Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers

McCrary (religious studies, Arizona State Univ.) places the thorny concepts of American secularism, sincerely held religious beliefs, and religious freedom under a microscope. Setting the tone with stories that explore the fine line between new religious movements and fraud, McCrary works through a series of examples from U.S. legal history, examining court interpretations about what counts as religious practice and belief. The results are head-spinning and often bizarre, and the stakes of the cases are high, as they set the bar for what rights Americans are and aren’t guaranteed under the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, which prohibits government interference with religious belief, and within some limits, religious practice, something’s that has been referenced in disputes about wedding services for same-sex couples and religious exemptions for the COVID vaccine. The best chapters offer in-depth analysis of major court cases, especially when draftees sought religious exemptions from military service. Though the book’s dense writing sometimes gets bogged down in details and loses the narrative hook, the information is valuable and thought-provoking.