The Founding Fathers and the debate over religion in Revolutionary America: a history in documents

Abstract

The Founding Fathers and Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America: A History in Documents. Edited by Matthew L. Harris and Thomas S. Kidd. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, Pp. ix, 196. $19.95, paper.); Faith of Founders: Religion and New Nation, 1776-1826. By Edwin S. Gaustad. 2nd ed. (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2011, ix, 173, illus.. $24.95 paper.); Faith of Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama. By David L. Holmes. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012, xiii, 396. $29.95.)The first book, an anthology edited by Matthew L. Harris and Thomas S. Kidd, offers forty-three documents centering on role of in revolutionary America. The perceptive introduction, together with accompanying selections, reveals complexity of issues relating to or nature of founder's beliefs. It is hardly surprising that Anyone trying to project current political disputes onto revolutionary past quickly stumbles (23). Some documents contain surprises. One learns, for example, that many revolutionary state constitutions included religious oaths for office-holding, with the Christian Protestant religion declared as established faith of South Carolina (43). More evidence is needed for authors' claim that Madison saw humans as basically good (85). The omission of two crucial sentences from selection of Franklin's Autobiography (1791), leads to less nuanced portrait of man's than was actually case (166). The authors assert that Hamilton favored elite merchants and profit-driven manufacturers while Jefferson sought nation dominated by independent farmers, claim that such works as Forrest McDonald's Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas,1976) have found at best simplistic.The late Edwin Gaustad, long major figure in writing American church history, offers revision of his Faith of Founders, first published in 1986. Based on James Sprunt lectures delivered at Union Theological Seminary (Richmond), this beautifully written book shows complexity of church-state relations in early republic. Gaustad portrays Jefferson and Madison as libertarians: Jefferson was sufficiently secular to oppose thanksgiving proclamations, days of prayer, and times of devotion; Madison did not want military chaplains. The author calls Franklin surely freethinker (51) though Autobiography and 1790 letter to Yale president Ezra Stiles convey more conventional deism. Similarly Gaustad claims that George Washington, though nominally an Anglican, manifested a cool deism (64). The worldview of John Adams might be most fascinating of all, for second president found doctrine of original sin, in Gaustad's words, a cheap and easy escape from moral responsibility (77). Adams saw John Wesley as one of most remarkable Characters that enthusiasm, superstition, fanaticism ever produced (80). He took peculiar position of detesting Calvinism while affirming God's absolute sovereignty.The third book is written by David Holmes, who has contributed another valuable work on this topic, The Faiths of Founding Fathers (New York: Oxford, 2006). In an equally excellent study, Holmes now tackles span of presidents ranging from Truman to Obama. Holmes's style is lively, his research extensive, showing grounding in myriad of biographies, articles, websites, and manuscript collections in presidential libraries. …