INTERPRETING THE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: THE CONSTITUTION AND AMERICAN PLURALISM.

Drinan, Robert F.

INTERPRETING THE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: THE CONSTITUTION AND AMERICAN PLURALISM. By Bette Novit Evans. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1998. Pp. 294. $45; $17.95.

The tensions inherent in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution which forbids the establishment of religion but guarantees its free exercise, have generated over 40 Supreme Court decisions in the last 40 years. Evans has surveyed the decisional law, added some jurisprudence and philosophy, and produced a volume which will be essential reading for students of church-state relations in the U.S.

E. reviews the prevailing constitutional theories about religious liberty in the U.S. and offers her own interpretation, which she calls a "pluralist" resolution. Not everyone will agree that the "pluralist" formula solves the major problems in the conceptualization of religious freedom. And E. seems to concede the point. She admits that she has offered "no bright-line solution to the free exercise conflicts" (146). But she defends her "pluralist" theory by claiming that "the very untidiness of the principle is its strength" (246).

Through no fault of the author parts of this book are already obsolete because of the Supreme Court's decision in June 1997 that declared unconstitutional the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by the Congress in 1993.

Governments in America have a right and sometimes a duty to create or enforce certain moral values. How lenient should the government or its courts be when these values are rejected by groups like the Amish, the Hasidim, or some native American religious groups? E.'s book argues for a pluralist vision that would allow space for individuals or groups who oppose restrictions that the vast majority of citizens accept.

ROBERT F. DRINAN, S.J.

Georgetown University, D.C.