MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR, the angry atheist, may well have more religious fervor than anyone since Cotton Mather. Her fervor is aimed at making sure that reports of God's death are not exaggerated. Spouting the Constitution as Scripture, she has forced the Supreme Court to ban compulsory public-school prayers, threatened the tax exemption on church property, and is currently protesting the astronauts' moonside recitation of Genesis last Christmas Eve. "I'm no eccentric," she said recently. "I'm the leader of a valid movement."
The denial was not convincing, but it raises the question of what an...