not quite, obsolete. They might still trouble Europeans, but
we in this enlightened, free, and right-minded republic were
thought to have happily settled all that business. Did not our
constitutions, state and federal, guarantee to all citizens "the
free enjoyment of religious profession and worship without
discrimination" and ensure the complete separation of the
church from the state--of religion from politics? In our Amer-
ican "contribution to civilization," we had set an example
which less fortunate peoples might well follow. In this cheer-
ful assurance we were supported by such distinguished foreign
observers as Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce. Tocque-
ville in particular saw in the success of the American experi-
ment a clue to the great European problem of his day--how
to reconcile the advance of democracy with the maintenance
of the Christian tradition. In his own country these two inter-
ests seemed to be in conflict: "Les hommes religieux combat-
tent la liberté, et les hommes de la liberté attaquent les reli-
gions." In America, on the contrary, he found no church that
was hostile to democratic and republican institutions. ¹

Now, however, in these middle years of the twentieth cen-
tury, we begin to suspect that certain age-old problems are not
so simple as they once seemed. In present-day Europe, the
church-state issue is one of intensely practical politics, whether
in Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, or Nazi Germany. It has
also come home to us here through the natural sympathy of re-
ligious groups in this country with the victims of totalitarian
policies. These old-world conflicts have grown in part out of
situations quite different from our own; but some of the
factors involved affect us also. Here, too, laissez-faire liberal-
ism has--for better or worse--been weakened, governmental
functions have expanded, and nationalism is little less intense
than it is across the water. As our government extends its con-
trol over the economic activities of its citizens, are we sure that

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