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Is the United States still "a nation with the soul of a church," as Sidney Mead once insisted? Are we still united by what Robert Bellah identified as a "civil religion"? Or have we become so diverse, so various in our creeds and commitments, so concerned with tolerating others in the name of civil decorum, that there is little left save the accidents of geography and circumstance to bind us together as a people?

The often uninformed and partisan climate of the current dialogue about religion and public education makes this book, which provides a sane historical context for the debate, especially valuable. James W. Fraser succeeds in shedding light rather than heat on this potentially contentious issue.