| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John T. Noonan, Jr.. The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. 436. $35.00.

This book represents John T. Noonan, Jr.'s mature reflection on American church-state relations. Noonan is a longtime legal scholar and Reagan-appointed appeals court judge who has written widely on constitutional issues, most having to do with some aspect of religion, law, or politics. The style and approach Noonan takes in this book are varied, to say the least. Some chapters are historical interpretation and reflection, while others are pure literary invention. But even the latter are very well informed historically. 1

It is in the area of literary invention that Noonan shows real flair as a creative author. Chapter four, "The Foremost of Our Political Institutions," is billed as "Excerpts from the unpublished account of her observations in America in 1835 by Angelique de Toqueville, the keen-eyed younger sister of the famous Alexis" (p. 95). I must confess to being momentarily embarrassed by my ignorance of the existence of Toqueville's very talented sister. Of course, there was no such sister, or if there were, she never wrote this chapter. Rather, Noonan invented the whole essay to show that when Toqueville opined that religion in America "never mixes directly in the government of the society," he really was ignoring all sorts of ways in which religion did, in fact, so mix. . . .

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