| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. By Frank Lambert. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. xiv, 328 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-691-08829-2.)

The culture wars of our own time, writes Frank Lambert, are a continuation of a profound and enduring struggle to define religion's place in America. On one side are the Puritans and their ideological descendants, who maintain that America is a Christian nation and are intolerant of perspectives and laws outside that tradition. On the other side are the children of the Enlightenment, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, allied with some religious dissenters, who espouse voluntary religious exercise in a secular polity free from government coercion or favor. Lambert's well-written book chronicles the turbulent transition from a Christian commonwealth to a secular republic. The secular state embraced an open marketplace of ideas born of Enlightenment values, which, advocates argue, is self-regulating, as competition among multiple sects produces the purest religion and guards against any sect gaining legal preference.

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