ABSTRACT
Currents of thought about the possibility of and prospects for good, democratic government and public-spirited citizenship showed increasing signs of revival as the twentieth century turned. The essential foundation of good government in a constitutional republic was a citizenry and a leadership attuned to convictions of conscience and pursuit of the public good. The ideal of the merely skilled and efficient public administrator and the assumption regarding the rational-choosing voter have worked in the same direction: they have tended to nourish a procedural republic of group pressure, legislative conflict, and "minimal" citizenship. The issue of religion's place in American public life and especially its possible place in nourishing public-spirited citizenship, as well as the question of state support, either of parochial schools directly or of religious instruction within the public school system, received wide attention in three cases following World War II.
