Spotlight On…Our Founding Fathers
What Did They Really Believe?

by G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 6/21/2006

Just in time for July 4 and the run-up to Election 2006, publishers are serving up a smorgasbord of reflections on what the nation's founders really thought about God, national destiny and the proper role of faith in political life.

Three new books, all released in May, delve into the religious thinking of such foundational figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Hanging in the balance, it seems, are endlessly salient questions about the role of religion in American public life.

"Americans turn to their founders for cues, for inspiration and to prove contemporary points more than any other country in the world," said Scott Moyers, editor-in-chief at Penguin. He edited Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, authored by Brown University historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner Gordon S. Wood.

Despite much common subject matter, each author carves out a distinct approach. Wood focuses on the founders' values and virtues. Washington, for instance, emerges as a man deeply concerned with dignity, self-control, discipline and setting a good example. Yet for all his traditional values, he appears to share his contemporaries' disinterest in matters of doctrine and instead abides by a Deistic Christianity that's more pragmatic than it is orthodox.

A closer look at the founders' specific belief systems comes from David L. Holmes, a religious studies professor at the College of William & Mary. After setting the historical context in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford), Holmes dissects the religions of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, James Monroe and James Madison. Had pollsters been asking questions then, Holmes writes, "they would have placed every one of these six founding fathers in some way under the category of 'Deism and Unitarianism'."

What would the founders say about today's hot-button issues? Readers get a creative tour through various scenarios from columnist Richard Brookhiser's What Would the Founders Do? (Our Questions, Their Answers) (Basic). On topics from "God and Man" to "War and Peace," Brookhiser poses current questions with public policy implications and paraphrases how the founders would have answered. Example: "Did the founders think America was a Christian nation?" His answer: no. Religious, yes, but not necessarily Christian.

"These are essentially secular people who founded our country," said Jo Ann Miller, editorial director at Basic Books. "They had religious beliefs, both collectively and individually, but they basically were looking to create a democratic country."

For more about books on this topic, go to the reviews section of this issue of RBL.