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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