Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
• Published by: Random House March 11, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1400064376
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1400064373
• Book Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Various American evangelicals have claimed the founding fathers as believing and practicing Protestants who intended America to be a Christian nation. Secularists, on the other hand, see in the same historical record evidence that the founders were often Deists at best. Both views are grossly oversimplified, argues Waldman, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com. In this engaging, well-researched study, Waldman focuses on the five founding fathers who had the most influence on religion's role in the state—Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams and Madison—and untangles their complex legacy. They were certainly diverse in religiosity, with Jefferson a self-diagnosed heretic, for instance, and Washington a churchgoing Anglican who was silent on points of doctrine and refrained from taking communion. All, however, were committed to the creation of religious freedom in the new nation. Waldman deserves kudos for systematically debunking popular myths: America was not primarily settled by people seeking religious freedom; the separation of church and state did not result from the activism of secularists, but, paradoxically, from the efforts of 18th-century evangelicals; and the American Revolution was as much a reaction against European theocracy as a struggle for economic or political freedom. Waldman produces a thoughtful and remarkably balanced account of religion in early America. (Mar. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Were our Founding Fathers men of faith? What would they have thought about today's battles over religious freedom? In an attempt to answer these questions, Waldman, cofounder and editor of Beliefnet, looks back at religious regulation and persecution in early American settlements and the beliefs of leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison. David Colacci keeps his reading lively throughout Waldman's analysis of the arguments and decisions that shaped the nation's policies toward religion. Although this work is mostly focused on history, Waldman's optimistic view of our religious freedoms is present throughout, as are his criticisms of both sides of the culture wars. His portraits of the men who made our nation and their faith are fascinating listening. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Reader Reviews
As someone who, for the last quarter century, has researched and written about religious sensibilities in early America, I'm always astonished at the seemingly endless battle between those who insist that the Founding Fathers were orthodox Christians who founded a Christian nation (e.g., Tim LaHaye's Faith of Our Founding Fathers) and those who just as strenuously insist that the Founding Fathers were all Enlightenment secularists who loathed religion (e.g., Isaac Kramnick's The Godless Constitution). Although I think that there's more truth in the second than the first position, both of them are distortions, attempts to squeeze complex men and a complicated religious ethos into neat, unproblematic boxes. It's refreshing that Steven Waldman refuses to compartmentalize in this way. His Founding Faith is a finessed treatment of the various influences, religious, military, pragmatic, and political, that coalesced to form the legal and cultural traditions of church-state separation. For Waldman, diminuitive "radically pluralistic" Madison is the real hero of the story who "deserves the greatest thanks" (p. 200). But Waldman reminds readers that Baptists such as Isaac Backus and John Leland were some of the most ardent champions of separation (unlike many of their 20th and 21th century descendants); that Thomas Jefferson, villified both during his own lifetime and afterwards as an atheist, in fact greatly admired what he took to be the ethics of Jesus; and that the first Great Awakening was a potent force in encouraging political revolution and independence. Waldman's point is that simplistic divisions of players into religious or nonreligious camps, as well as simplistically linear lines of causation when mapping the founding of the nation and the crafting of the separation policy, just don't have much explanatory value--even though they may be ideologically appealing. I don't fully agree with everything that Waldman claims. I think, for example, that the case for the Founding Fathers being more deistic than anything else is stronger than he allows, primarily because I see 18th century deism as more fluid and less defined than he does. I'm also more ambivalent about the political influence of the Great Awakening than he is. But Waldman's treatment is pleasingly written, informative, well-researched and, given the current tiresome but loud cultural wars, remarkably timely. The book's final chapter, "They Were Right," focuses on the contemporary culture war by examining and debunking a series of "liberal," "conservative," and "common" fallacies about the Founding Fathers and religion. The discussions throughout the book of Madison's several-yeared campaign (including the sometimes torturous Constitutional debate) to establish religious liberty are especially good. All in all, highly recommended. _______ * Representative Elia Boudinot (New Jersey), in a 1789 debate in the House of Representatives on religious freedom and law. Quoted by Waldman on p. 150