Deep Conviction

March 25, 2019
Collis (the novel At Any Cost), an attorney who works on religious liberty cases, profiles four Americans whose legal cases reveal “just how crucial true religious liberty is” in his slapdash nonfiction debut. For each profile, Collis digs into how his subjects reveal the complexities of ensuring individual religious liberty in a nation of increasingly diverse beliefs: Anthony Kohlmann, an early-19th-century priest, fought for the sanctity of the confessional; Roy Torcaso, an atheist, resisted taking an oath affirming the existence of God (formerly a requirement to work for the Massachusetts government) during the Cold War; Al Smith, a Klamath man, fought for the legal right to perform a religious practice that required peyote; and Jack Philips, a baker whose refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding took him all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won his case. Despite claims of the “universality” of these cases, Collis carefully avoids historical cases in which the exercise of one person’s religious liberty infringes on the liberty of another person; instead, he focuses on those in which the state alone infringes on personal liberties, for instance, setting up his defense of Philips as a victim of a new oppressive political majority he calls the LGBT Left. While Collis goes into great detail addressing a topic foundational to American democracy, he sells his readers short by not fully grappling with examples that represent the range of complexity in America’s long history of wrestling with religious freedom.

June 1, 2019

Collis (law, Univ. of Denver) selects four very different case studies from American history to illustrate the challenges of protecting religious freedom. The author begins in 1812 with a Catholic priest in New York who is asked to reveal information from a private confession. In 1959, an atheist in Maryland won a legal battle to become a notary without having to declare a belief in God. A more complex case was heard in 1990 involving a member of the Klamath tribe and his appeal to freely practice his beliefs (Oregon v. Smith). The Supreme Court held that the state could prohibit certain religious practices as long as it wasn't targeting any specific religion. The final case outlined is the recent and highly publicized Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Court, in a 7-2 vote, decided that the Commission's hostility to religion invalidated the lower court's ruling. Collis is an effective storyteller, despite frequent flourishes and embellishments in his narrative, which benefits from extensive research and generous use of court transcripts and interviews. VERDICT Readers interested in religious liberty will find this work to be an accessible exploration of a much-disputed area of constitutional law.--Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019
Religious freedom is a pillar of the First Amendment of the Constitution, and yet it is a right that is often over-simplified, misconstrued, and contested. Collis, a professor of law and practicing lawyer specializing in religious liberty, tackles this difficult topic through four different and instructive examples from different eras in American history. The defendants in these cases include a Catholic priest in 1813, an atheist in 1959, a devout Native American in 1989, and a Christian baker in 2017. While the situations are varied, each reveals the role that power plays in applying the law and that the nature and dynamics of social mores and political clout change over time. Collis does a superb job of presenting these cases clearly and thoroughly and without strong bias, focusing on the letter of the law and its implications. While legalese is not completely absent, this is truly an accessible and fascinating narrative for all readers interested in how diverse battles over First Amendment rights and religious freedom have shaped people's lives and the nation at large.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)