Liberalism and Catholicism are two of the most important forces shaping the contemporary political culture of the United States. This book explores what is at stake as they encounter each other in new contexts today and what a fresh conversation between them promises for the future of American public life. It is based on the conviction that both traditions continue to have much to learn from each other and that both would contribute more constructively to the resolution of the problems facing the nation if they were to do so.

This book examines the famous Jefferson document that foreshadowed the Constitution's guarantee of religious liberty, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute and shepherded it through a decade-long struggle for adoption. The statute reflects two key Revolutionary principles: absolute freedom of religious conscience and the separation of church and state.

Steeples and Stacks is an examination of the religion-based community group that formed in Youngstown, Ohio in 1977 in opposition to the proposed shutdown of a portion of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube's steel works, one of the most dramatic of the plant closings that have come to symbolize American deindustrialization. Church leaders and steel workers banded together to form a powerful ecumenical political coalition, established links with Washington lobbyists, and proposed to buy the plant and run it as a community industry. Though the proposal ultimately failed, the story of the coalition...