God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields

An in-depth look at five recent landmark court battles over the separation of church and state

Over the past two decades, federal courts have become contentious battlefields in AmericaÂ's growing religious wars. Since 1989, five momentous court cases have divided communities—and the nation. Peter Irons, a noted constitutional scholar, lawyer, and author of the bestselling May It Please the Court, delivers a compelling narrative accompanied by first-person accounts from both sides of the fight in these historic cases.

In 1989, residents of San Diego challenged a forty-three-foot-high cross in the center of a public park; 1995 brought a dispute in a Texas town over the recital of prayers at high school football games; in rural Kentucky in 1999, a lawsuit was filed against displaying the Ten Commandments in county courthouses; in 2000, a California parent challenged the words “under God” in his daughterÂ's daily Pledge of Allegiance. And, finally, in 2004, parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, challenged the school boardÂ's requirement that “intelligent design” be taught as an alternative to DarwinÂ's theory of evolution. IronsÂ's detailed, in-depth investigation of each of these trials is followed by interviews with the people involved to provide a complete picture of the ongoing wars for “the soul of America.”