The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom

"Christ tells his followers to do unto others as they would have others do unto them," writes Judge John T. Noonan in the introduction to The Lustre of Our Country, his expansive study of religious liberty and its relationship with American law. "From such sayings a deduction in favor of religious freedom seems obvious; but such sayings have been contained in cultural contexts that made the deduction imperfect." Enter James Madison, whom Noonan argues, found the perfect phraseology to theoretically transcend cultural context and effectively circumvent lawful coercion, ultimately making him "the man primarily responsible for religious freedom becoming the first of our liberties."

Noonan thoroughly and artfully examines how the Madisonian ideal has been tested and assimilated over the years through various court cases, and how the First Amendment has influenced the struggle for religious freedom elsewhere, from revolutionary France to post-WWII Japan and Russia after the cold war. Noonan avoids becoming too dry, writing several chapters in a disparate voice (a brief autobiographical sketch, a letter from the sister of Alexis de Toqueville, and a chapter in the form of a catechism are highlights), illustrating how the notion of religious liberty has imbued every segment of our society. Noonan himself professes that freedom of religion is America's greatest contribution to the world.