| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Bonds of Affection: Civic Charity and the Making of America—Winthrop, Jefferson, and Lincoln. By Matthew S. Holland. (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2007. xii, 321 pp. Paper, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-58901-183-0.)
Matthew S. Holland's book Bonds of Affection is a historical argument with what the author takes to be a secularization of American history. Using certain speeches of John Winthrop, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, Holland notes that "each leader consciously worked to channel some understanding of Christian love—what the New Testament calls 'charity'—into a central civic, rather than strictly religious, virtue" (p. 5). The difficulty with the book is both the job Holland does in proving his argument and then determining what (if proven) his argument would suggest.	1
When reviewing and deconstructing Winthrop's work, particularly his famous "A Model of Christian Charity" speech in 1630, Holland is on firm ground in discussing a thoroughly Christian interpretation of political life that rhetorically melds the duties of a Christian subject and a seventeenth-century Puritan citizen. There is one problem in these chapters, however: since theocracy is no longer popular, Holland places much emphasis on the assertion that Winthrop was not the "bad" Puritan leader and that the Puritans have a bit of a bad name anyway.	. . .

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