REVIEW ESSAY R ELIGIOUS FR EEDOM IN THE DOCK Kenneth L. Grasso The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom by Steven D. Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) The Twilight of the American Enlightenment by George M. Marsden (New York: Basic Books, 2014) T he past several decades have witnessed a far-reaching transformation of American public life. We have witnessed the disintegration of the Judeo-Christian religious and moral consensus on which our society has historically traded and the ascendancy of a new ethic of human autonomy rooted in the radical Enlightenment. The result has been the bitter and seemingly endless culture war we see today. The revisionist history contained in the two books under review here illuminates some of the developments in American political culture that set this transformation in motion. Steven D. Smith's The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom challenges the standard accounts of the origins and nature of American religious Kenneth L. Grasso is professor of political science at Texas State University and second vice president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He has edited several books, including Theology and Public Philosophy: Four Conversations (coedited with Cecilia Castillo). 83