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Book Review: The Secular State under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America

Where the empirical side of Fox’s work is concerned, although cross-national projects are usually hard to double check, in particular when considering the myriad of variables that Fox and his teams are coding, overall trends discussed through the book seem to be plausible, along with country level examples (as the very detailed examples of Argentina, Sweden, and many former Soviet countries suggest). Both, overall trends and country examples, reinforce the idea that the information Fox refers to is highly reliable. A future research avenue would refer to the study of societal attitudes at the national level, using Grim and Finke’s dataset, and survey data using hierarchical models. There are however some specific cases in which classifications and comments offered through the book would be debatable, such as placing Mexico and Uruguay in the same category of separationism, when Uruguay grants property-tax exemption to religions, whereas Mexico does not (Hagopian 2009: 34). Other examples refer to the anecdotal evidence concerning state ownership of Mexico’s church buildings, perhaps suggesting that maintenance is funded by the state, when in fact, this is not the case. One more issue worth mentioning is the lack of discussion regarding the US policy of faith-based initiatives, when analyzing the idea of accommodation. Nevertheless, these points are rather minor when considering the monumental work Fox accomplishes. This book, clearly oriented to the ‘center of gravity’ that the national level offers, also includes some local and regional references, such as Nigeria’s uneven adoption of the no official religion constitutional clause at the regional level (p. 204); restrictions on religious clothing in Germany, Belgium and Swiss subnational units; and Mexico’s discrimination of evangelicals regarding burials in several indigenous communities (p. 143). However, it would be important to explore religion policies at the subnational level, going beyond the national mean. In order to be fair, it is noteworthy to remark that Fox includes one subnational measure in his national level dataset: restrictions on proselytizing (p. 149). Besides already commented minor shortcomings, overall, Fox’s book and dataset offer a valuable resource for the quantitative study of religion and politics, provoking new questions at the national, and at the subnational level.