This book reveals how taken-for-granted political structures have shaped the fate of religion in Australian and American public life.

List of figures and tables; Acknowledgments; List of acronyms; Introduction; 1. Politics, institutions, and secularization; Part I. Forging the Nineteenth-Century Settlement, 1800¿80: 2. State-building and secularization in comparative perspective; Part II. The Nineteenth-Century Settlement in Transition, 1880¿1945: Preface to Part II; 3. Slow secularization in the permeable American state; 4. Settlement stability in the insulated Australian state; Part III. Forging the Twentieth-Century Settlement, 1945¿2000: Preface to Part III; 5. Secularization and the courts in postwar America; 6. Desecularization and electoral institutions in postwar Australia; Part IV. Implications: 7. Conclusion; Epilogue. Toward a twenty-first century settlement?; Index.