 What few realize about our freedom of religion
Our book club at church selected "Founding Faith" because of its timeliness today. The author goes into detail about the influential men, most notably George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, who contributed to the shaping of the First Amendment. The book first tells of what led up to the decision that this amendment was necessary, with stories about Massachusetts and Connecticut and their "one" religion and about Virginia and Rhode Island, who were more tolerant, as well as many other states' approaches. Waldman pointed out that the states were not yet "united."
The author outlines the personal religions of many of the Founding Fathers, so the reader can understand why these men reacted as they did traveling the rocky political road to the finished amendment. Amazing to the book group studying and discussing this selection was that political shenanigans did not start with the 20th or 21st century. We concluded that this is a valuable book for all to read.
Founding Faith
This is a fascinating and delightful historical discussion of what has become an extremely timely subject, the separation of church and state as viewed by the Founding Fathers. I believe anyone who is interested in this topic will be greatly enlightened by Waldman's excellent study. It is thoroughly documented, well organized and terrifically readable.
The Multifarious Founders and Their Religious Views
There are few questions that can get legal scholars, jurists, and ideologues as excited as the question of what the attitude of the American founders towards religion was. For the last fifty-or-so years, the issue has had no shortage of opinions written on the issue. Some feel that the founders advocated for complete seperation between religion and government. Others believe that the founders only wished to prevent establishing a national religion; anything short of that would have been acceptable.
This book (along with several others, like American Gospel) take the middle view. Profiling the seperate views of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jerfferson, and Madison, Waldman an attempt to show that the founders themselves may have been of a divided mind on the question of how much religion and state should intermingle. The conclusion the author comes to: (a) the founders were as confused on the subject as we are, and had as many different opinions; (b) myths abound on both sides of the current church/state debates.
Waldman debunks two myths simulteneously myths. The founders were neither deists as the "left" supposes, or Christians of the variety that the "right" commonly supposes. While most of the founders were Christians, most were quite liberal by any conservative Christian standard. (Of Washington, Waldman notes that he was the type of Christian who would have gone to church "unless there was a good football game on." Of Jefferson, Waldman notes that he was a Christian only in the sense that he believed Christ to be a good moral philosopher.) While all the founders seemed to believe in a God active in the world (ruling out deism), most (excepting Adams) took the bible as highly metaphorical, rarely referred to Jesus Christ in writings, and made disparaging comments in private letters to do with organized religion.
Waldman's book is well-researched, very readable, and hard to argue with. He takes us from the early days of the colonies (where all but two states had strong political support for religion), through the Revolution and Constitutional Convention (where discussion of religion was always brief), all the way through Madison's death. The drafing of the first amendment is focused on quite heavily, and Waldman does a good job in showing how our Bill of Rights was more an act of political compromise than ideeological zest. (The first amendment went through multiple drafts, the final of which is the one using the vaguest, and thus most politically expedient, language.)
In the end, Waldman concludes that hoping for any "original intent" of our Founders on religion is hopeless. Like Jack Rakove's book "Original Meanings," Waldman reminds us through astute historical analysis that not only were their too many heads to have any single intent, but that even the founders (namely Franklin and Adams) had quite evolving and not always consistent internal views. They are not Gods whose views were fully formed, but humans whose views were nuanced and evolving.
A very good read for those who want a well-researched and -argued book on the Founding Faiths.
This should be required reading in school
Finally a book that uses historical facts, instead of subjective opinions.
FANTASTIC FANTASTIC FANTASTIC!!!!!!!
A must read...
 An evenhanded view of our founding fathers
Founding Faith is a very good, even-handed review of the attitudes and the possible intentions of the founding fathers, especially as it pertains to the contentious issue of separation of church and state.
While I would love to hear that the fathers intended this to be a strongly "christian nation" and others might wish to hear that they intended it to be a strictly "secular nation" the author makes the compelling case that neither extreme is the case. In listening to this book I got the impression that I was getting the whole story, rather than one side or the other.
I pulled the following points from the book:
1. The founding fathers did not all agree on the issue of separation.
2. While most of the fathers were very spiritual, not all would fit the classifications of "conservative" or "evangelical".
3. The 1st Ammendment was designed as much to protect "religion from the state" as to protect the "state from religion".
4. The biggest problem both in England and in the colonies was between christian denominations (Congregationalists against Quakers, Presbyterians against Baptists, etc) rather than religious versus atheist. The official denomination of the colony would collect taxes and make the laws specific to their creeds, to the detriment of the members of other denominations.
5. The fathers wrestled and compromised over the wording of the first ammendment but surely never envisioned the lengths to which their words would have been applied in 20th and 21st century America.
The book is interesting and full of quotes and insights into the lives of the various fathers. At times it gets a bit laborous but the author ties the pieces together nicely in the later chapters (CD 7) and brings it home. This is probably a book to read several times in order to fully understand all of the details.
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