Book review

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

Reviewed by J. Brent Walker

For the past quarter century, the illusive “original intent” of our founders and their degree of religiosity has been debated in the public square with unrelenting vigor. This argument has been accompanied by a spate of books, mostly over the past 10 years, discussing the topic and often taking one side or the other. Steven Waldman’s new book, titled Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, is a welcomed contribution to that dialogue.

The inquiry usually is surrounded by a debate over whether the founders (all or mostly) were evangelical Christians or whether they (all or mostly) were deists. It also addresses whether this country was intended to be a Christian nation or a secular republic. Waldman, editor-in-chief of beliefnet.com, adopts a more nuanced view, shorn of an obvious ideological agenda, more in the tradition of Jon Meacham’s American Gospel, published in 2006.

Waldman aims to tell the story of the birth of religious freedom in this country by looking at five founders: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. His focus is not just on their religious beliefs and practices, but on “how their spiritual journeys might have influenced their approach to religious freedom.” Each of these founders was considerably different in terms of their religious experience and their views on church and state, and all of them changed their views over their long lives.

Of particular interest to the readers of this publication, Waldman gives Baptists their due perhaps more than any other commentator (besides me). John Leland, and to some extent Isaac Backus, is woven throughout the narrative. Waldman tells the story about the half ton of cheese that Leland had made to give to Thomas Jefferson in gratitude for his commitment to liberty (See the chapter in my new book, Church-State Matters, titled “Jefferson’s Wall and Cheshire Cheese”). Waldman recounts the lobbying efforts by Leland to convince James Madison to seek a bill of rights containing religious freedom protections, as well as their famous meeting outside Orange County, Va., where the deal was struck. He also chronicles the Baptists’ opposition to Patrick Henry’s attempt to fund religion with tax dollars and support for Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” that helped scuttle Henry’s misguided proposal. Finally, but importantly, Waldman understands that Madison was convinced of the need for religious liberty protections, not so much by Enlightenment principles, as by the witness of the widespread persecution of Baptist preachers in Virginia.

Waldman begins and ends his book by outlining and then dispelling common myths about our founders and their religion and commitment to religious freedom. These are not unlike my own which can be found on the church-state separation resources page of the BJC’s Web site, www.BJConline.org. For example, Waldman explodes the so-called “liberal fallacy” that “most founding fathers were deists or secular,” as well as the “conservative fallacy” that says “most founding fathers were serious Christians.” He critiques the common assertion that “the Constitution demanded strict separation of church and state throughout the land” (including the states), as well as the misunderstanding that “separation of church and state is a twentieth century invention of the courts.”

Breaking down these myths is a helpful effort on Waldman’s part, although by pitting the two against one another he tends to suggest that they are of equal weight. This is misleading. I think the record is clear that the religious right is engaged in a lot more historical revisionism than is the secular left.

Waldman concludes his introduction by positing his fundamental principle: “The Founding Faith, then, was not Christianity, and it was not secularism. It was religious liberty — a revolutionary formula for promoting faith by leaving it alone.”

This book deserves your careful attention. How could it not when the author’s primary heroes are James Madison and John Leland!