Lincoln, Jefferson, and the Legacies of Religion

Abstract

Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Legacy and America's Creed. By John Ragosta. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. 292 pp. Lincoln and Religion. By Ferenc Morton Szasz, with Margaret Connell Szasz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. 103 pp. We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History. By Gary Phillip Zola. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. 457 pp. Prompted by the prominence of religious rhetoric and ideology in American politics, recent decades have shown an increased attention by scholars to both the religious beliefs of presidents and the intersection of religion and politics in American life. Three new studies seek to expand upon this growing field and demonstrate not only the ways that religious belief influenced Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, but also how those beliefs shaped the presidents' legacies and how those legacies have shaped Americans' national and religious identities. For John Ragosta, Thomas Jefferson's religious views are instrumental in properly understanding both the First Amendment and the appropriate relationship between church and state in American history. Ferenc Morton Szasz and Gary Phillip Zola both examine Lincoln's religious beliefs, but do so with an eye toward the many ways Americans have remembered and creatively imagined those beliefs in their own understanding of America and Americans. As such, three works are incredibly valuable studies that connect personal belief, historical context, and the complex nature of national memory in ways that can benefit historians, social scientists, and the public at large. In Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Legacy and America's Creed, John Ragosta, a former lawyer and current visiting assistant professor of history at Oberlin College, examines both Thomas Jefferson's view of religious liberty and how his legacy has been used in subsequent battles over the meaning and proper relationship between church and state in American history. Ragosta rightly notes that recent decades have seen scholars, lawyers, and politicians begin to transition from disagreements over Jefferson's views of religious freedom to arguments over the centrality or even importance of those views for the nation. By reexamining the former, Ragosta repositions Jefferson as the principal interpreter of church/state relations in America. He concludes that Jefferson, and by extension a proper reading of the First Amendment, adamantly limits the power and influence of the federal government over religious institutions and Americans' personal religious beliefs and practices. Ragosta's argument stands in contrast to those who argue that the founders never intended to limit public religion and that the Constitution allows nondiscriminatory aid to religious groups. However, he also rejects the notion that the First Amendment only served to limit the federal government's influence over states' rights in the realm of religious establishment and support. Grounding his interpretation on a deft handling of Jefferson's biography and a multitude of primary sources, Ragosta asserts that the First Amendment was a compromise between those seeking to protect the states from federal oversight and Jefferson and his supporters, who explicitly sought to limit governments of kinds from interfering with private conscience and acting in the area of religion. He then notes that all of the various positions wanted the federal government, at least, strictly out of the business of regulating religion, prohibited from making an establishment, and separated from religious issues (p. 118). In other words, states' rights activists insisted that the First Amendment be limited to the federal government exactly because it put such strong restraints on governmental interference in religious matters. Ragosta follows his skillful analysis of Jefferson's views with a discussion of Jefferson's controversial legacy and the ways that changing contexts have also altered how Americans have understood Jefferson and the First Amendment. …