Freethinkers have worked tirelessly to keep government out of religion and religion out of government. While many conservatives have denied or played down this nation's secularist tradition, in which people like Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll have played prominent roles, Susan Jacoby is working hard to revive it. And Aparajita Nanda has edited a new anthology about the experience of Blacks in, and in relation to, California.

Is secularism the modernizing, progressive answer to stuck-in-the-past religion? Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini call into question the secularism-religion binary; they contend that a kind of Christian secularism dominates US politics. They also see gender and sexuality as central to the development of both the neoliberal agenda and what they call Barack Obama's Neo-New Deal.