Below
are reviews of So Help Me God—The
Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle
over Church and State.
New
York Review of Books:
Church
has certainly written an illuminating and entertaining
work of history, and the best
account of the first five presidents and their relation
to
religion that we have. But Church's spirited
and colloquially written narrative goes well beyond
any
narrow discussion of issues of church and state.
Because Church defines religion broadly, viewing
"moral and religoius values as basically interchangeable,"
he inevitably rings many seemingly secular subjects
into the story, making it all the more interesting.
—Gordon
Wood
“[T]his
fascinating and subtle study, . . . [is] an
important, nuanced book, likely to overshadow
titles like David Holmes’s The
Faiths of the Founding Fathers.”
—Kirkus,
August 2007
Religious
historian and minister Church examines freedom
of religion in late-18th- and early-19th-century
America. Discussion about the separation of church
and state often devolves into one-sided, black-and-white
debate—either America was founded as a “Christian
nation” or every last framer was deeply committed
to secularism. In this fascinating and subtle study,
Church (The Separation of Church and State: Writings
on a Fundamental Freedom by America’s Founders,
2004, etc.) shows that the matter was not nearly
so simple. Some early Americans believed that the
new nation needed “a strong Christian government” to
survive, and others favored a clear separation
between church and state. Central to the victory
of the latter view—and thus to the story
Church tells—is Thomas Jefferson’s
drafting of the “Statute Establishing Religious
Freedom in Virginia,” which disestablished
the Anglican Church and created a model for the
religious freedom later enshrined in the First
Amendment. Church is especially good at revealing
small but significant episodes: George Washington’s
insisting his troops honor the Sabbath during the
Revolutionary War, James Madison’s thoughts
on the constitutionality of chaplains in Congress.
Perhaps the most fascinating character in this
narrative is John Adams, who, though himself disdainful
of orthodox Christian teaching, believed that religion
was necessary to maintain virtue in the new nation.
Church also investigates the seeming irony that
a nation with no established religion should remain
so religious. There’s no contradiction there,
he suggests; in fact, disestablishment guaranteed
that churches would not be manipulated by politics,
and thus freed them to focus on matters of faith,
not statecraft. The author’s discussion of
Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists—a
letter that includes the phrase “a wall of
separation between church and state”—would
have been enriched if Church had made better use
of recent scholarship tracing the origins of that
phrase.
Nonetheless,
an important, nuanced book, likely to overshadow
titles like David Holmes’s The Faiths of
the Founding Fathers (2006).
So
Help Me God receives starred review from Publishers
Weekly:
Those
who think that the past holds clear and reassuring
lessons for today will be hard put to find them
here. In this beautifully crafted and timely work,
the aptly named Church (minister of Manhattan’s
Unitarian All Souls Church and author or editor
of 22 books) takes us through the complex thoughts
and actions of the nation’s founders in a
way that will give pause to most readers. Each
of the nation’s first five presidents saw
the relationship between government and religion
differently; each thought and acted in surprising
ways not always in harmony with their private beliefs.
What united them, says Church, was a deep commitment
to the nation’s welfare as they defined it.
This civil religion, grounded in Protestant moral
convictions, often took distinctive form, e.g.,
Washington lashing out at clerical interference
in government and James Madison declaring four
national fast days. The issues roiling their day
were not ours, but they were equally fraught and
equally unresolved. Church, who’s too severe
and present-minded about John Adams, makes clear
that the tangled historic links between religion
and politics were built into American history from
the start and are unlikely to be dissolved. This
is an important work that delights and informs.
Library
Journal:
Church
(Minister of Public Theology, Unitarian Church
of All Souls, New York; Freedom from Fear)
systematically looks at how the first five U.S.
presidents wrestled with the separation of church
and state. Many Christians in the United States
believed that their new government would not survive
without a strong church presence fashioned along
the English model. Others felt that a strict church-state
separation was the only way to guarantee the religious
liberty for which many had fought. This divide,
author Church argues, between "order and liberty" was
America's first great culture war, one that continues
to this day. The founding presidents ran the gamut
from John Adams, who touted a "Christian Republic," to
James Monroe, who espoused complete church-state
separation. The book reveals the complexities and
ironies of this divide. For example, George Washington
was stoic on religion, yet he worked to establish
a moral government with religion as one of its
pillars; Baptists lionized Thomas Jefferson, the
champion of liberty and secular government, as
the savior of their religion. Well researched and
written, this lively book will appeal to students
of American religious history. Recommended for
larger public and academic libraries.
—Robert
Flatley, Kutztown Univ. Lib., PA
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