The convergence of the First Amendment and Vatican II on religious freedom.

• Date: 01 May 1999
• Author: Drinan, Robert F.

THE LUSTRE OF OUR COUNTRY: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. By John T. Noonan, Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 436. $35.

Did the United States radiate the views of James Madison on the free exercise of religion to the world? That, in essence, is the main thrust of this provocative study by John T. Noonan, Jr., Professor Emeritus at the University of California Law School, Berkeley, and a Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Noonan is, of course, the author of magisterial books on abortion, birth control, legal ethics, and related issues.(1) He writes as a committed Catholic who takes pride in the religion that he learned as a child in his native Brookline, Massachusetts. In Catholic circles and far beyond he is regarded as a scholar who combines the insight of faith with the voice of reason.

In thirteen closely argued chapters Noonan describes how James Madison was instrumental in securing adoption of the "free exercise" of religion in the First Amendment. This formulation has a very special significance since it was not the idea of a secularist or a deist, but of a person close to and active in the Anglican church. The sixteen words of the First Amendment banning the establishment of religion and guaranteeing its free exercise had a profound effect in guaranteeing that there be no state-sponsored religion and that believers enjoyed, with some exceptions, the right to practice their religious beliefs.

Noonan contends that the separation of government and religion with the guarantee of free exercise has been a success in the United States and that many nations have adopted it as the best way to resolve the problems of church and state in societies that are deeply divided with respect to religion. Indeed, it was our Founding Father James Madison who furnished the title to Noonan's book, expressing his revolutionary belief and hope that "freedom of religion promised a lustre to our country" (p. 4). These notions, however, must cope with active secularism that is negative and even antagonistic to organized religion.

Despite the absence of a national church, the United States has maintained a public piety that almost assumes a nationally accepted belief and faith. Noonan cites and seemingly applauds a famous expression of such piety in the dramatic God-centered prayer spoken by President Roosevelt on D-Day, June 6, 1944. After announcing that the invasion of Europe was successful President Roosevelt said these words: "`And so in this poignant hour, I ask you to join me in prayer'" (p. 393). Roosevelt did not define what he meant by "prayer," but the prayer was acceptable and welcome to all but some secularists or non-Christians.

In pursuing his thesis Noonan reviews the principal instances in American history when church and state have clashed. They include the struggle over slavery (pp. 114-15), exemptions from the military for conscientious objectors (pp. 219-26), religion in the military service (pp. 84-85), and the famous cases involving excusing the children of Jehovah's Witnesses from saluting the flag (pp. 241-44). The underlying assumption of Noonan is that the American experience has been generally salutary for religion and for a government devoted to the advancement of values and virtues, some of which are derived ultimately from religious sources. These ideas are now transformed into truths that furnish sound ideals for a nation that is neither expressly sacred nor explicitly secular.

Noonan's analysis of religious practice in France (pp. 265-84), Japan (pp. 287-304), and Russia (pp. 307-27) is filled with little known facts that have seldom been pulled together before. Some readers may feel that the author engages in a bit of a stretch, essentially claiming that the United States was instrumental in placing the concept of the free exercise of religion in the legal institutions of the countries he discusses. Nevertheless, it is amazing how frequently the American understanding of the free exercise of religion has been adopted in some form in scores of nations that have emerged in the postcolonial world.

Noonan's final and bold contention is that Madison's concept of the free exercise of religion was in essence adopted by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. In crafting his argument, Noonan traces the dramatic events involved in the book of the Jesuit theologian, Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., who was first silenced by the Holy See but then invited to be an expert at the Second Vatican Council, where he turned out to be one of the major architects of Vatican II's proclamation on religious freedom.(2) Noonan also describes at some length the pioneering work of Jacques Maritain, a convert to Catholicism (pp...