Summary

The very first words of the Bill of Rights protect the freedom of religion and prohibit the government from establishing any official religion. Freedom of Religion discusses those first 16 words, which protect the right of every citizen to exercise his or her religious beliefs. Politicians and legal scholars agree that the first 16 words in the Bill of Rights are the cornerstone of American law, but rarely do people agree on what those words mean.

Topics include:

• Court cases over the legality of wearing religious attire, such as yarmulkes, in the military
• Controversy over whether or not publicly funded town and county holiday decorations may be religious in nature
• How the First Amendment transformed into a firm guarantee of individual religious liberty and the separation of church and state
• Religious freedom in the American colonies
• The American religious culture's potential for change
• The religious diversity of the United States
• The Scopes trial over teaching evolution in the public schools
• and more.

Specifications

Black-and-white photographs, maps, and graphs. Appendix. Glossary. Chronology. Further reading. Box features. Index.

About the Author(s)

Tom Head holds a B.A. from Regents College (now Excelsior College) and an M.A. in humanities from California State University. Head is editor or coauthor of more than 12 books on such various topics as the Civil War and Mikhail Gorbachev. He is the editor of The Bill of Rights in a series titled Interpreting Primary Documents. Head is a member of The Authors Guild, the Mississippi Library Association, and the National Writers Union.