What is religious freedom? Is it the freedom to pray in school or the freedom not to? A high wall between church and state or intelligent cooperation? After two centuries of debate and thousands of court decisions, the meaning of the First Amendment is still hotly controversial.

This volume provides in a single source a thorough grounding in the origin, development, and current controversies surrounding the free practice of religion.

The first boatloads of European settlers did not come to America advocating religious tolerance. They came seeking the freedom to practice their own religion. Other sects, they believed, were wrong at best and, at worst, not to be tolerated.

The question of what constitutes "legitimate," constitutionally protected religious practice has been debated ever since. Does it include the use of peyote? Polygamy? Refusing medical care for a sick child? Freedom of Religion follows the evolving understanding of the concept of religious freedom from Great Britain to the New World, through hundreds of U.S. courtrooms, to the volatile modern-day issues of school prayer and faith-based initiatives. The thorough, responsible, and cool-headed analysis presented here offers readers a solid grounding in the constitutional issues behind the headlines.

• Four chapters discuss the development of religious freedom from its roots in tribal societies through key court decisions of the 1990s
• A chronology outlines significant events and court decisions from 1776 to 2001, and a table lists all of the pertinent cases alphabetically