The Godless Constitution is an urgent and timely reexamination of the roots of church-state separation in American politics - and a ringing refutation of the misguided claims of the religious right. In this important polemic two distinguished scholars of American political ideas and religion refute this dangerous attempt to introduce what they term "religious correctness" into our politics, by reminding us that the absence of any mention of God in the Constitution was a conscious action on the framers' part, intended to prevent the bloody religious controversies that so marked European history. They also emphasize that church-state separation was seen as a guarantee of - not a hindrance to - religions liberty. Fully respecting the importance of religion in the public sphere, yet forthright in defining proper limits, The Godless Constitution offers a bracing return to the first principles of American democracy - and a guide to keeping them intact in the forthcoming presidential campaign.

304 pages.

The Burke that emerges from Professor Kramnick's sensitive reinterpretation--the troubled ambivalent bourgeois--is vastly more interesting and truly significant than the mythic defender of the old order that generations have worshipped and misunderstood.