To Serve God and Mammon

What is the appropriate role of religion in a democratic polity such as the United States? To Serve God and Mammon shows that church-state relations are ultimately contested in a variety of political arenas at the local, state, and federal levels and illustrate a number of general properties of the American political system.An important theme of this book is the apparent tension between the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The book covers the history of church-state relations in the United States, the activities of individuals, interest groups, and various branches of government in the church-state area, and the transition of church-state debates from a focus on establishment clause issues to questions involving religious free exercise.