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Reviews
| Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, by Steven Waldman. New York: Random House, 2008. 277 pages. $26.00, cloth.
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| This important work is most suitable for classroom use in American history surveys and in specialized courses in Constitutional history. Founding Faith, complete with ample citations and comprehensive bibliography, addresses why the current-day culture wars have distorted the dramatic history of how Americans came to worship freely. According to its author Steve Waldman, the Founding Fathers did not argue for a Christian America or a secular America. The basic premise of this work is that the "Founding Faith" was "not Christianity, and it was not secularism. It was religious liberty—a revolutionary formula for promoting faith by leaving it alone" (p. xvi). The Founders' objective was to promote religious freedom, not religion. |
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Throughout the narrative, Waldman dispels some notable myths. First, America was not settled as a bastion for religious freedom. Second, the Founding Fathers rebelled against religious tyranny among their colonial neighbors as much as they condemned what took place in Europe at that time. Third, few of the Founders were actually Deists (believers that God created the universe but was no longer involved after that point). Fourth, that the Founders were devout Christians is questionable; most disliked organized Christianity. Fifth, eighteenth-century evangelicals were responsible for promoting separation of church and state in contrast to their present-day position. Sixth, one of the factors for fighting the American Revolution was religion. And seventh, the view that the First Amendment was designed to separate church and state universally is incorrect: the Founders intended it to apply to the federal government, not local governments. |
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The principal figures in this narrative are Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Waldman's hero, James Madison. In Waldman's estimation, Ben Franklin acted as a bridge between the generation of the early eighteenth century and that of the Revolutionary era. Forging a "personal hybrid between the morality-focused Puritan theology of his youth and the reason-based Enlightenment philosophy of his adulthood," Franklin did not reject religion (pp. xiv, 22). Rather he customized it to his own tastes, and religious pluralism was his true faith. George Washington's support for religious liberty took place before he became president. Waldman observes that during the Revolution, the new nation's commanding general quickly recognized "that religious tolerance was a practical and military necessity" given the many different faiths among those in the Continental army (p. 61). Perhaps the most religious, despite his anti-Catholicism and hating the Church of England due to his Puritan roots, was John Adams. What motivated Adams was a personal belief that religion would make good citizens, so it was best to embrace religious diversity. While Adams would attempt to paint Thomas Jefferson as anti-religious during the 1800 presidential election, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom actually loved Jesus but hated organized Christianity. Jefferson was both spiritual and heretical at the same time, attributes that helped define his approach to religious liberty, according to Waldman. But it was the diminutive and least charismatic founder, James Madison, which the author admires most. It was Madison who was responsible for providing the idea behind the true intent of religious freedom as embodied in the First Amendment. Witnessing the wave of religious persecution against Baptists in his own Virginia county strengthened Madison's diversity of viewpoints: "Rationalist, evangelical, liberal Protestant, and classical—Madison took in all of them, integrated them, and created a philosophy of government that bore the marks of each" (p. 98). |
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During the course of this story, we are told how these Founders grappled with the complex issue of religion, how the intent behind the First Amendment was debated as part of a political compromise, and how, as presidents, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison handled the matter. But, apart from chronological lapses such as placing the Great Awakening preacher George Whitefield in the mid-seventeenth century when he actually came to America in the first half of the 1700s, one must wonder why Waldman failed to elaborate more on Adrienne Koch's Power, Morals and the Founding Fathers. It would have been interesting if Waldman did expand upon the Founders' notions of morality and how it shaped the way they governed. Did the Founders tie their moral views to religious liberty? If so, how did they do it? And how did they attempt to balance their particular views on morality, religion, and politics while governing? Those questions aside, students who think that the United States was established as a Christian nation and those who believe that it was founded upon the principle of separation of church and state better read this book. |
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| Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York |
Charles F. Howlett |
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