Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law (Anderson review) |
Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law (Anderson review)
The Catholic Historical Review
Volume 97, Number 1 (January 2011)
pages 179-180
E-ISSN: 1534-0708, Print ISSN: 0008-8080
R. Bentley Anderson, S. J. Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies
Fordham University
In Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law, Fay Botham, adjunct professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa, focuses on a rarely examined issue in American race matters: the intersection of religion, law, and interracial marriage. To what extent did Protestant or Catholic understanding of marriage influence secular law regarding this institution? In particular, how did the Catholic understanding of marriage as a sacrament and the Protestant notion that marriage was sacred but a state matter influence judicial decision making? Furthermore, what are the proper roles of the church and state in establishing marriage laws in this country?
Divided into six chapters, Almighty God begins with an examination of the 1948 California-based case Perez v. Lippold, which outlawed religious discrimination in marriage. The deciding vote in the state of California’s Supreme Court decision was cast by a Christian Science jurist who agreed with the…
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Tags: Fay Botham, R. Bentley Anderson, The Catholic Historical Review