| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law. By Shawn Francis Peters. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. x, 262 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-530635-4.)

Shawn Francis Peters has written a concise book on a compelling topic: the legal prosecutions of parents whose reliance solely on religious healing resulted in the deaths of their children. The author examines a substantial number of cases that have come before the courts in the last century and a half, beginning with the Peculiar People, a sect in mid-nineteenth-century England, and ending with the 2004 conviction of a Milwaukee minister who suffocated a boy during a church ritual intended to rid him of autism. While differing in time, place, and specific circumstances, the cases raise issues of fundamental individual rights that have vexed the courts, state legislatures, and the public. At center stage is a question: Is the state's primary duty to protect the religious liberty of parents or to safeguard the welfare of their children? As Peters's careful exploration makes clear, the answers are often painstakingly arrived at, the precedents set in one case are not easily applicable to others that follow, and, consequently, the case law remains confusing.

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