If the proliferating literature on religion in American life largely overlooks the question of how religious sentiments are represented in Washington, the gap is narrowed by this readable and relevant investigation of the role of national religious lobbies.
Drawing heavily on original inter views and data analysis, this study places religious political activism in its historical context. It surveys the Washington offices of various denominations from the standpoint of strategies, priorities, and representational roles, and concludes by reflecting on the meaning of such lobbies for American politics and religion. The representation theory of Hanna Pitkin provides the theoretical framework for the book, but the reader need not adopt this viewpoint to benefit from reading it.
Such findings as the following will stimulate scholars, students, and laity: that religious lobbies vary considerably in the extent to which they mirror member opinion and the opinion of the broader American population; that the congressional milieu often shapes the religious lobby in the sense of requiring strategic compromises; and that church offices nevertheless can be determinative in legislative battles.
The best example of a religious lobbying success, and the case study of this book, is the legislation of equal access in 1984—a part of the large and seemingly interminable church-state battle over religion in public schools. Hertzke excels in recounting how a coalition of moderate church lobbyists and members of Congress perceived a need and drafted a bill. They survived setbacks and prevailed on the floor of each house, and even hammered out implementing surface events with great expediency.
Thus it came about that high school students could initiate supervised religious activities on school premises during noninstructional hours if the school gave other extracurricular, nonacademic groups access to its classrooms—if in effect the school declared itself a "limited open forum."
Inevitably, books like this are quickly dated. Hertzke stops short of the enactment of the Civil Rights Restoration Act, the loss of the charitable deduction by nonitemizers, and the setbacks equal access has received in at least three federal district courts. And he errs in purporting to grasp Washington realities without reference to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a truly visible and effective part of the mix.
Just the same, Hertzke uses congressional lobbying as a manifestation of the religious politization occurring in America. His work is a valuable contribution because it illustrates the dynamics of this phenomenon.
