| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

One Nation under Law: America's Early National Struggles to Separate Church and State. By Mark Douglas McGarvie. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004. xii, 256 pp. $38.00, ISBN 0-87580-333-4.)

The real constitutional source of American law on the relationship between church and state, claims Mark Douglas McGarvie in this insightful book, is not the First Amendment, but the contract clause in Article I, Section 10. McGarvie, a specialist in law as well as American history, presents a fresh and well-documented argument based on both a comprehensive investigation of contract law and a thoughtful discussion of the variant ideologies of republicanism. In a brief conclusion that alludes ever so gently to contemporary debates on this sensitive matter, McGarvie refutes the idea that the Founders did not contemplate the separation of church and state. "While the Constitution did not directly separate church and state," he says, "it did provide the ideological and legal structure that made separation not only possible but inevitable" (p. 190).

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