Book Review: Separating Church and State

Separating Church and State: How the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union Led the Nation in Religious Liberty by Bruce J. Dierenfield

By George Francis Kane

Separating Church and State covers the history of the early years of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. It is the definitive history of church-state legal struggles in Minnesota from the MCLU’s founding in the early 1950s through the 1980s, and will certainly be of intense interest to members of Minnesota Atheists. The author, Bruce J. Dierenfield, is a history professor, a long-time member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Western New York chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

The source of most church-state struggles for the MCLU in its early years was the public schools, where Christians sought maximum access to the vulnerable student population. The MCLU fought battles over bible distribution in the schools, classroom prayers, Baccalaureate and graduation prayer ceremonies, Christmas celebrations, religious music and other intrusions of religion into Minnesota’s public schools. Other church-state struggles covered in the book included public funding of the activities of churches and related groups, including the Fort Snelling Chapel, and government attacks upon the rights of religious minorities such as cults and Native Americans.

Bruce Dierenfield is an excellent storyteller, although some chapters ended without satisfying resolutions. He weaves each chapter with a stunning level of detail culled from contemporaneous news coverage, MCLU records and the notes of the staff.

Many of the legal struggles were driven by MCLU staff such as Randall Tigue and Bob Bruno, but the central character of the book is Matthew Stark, long-time President of the MCLU and Executive Director. One chapter is devoted to Stark’s biography.

The following quote from Matt Stark conveys a message that is important for all atheists and secularists: Being a supporter of the separation of church and state requires a wider focus than the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Fundamentally censorship is a church-state issue. Reproductive freedom is essentially a church-state issue. Gay rights is a church-state issue. All of those battles essentially involve government attempting to voice somebody’s religious beliefs on the rest of the population, and so I think any affiliate that wants to be vigilant on issues of gay rights, reproductive freedom, and censorship has got to be active in church-state. It’s the liaison between church and state that threatens civil liberties in all of these other areas.
—Matt Stark, 1996

This book can be ordered directly from Itasca Books.