Book review

So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State

Reviewed by Marc A. Jolley, Director, Mercer University Press

The earliest battles over church and state in the United States are old hat. It takes a good writer with a particular perspective to make the story both fresh and readable. Forrest Church has done just that.

The book is organized chronologically by the first five presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Church looks at the religious faith or beliefs of each of these men in the context of the Colonial era. While their faith is not what any of us were taught in grade school or in Sunday school, Church assesses their religious natures in a lucid narrative. That Washington, Jefferson and Madison were deists or perhaps theists is explained clearly. Adams was a “church-going animal” yet he was a liberal. And Monroe was an inch short of being an atheist.

In the beginning, the church and state were near inseparable. How they were separated (at least in theory) is the story of this book, and that story is best seen, according to Church, through the first five presidential administrations.

While Washington was everyone’s hero, he was no pure Christian. In fact, he rarely ever mentioned the name of Jesus in any of his own writing. His chief goal was freedom and independence. Adams may have been a “church-going animal” but he is responsible for strong language that attempted to put Christianity in it’s place early in the Treaty of Tripoli: “As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion... .”

Jefferson and Madison’s stories are well known. But the story of how the Bill of Rights came about is often overlooked in most histories. Jefferson is credited with erecting a wall of separation, and Madison is credited with crafting the Bill of Rights. Church makes sure his readers know, however, that both of these foundational ideas and texts are the product not of just Jefferson and Madison, but of the influence of Baptists like John Leland and the Baptists of Virginia. Without Baptists fighting for religious liberty the Bill of Rights may not have been written and the wall may have been erased from memory. But the wall stands and it stands by the fighting spirit of Colonial Baptists.

Finally, Church’s chapter on James Monroe is critical. Usually Monroe is not discussed much in terms of Church and State. But the Monroe doctrine, according to Church, is the idea that “put the United States publicly on record against imperialism and in favor of self-determination” (p. 408).

The real story of the separation of church and state, however, is rooted not in presidential narratives as much as in Baptist history. This story is told only briefly by Church. Still, this is a wonderful read. The full story on the separation, however, remains to be written. To the reading public, though, the sordid stories of the founders is more appealing. Church appeals to them directly, and he does it well.