In this fascinating cultural history of interracial marriage and
its legal regulation in the United States, Fay Botham argues that
religion--specifically, Protestant and Catholic beliefs about
marriage and race--had a significant effect on legal decisions
concerning miscegenation and marriage in the century following the
Civil War. She contends that the white southern Protestant notion
that God "dispersed" the races and the American Catholic emphasis
on human unity and common origins point to ways that religion
influenced the course of litigation and illuminate the religious
bases for Christian racist and antiracist movements.