Winnifred Fallers Sullivan - The Impossibility of Religious Freedom [2005][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: May 9, 2005
The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground.
Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains.
A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution.

Editorial Review
From Booklist
The First Amendment is stirring second thoughts among scholars wary of the social and legal consequences of religious liberty. Herself a witness for the plaintiffs, Sullivan recounts the tangled courtroom drama in a Boca Raton case in which a group of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families unsuccessfully sought a religious exemption to city ordinances prohibiting any vertical cemetery memorials (including upright crosses, statues, candles, and Stars of David). What emerges from Sullivan's carefully documented analysis of the case is the irreducible diversity of American religions-and the profound difficulty of accommodating such a wide range of beliefs, especially when individual convictions and practices diverge from official orthodoxies. Consequently, in reluctantly ruling against the Boca Raton plaintiffs, the judge voices perplexities now all too typical of American jurists trying to balance the rights of individual conscience against the demands of public order and democratic governance. Bryce Christensen

Reviews
"A smart-and in the present circumstances, sobering-little book."--Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times

"Sullivan's book has the great virtue of placing abstract legal dilemmas in the concrete realities of everyday life."[b]--R. Laurence Moore, American Scholar

"Scholars or lay-people intrigued by the status of religion in contemporary developed nations will find Sullivan's study very useful."--John M. McTaggart, International Review of Modern Sociology

"Drawing on her expertise in law and religion, Sullivan argues that religious freedom in America is impossible. . . . [She] succeeds in arguing that religious freedoms are not as free as one might think."--Library Journal

"Sullivan's examination of the judicial process is only one important aspect her book. The most important contribution is her discussion of the problems of how law defines religion and through its definition impedes religious liberty."--Bryan K. Fair, Journal of Law and Religion

About the Author
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Religion Program at the University of Buffalo, The State University of New York. She is also the author of "Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States".