ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the kinds of tension between the religiously plural society coming into existence and the older paradigms of Church-State relations—especially republican Protestantism but also continental Roman Catholicism—which did not readily comprehend either the situation of post-Civil War America or the legacy of the Constitutional epoch. While the evangelical forces had labored to realize their “true American Union of Church and State,” vast changes had been taking place within American society. Some American Roman Catholics became such partisans of the American circumstances that their orthodoxy was suspect in Europe. The direct and immediate issue before the American people is not the general question of Church and State, but the specific question of Bible reading and religious instruction and worship in our public schools. Chief among these anti-Catholic secret orders is the American Protective Association, better known by its initials.
