FORUM: Mark deWolfe Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness Introduction

Extract

Mark deWolfe Howe's classic, The Garden and the Wilderness: Religion and Government in American Constitutional History, was published in 1965. Notwithstanding the many subsequent judicial and scholarly developments in First Amendment religion clause jurisprudence, this slim volume remains among the best efforts to consider seriously the interrelated histories of law and religion in the United States. Beautifully written and economical in its expression, Howe's book is often cited but less often carefully read. Unlike many who write about the religion clauses, Howe understood the deeply contingent nature of the dependence of religion and law one upon the other.