ABSTRACT
Alexis de Tocqueville's treatise on America had the great virtue of distinguishing between the novelty and the history of the country. For Tocqueville, the realist, the Dionysiac therapies of evangelism were believed destructive to the rational exercise of freedom. Love and reverence were not at the core of the American arguments for freedom of worship. The Brycean motives for religious freedom were, therefore, somewhat mingled in the American settlement, though the political was surely uppermost. This chapter analyzes Tocqueville's theory of freedom and control in a democratic society and examined some of the evidence that he elicited from the American experience to support it. In Tocqueville's view, "society" was the arena of liberty, and in the freest of societies religion held sway both as an inner control and as a moderating force in politics. The abstention of the State from interference of faith and worship may be advocated on two principles, which may be called the political and the religious.
