A. Hollis-Brusky and J. C. Wilson. "Separate But Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture" (Oxford UP, 2020)
How do we understand the nuances of efforts by Christian conservatives to affect American law \u2013 and evaluate their success? What lessons do they hold for other social movements? Dr.\xa0Amanda Hollis-Brusky, associate professor of politics at Pomona College and Dr.\xa0Joshua C. Wilson, professor of Political Science at the University of Denver join the podcast to discuss\xa0Separate But Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture\xa0(Oxford UP, 2020)\nThe book evaluates whether activists pushing for lawyers and judges with a Christian Worldview have been able to achieve their goals and transform American legal culture. This impressive book contributes to our general understanding of social movements, legal mobilization, and constitutional development \u2013 but also the specifics of how the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (CCLM) has attempted to transform American law from secular and liberal to Christian and natural. While many people know of The Federalist Society\u2019s attempts to influence scholarship, they may be less familiar with the push to create separate law schools and legal institutions that teach from a Christian worldview such as Regent University Law School, Liberty University Law School, and Ave Maria School of Law. This thoughtfully written and well-researched book uses a modified version of Support Structure Theory and extensive data collected by the authors to interrogate why the New Christian Right rejected the lower-cost, lower risk infiltration approach to support structure building in favor of \u201ca mix of\xa0parallel alternative\xa0and\xa0supplemental\xa0approaches.\u201d The book includes a helpful model (the Support Structure Pyramid) for conceptualizing litigation-based movement support structures, institutions, and their relationship to legal change. The podcast includes a conversation about the evolution of that particular conception (and what the authors might change). Their analysis of different forms of capital (human, social, cultural, and intellectual) allows Hollis-Brusky and Wilson to assess the actual and potential capital outputs of each institution and the extent to which the Christian Conservative Legal Movement achieved their goals. The Christian Right has struggled to influence the legal and political mainstream but it has succeeded in creating a space of resistance to unify and connect those who seek to challenge \u201ca dominant legal culture\u201d seen as \u201cincorrigibly liberal.\u201d In the podcast, the authors discuss how they brought together Hollis-Brusky\u2019s scholarship on the Federalist Society (Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution\xa0(Oxford, 2019) and Wilson\u2019s earlier research on\xa0The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, and American\u2019s Culture Wars\xa0(Stanford, 2013) to create this nuanced, collaborative book.\nSusan Liebell\xa0is an associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph\u2019s University in Philadelphia.\xa0Why Diehard Originalists Aren\u2019t Really Originalists\xa0recently appeared in the Washington Post\u2019s Monkey Cage and\xa0\u201cRetreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground\u201d was published in the\xa0Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at\xa0sliebell@sju.edu\xa0or tweet to\xa0@SusanLiebell.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law