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384 JOURNAL OF CH UR CH AND STATEthese fundamentalists managed to build a successful mass movementby targeting evolution as an especially dangerous promoter of thesecular worldview and establishing alliancesmovement theoristswould call them "bridges"w ith a variety of oth er groups. Th ey the nattempted to translate mass support into legislative action throughsustained lobbying camp aigns in ma ny state legislatures. Lien eschsuggests that the hope of antievolutionists that the publicity attendingthe Scopes trial (1925) would generate additional grass-roots supportfor the antievolutionist cause was realized in the short run, but by theend of the 1920s a combination of inept leaders, organizational rival-ries, and declining popular interest had led to a decisive decline in theirlegislative efforts. U nd au nted , a "com m itted core" of antievolutionistsshifted the focus of their efforts to convince textbook publishers andlocal teachers and school boards to avoid discussion of evolution. Then,during the 1960s, buoyed by growing enthusiasm for conservativereligion and politics, antievolutionism once again became a massm ovem ent anci moved back into the courtroom .Many historians will doubtless regard Lienesch's invocation ofsocial m ove m ent theory as an unw elcom e distraction. It is ne verentirely clear whether he is trying to use the theory to shed light on thehistory of antievolutionism or deploying his narrative to demonstratethe m erits of m ovem ent theory. M oreover, it is unlikely that read ers ofthis journal will discover anything startlingly new in Lienesch'sdiscussion of the history of either the Scopes trial, where the church-state relationship seemed to be relatively unimportant to all of thelitigants, or more recent court cases dealing with ' creation science" andIntelligent Design, in which the Establishment Clause has held centerstage. Ne verthe less, those interes ted in the ongoing history of theevolutionary controversy will find themselves in Lienesch's debt for alively and insightful discussion of the changing fortunes of theantievolutionist movement during the course of the last century.

J O N H . R O B E R T SB O S T O N U N I V E R S I T YB O S T O N , M A S S A C U S H E T T S

The Battle over School Prayer: /f o w Eng el v. Vitale Changed America.By Bruce Dierenfield. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.240 pp . $35.00.

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BOOK REVIEWS 385Vitale struck down state m anda ted public school prayer. Th e rulingangered countless conservative Christians, anci precipitated theeventual rise of a new potent political block known as tne ChristianRight.In The Rattle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale ChangedAmerica, historian Bruce Diereniield charts the origins and cones-que nces of that mom entous case. H e argues that the prayer contro-versy is significant for several reasons: (1) it shows tne power thatProtestants have long held over American political and educationalinstitutions; (2) prayer represents an issue tnat, unlike most contro-versies in American nistory, the political system did not resolve quickly;and (3) the controversy inaugurated a rameal new jurisprudence whereschools "that had b ee n founded to instill religious truth s we re n o w . . .to be inoculated from religious instruction and worship altogether" (p.4). After tracing the widespread practice of school prayer during thenation's early history, Dierenfield spends the bulk of the book on thespecific origins and evolution of the Engel case. And it is in thos echapters that he makes his greatest scholarly contributions. M uch ofhis analysis is based on interviews with all of the major figures in thecase, adding a personal dimension to his story (including powerfulexamples of^the narassment that many of the plaintiffs endured in theyears surrounding the case) that is missing in other accounts of theprayer controversy. H e also fleshes out the broad er im portanc e forchurch-state conflicts of the socio-economic transformations that theUn ited States wen t throug h after W W II. O the r scholars have notedthat post-WWII affluence, Cold War fears, and a 1950s obsession withjuvenile delinquency, led to a retrenchment of traditional Americanvalues including increased church attendance, and in the case of NewYork state, a prayer (which became the basis for the Engel case)composed by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish religious officials, to berecited in public schools. But Dierenfield also points out that thepostwar economic prosperity led many Jews to join their gentilecoun terparts in leaving the cities and moving to the subu rbs. Prior toW W II, Jew s, as a religious m inority, hacT previously pu t up littleresistance to the use of Christian or even non-denominational prayersin schools. Dierenfield maintains that Jews, em bold ene d by their ne weconomic standing in postwar America, not only moved to the suburbsbut immediately chafienged what they saw were affronts to theirreligious freedom. Th e five principle plaintiffs in the Engel ca.se wereall of Jewish ancestry, thougn by the time of the case three of them

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386 JOURNAL OF CH UR CH AND STATEresu lted in a m ore secularized pub lic squ are. But his final ch ap ter onthe battles over school prayer since Engel represents the book'sweakest point. W hile ably discussing the prom inen t school praye rcases of tne 1980s through the early 2000s, Dierenfield largely glossesover the various congressional battles waged for proposed schoolprayer constitutional amendments, and He offers no substantialexplana tion as to why tho se efforts failed. Clea rly Dierenfield, and theseries through which this book is published by tne University Press ofKansas, is mo re in teres ted in the oro ad er legal trajectory of this casethan its full political implications. Nevertheless, Dierenfield adds muchto our understanding ofthe Engel case, and the book's straightforwardargument and writing style should find a welcome audience amongscholars and stud ents of constitutional history and th e role of religion inmodem America.

A A R O N L . H A B E R M A NU N I V ER S IT Y O F N O R T H E R N C O L O R A D O

C R E E L E Y , C O L O R A D O

Patriots, Pohtics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing, By Stuart A.Wright. New York: Cam bridge University Press. 2007. np .Stuart A. Wright's Patriots, Politics, and the Oklaho ma CityBombing i? , a stellar study ofthe confluence of factors leading up to theOklahoma City bombing. Wright makes it clear that this bombing wasnot a one man showthe work of Timothy McVeigh. Wright sketchesout the context and precipitating events, internationally (the Cold Warideology of anticommunism) and domestic factors, which include the

governmental regulation of guns; the extension of federal war on drugs;the militarization of the police force, and the economic disruptions tosmall family farms in the 1980s. All of these variables and events actedas opportunity and threat that mobilized an informal network ofpatriots, composed of various religious associations (Christian identitygroups) and insurgent-type groups (Posse Comitatus) using marshal-metaphors of war against the federal governmenta war to protect theAm erican constitution and the right to bear arm s.Wright uses and transforms social movement theorythe

attribution of opportunities or threats, social appropriation of sites formobilization, and discursive framingto descrioe this insurgent

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