Religion and the State Europe and North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The historiography of church-state relations in America and Europe remains a live cultural, religious, and political issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Even more, current political invocations of history illuminate the need for a thoroughly trans-Atlantic approach to the history of church-state relations in the modern West. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the formative period for modern church-states relations we see vividly the complex interrelationship of developments from England, France, and America. Ever since, historians and political figures have compared the European and American efforts to discern the proper role of religion in government and government in religion. This work is an effort to illuminate that role or at the very least to bring to light the innumerable ways in which such roles were formed.

Josh B. Stein is professor of history at Roger Williams University, where he has taught since 1969. His most recent book is Commentary on the Constitution from Plato to Rousseau. Sargon G. Donabed is assistant professor of history at Roger Williams University, where he teaches Middle Eastern and religious studies. He is the coeditor of The Assyrian Heritage: Threads of Continuity and Influence.