ABSTRACT
In the early twenty-first century, talk of God is instead ubiquitous in the United States (US). But Cox wrote at a time when the advances of the modern African-American civil rights movement and related liberation movements for other non-white peoples, cultural minorities and women had already helped to foster judicial invalidations of major symbols of the longstanding primacy of Protestant Christianity in American life. In the last quarter century, Christian conservatives have won important changes in prevailing constitutional doctrines governing state/church and, more broadly, state/society relations; but the changes have been far less than many in the Christian Right have wished. Although the American founders created the first national state in history without an established church, most Americans have always professed religions, and national, state and local governments have provided many types of accommodation and assistance to religiously affiliated schools, hospitals, child welfare and other social service agencies through much of US history.
