he never intended it to be the iron curtain of today, which instead was built on anti-Catholic legal views in the 1940s.
Though the new scholarship has received good reviews for exploding a "Jeffersonian myth" about a wall against religion, others say it is too late to tear down a barrier that Americans feel comfortable with.
"What we have today is not really Jefferson's wall, but [former] Supreme Court justice Hugo Black's wall," says American University professor Daniel Dreisbach, whose forthcoming book, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State, explores …
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Publication information:
Article title: Justice Black's Bigotry Gets Misread as Jefferson's Belief: Scholars Challenge the Theory of Separation of Church and State as a Mid-20th Century Myth Concocted by Ideologues. (Constitutional Law).
Contributors: Witham, Larry - Author.
Magazine title: Insight on the News.
Volume: 18.
Issue: 32
Publication date: September 2, 2002.
Page number: 47.
© 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.
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