In the run-up to the 1994 elections, Democratic spokesmen frequently warned of the sinister influence of the “Christian right” on the Republican party. But warnings about an impending theocratic tyranny did not make much impression on the voters. Such alarums seem to have been quietly dropped by professional politicians. The academy works at a slower pace, however, and professors are less nimble in shifting their direction of attack. Or perhaps it is the vanity of professors that leads them to think that failed appeals just need a bit more intellectual grounding to make their mark.

At any rate, Isaac Kramnick, professor of political theory, and Laurence Moore, professor of American history, try to gain some new traction in The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (WW Norton, 224 pages, $ 22). They employ the term “religious correctness,” as they explain, ” to turn the tables on those who imagine that the only danger to our free institutions lies in something they, pejoratively, call political correctness.” Take that!