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110 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Let every person know that we will not interfere with any person's particular religious profession!" *, March 14, 2008
As someone who, for the last quarter century, has researched and written about religious sensibilities in early America, I'm always astonished at the seemingly endless battle between those who insist that the Founding Fathers were orthodox Christians who founded a Christian nation (e.g., Tim LaHaye's Faith of Our Founding Fathers) and those who just as strenuously insist that the Founding Fathers were all Enlightenment secularists who loathed religion (e.g., Isaac Kramnick's The Godless Constitution). Although I think that there's more truth in the second than the first position, both of them are distortions, attempts to squeeze complex men and a complicated religious ethos into neat, unproblematic boxes.
It's refreshing that Steven Waldman refuses to compartmentalize in this way. His Founding Faith is a finessed treatment of the various influences, religious, military, pragmatic, and political, that coalesced to form the legal and cultural traditions of church-state separation. For Waldman, diminuitive "radically pluralistic" Madison is the real hero of the story who "deserves the greatest thanks" (p. 200). But Waldman reminds readers that Baptists such as Isaac Backus and John Leland were some of the most ardent champions of separation (unlike many of their 20th and 21th century descendants); that Thomas Jefferson, villified both during his own lifetime and afterwards as an atheist, in fact greatly admired what he took to be the ethics of Jesus; and that the first Great Awakening was a potent force in encouraging political revolution and independence. Waldman's point is that simplistic divisions of players into religious or nonreligious camps, as well as simplistically linear lines of causation when mapping the founding of the nation and the crafting of the separation policy, just don't have much explanatory value--even though they may be ideologically appealing.
I don't fully agree with everything that Waldman claims. I think, for example, that the case for the Founding Fathers being more deistic than anything else is stronger than he allows, primarily because I see 18th century deism as more fluid and less defined than he does. I'm also more ambivalent about the political influence of the Great Awakening than he is. But Waldman's treatment is pleasingly written, informative, well-researched and, given the current tiresome but loud cultural wars, remarkably timely. The book's final chapter, "They Were Right," focuses on the contemporary culture war by examining and debunking a series of "liberal," "conservative," and "common" fallacies about the Founding Fathers and religion. The discussions throughout the book of Madison's several-yeared campaign (including the sometimes torturous Constitutional debate) to establish religious liberty are especially good.
All in all, highly recommended.
_______
* Representative Elia Boudinot (New Jersey), in a 1789 debate in the House of Representatives on religious freedom and law. Quoted by Waldman on p. 150
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent overview, May 4, 2008
Highly useful book on the religion of the Founding Fathers, and their intent concerning religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Founding Faith is a fair and balanced book, puncturing liberal and conservative myths about the topic with equal cheer, and more importantly, placing the discussion squarely within the historical context of what the Founders were doing and what it was possible for them to accomplish.
So were the colonies Christian? Yes, of course, and more, predominantly Protestant with considerable anti-Catholic bias. Most colonies did have an established church, mostly Anglican or Congregationalist, yet, after the revivalism of the Great Awakening period in the mid-1700s, the colonies were more religiously diverse than ever. The fear that the British Crown would force all the colonists to be Anglican was a factor in the Revolution.
Some of the factors leading the young nation into religious tolerance were pragmatic. George Washington, for example, was trying to forge a unified fighting force out of a religiously diverse group of soldiers. He had to quell the level of anti-Catholicism because he was trying to persuade the French Catholics in Canada to join in the Revolution.
Were the Founders Deists? No, they weren't, as even Jefferson and Franklin acknowledged the hand of Providence in the affairs of men. But neither were the five Founding Fathers that Waldman profiles orthodox Christians. Franklin flirted with a variety of religions, including Deism (the philosophy that God created the Universe like a watchmaker creates a watch, and then retreated from participation in his creation), but he also was was interested in the Great Awakening and thought the influence of Christianity upon the morals of people was a good one. Adams was more likely than the others to support government involvement in religion, but he moved more towards Unitarianism the older he got and rejected much of orthodox Christianity, thinking that the much that was good in it had been corrupted, but that its founding principles were still the best. Jefferson was similar but more so. Like Adams, he despised the influence of clerics throughout history. He rejected the divinity of Jesus and the miracles, but was so enthralled by the moral teachings of Jesus he twice cut apart Bibles and pasted the parts he thought uncorrupt into new documents and apparently read them often. Washington was the most silent about religion, rarely attended church, yet often used the religious rhetoric of his day. He did, though, speak of religious equality (for Jews specifically) . Most important of all was James Madison, who was the primary writer of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Madison did not leave behind a clear record of his religious views, but from what there is, he seems to have been more orthodox than the others. He was, however, of all of them, the most devoted to the idea of religious toleration. One of the factors that shaped this was his knowledge of the Baptist preachers in Virginia who were often jailed and beaten, and who had to go through lots of hoops to even be able to perform marriages. Madison believed that religious support for one church over others was BAD FOR RELIGION, as well as the state, that it oppressed some religions while making the dominant one lazy. He also thought it a weak faith than needed government support, as well as believing it was bad to force anyone to profess and be taxed to support a religion in which they did not believe. The original language of what is now the First Amendment refers to the "rights of conscience", an even broader formulation than what is in the current amendment.
One of the important historical points that Waldman made is that Madison was a politician, who had to be able to get the votes of other Congressmen to get the Bill of Rights passed. Madison did not get everything he wanted, and what was passed enabled those who wanted some religion in politics to interpret the result their way, as well as those who wanted a strict separation to interpret it their way. Most importantly, Madison did not get a law that applied the Bill of Rights to the states. This meant, for example, that states were perfectly free to establish churches, which most did, though they gradually disappeared during the first half of the nineteenth century. It wasn't until the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War that the Bill of Rights did apply to the states.
Waldman's most important point, perhaps, is that many religious people did then and do now support religious toleration. "He [Madison] and his Baptist allies would be mystified by the assumption that being pro-separation means being anti-God." (p. 201). It seems no coincidence that the United Sates is one of the most religiously free, religiously diverse, and religiously flourishing nations on earth.
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30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary--Elegant in Concise Inisights and a Holistic Appraisal, March 18, 2008
This is a very special book. The author has done an utterly superb job of original research and elegant concise representation of the nuances in belief, practice, and circumstances with respect to the matter of religion as confronted by the Founding Fathers, and especially Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
We learn early on that freedom of religion was originally designed to apply only at the federal level--only later, when the North pushed through the Fourteenth amendment, did this get grandfathered upon the states.
We learn throughout the book that the original evangelicals wanted separation of the church and state, and made common cause with the rationalists, both groups believing that individual liberty and freedom of personal conscience were the core values.
Midway through the book we are confronted by the author with the reality that the diversity of faiths existent today in the USA render meaningless and unachievable any thought of America being a Christian or even a Protestant nation--pluralism rules.
Religion was appreciated by the Founding Fathers for its generally good impact on civic morals. George Washington especially, in the Continental Army, demanded religious tolerance, authorized chaplains, encouraged officers and men to attend religious services, and generally communicated a sense that the American Revolution was a "holy war" with God standing firmly with the colonies against England and the Church of England.
The author provides concise but no less shocking accounts of the early religious wars in America, with torture and execution and jail being imposed on Quakers and Baptists, Protestants against Jews and Catholics.
We learn that both Jefferson and Franklin doubted divinity but respected Jesus for his moral code.
Adams considered Catholics the "whore of Babylon" and this resonates with more than one modern US evangelical who has endorsed John McCain.
We larn that the Great Awakening and the revivals spawned a general practice of questioning authority.
The author draws a clear connection between political liberty and religious freedom--the two were intertwined from the beginning of the revolutionary impulse.
George Washington was spiritual but not theological.
There are many gifted turns of phrase throughout the book. One that stayed with me: Jefferson saw God not as devine, but as a "brilliant wise reformer offering a benevolent code of morals."
Madison held a dispassionate faith in contrast to the others. He also felt that one should err on the side of separation.
From page 192 the author lists and discuonts four liberal and four conservative falacies. Buy the book.
The conclusion is as elegant as the rest of the book: Separation is the root condition for nurturing the fullest possible religious diversity and vitality.
I put this book down with an intellectual, spiritual, and civic "WOW" in mind. Truly an extraordinary work, a very important work, a lovely piece of scholarship that is meaningful to every American and every immigrant would would be an American citizen.
Other books that are faith-related that I recommend:
God's Politics LP
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik
The Complete Conversations with God (Boxed Set)
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors
DVDs I recommend:
Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition)
Bonhoeffer
Tibet - Cry of the Snow Lion
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