Overview

"The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"", may be the most contentious and misunderstood provision of the entire United States Constitution. What exactly is an ""establishment of religion""? And what is a law ""respecting"" it? Many commentators reduce the clause to ""the separation of church and state."" This implies that church and state are at odds, that the public sphere must be secular, and that the Establishment Clause is in tension with the Free Exercise of Religion Clause. All of these implications misconstrue the Establishment Clause's original purpose. The clause facilitates religious diversity and guarantees equality of religious freedom by prohibiting the government from coercing or inducing citizens to change their religious beliefs and practices. In Agreeing to Disagree, Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell detail the theological, political, and philosophical underpinnings of the Establishment Clause, state disestablishment, and the disestablishment norms applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. In one of the most thorough accounts of the Establishment Clause, Chapman and McConnell argue that the clause is best understood as a constitutional commitment for Americans to agree to disagree about matters of faith."

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"Nathan S. Chapman is the Pope F. Brock Associate Professor of Professional Responsibility at the University of Georgia School of Law, and a McDonald Distinguished Fellow of Law and Religion at the Emory Center for Law and Religion. He was formerly the executive director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, six of which involved the Religion Clauses. McConnell is also coeditor of Religion and the Constitution and Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought. His most recent book is The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power under the Constitution. Walter Dixon is a winner of Audible's ""#1 Editor's Choice and Customer Favorites"" award. He has narrated more than 200 audiobooks; performed in musical theater, drama and opera productions, and professional stand-up comedy; and voiced commercials, corporate videos, animated features, vintage radio dramas, and audio tours for the Guggenheim and other museums."

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