Book Review: Faiths of the Founding Fathers

I just finished reading the book by David Holmes, and I thought I'd post some thoughts. From a scholarship point of view, the book was pretty good, but was quite boring at times. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in a thorough analysis of ... what the title suggests. Most of what follows is summary from the book; some of it is my thoughts. I hope it's clear which is which.

First, a quibble. Throughout the book, Holmes refers to the religion (in some cases, more broadly, belief system) of founding fathers as Deism. Yet, clearly, many of the Founders believed in a personal God (Holmes reiterates this many times), which I've always found to be contradictory to Deism. Everything I've read equates Deism with an impersonal God (see a dictionary, the wikipedia, britannica). While there were many Deists during the time (Thomas Paine was an outright Deist), the FF were more accurately general Theists. Holmes breaks down the beliefs into three categories: Deism, Christian Deism, and Christian. He generally means "real" Deism by the first, but what he calls Christian Deists would more accurately be called either rational theists (on the Deist side of the spectrum) or Unitarians (a la John Adams). Anyway, I think it's a pretty semantic issue, and maybe I'm misreading, but the other terms seem more accurate.

In the first section, Holmes analyzes the religious beliefs of the colonies as a whole. Although much of the general population was unchurched, religious belief was quite high. Coupled with this, there was a large amount of religious intolerance in much of America. Excepting for Pennsylvania most of the colonies had at least a few laws criminalizing or marginalizing some faiths (atheism was way out). So, yes, there was a lot of religiosity in early America.

What the Dominionists¹ today don't understand is that the leading intellectuals who would become the founders were exactly opposite of this. While several of founders (Adams and Washington) believed that religion was necessary for the common man to be moral, they believed that any religion was an equally valid way to find morality and that religion was good for the common man. Christians today may point to this ideal and say "Look, even these great men believed in religion itself." Yet, this doesn't make the opinion valid. At the time, many rational people still fell back on religion as an explanation for the universe -- science was yet in its infancy. We should judge these men not by the common shortcomings of their time, but by how much they transcended those shortcomings. After all, we do not reference their views on race; while Adams was a staunch abolitionist, we would (hopefully) find his thoughts on the inferiority of non-white races abhorrent today. Yet, for his time, he was far ahead of the curve.

Yet another fact that ought to have Dominionists shaking in their boots is that prior to the American Revolution, many of the colonies had state-sponsored churches, and these were dismantled in the time span around the Revolution. On what basis then do they argue that the Founders wanted a "Christian Nation"?

Next is an analysis of Deism and its roots in the Enlightenment, and the impact that Thomas Paine had on many of the founders. Holmes points out how much Deists, and the intellectuals of the time in general, valued reason over all else -- this led them to abandon much of Christian orthodoxy. Critical to his later analysis of individual Founders' beliefs is a careful examination of what language Deists of the time used to refer to God:

In place of this Hebrew God, Deists postulated a distant deity to whom they referred with terms such as "the First Cause," "the Creator of the Universe," "the Divine Artist," "the Divine Author of All Good," "the Grand Architect," "the God of Nature," "Nature's God," "Divine Providence," and (in a phrase used by Franklin) "the Author and Owner of our System." The Declaration of Independence displays precisely this kind of wording and sense of a distant deity.

Far too often I run into someone who presents a random quote from Jefferson, Franklin, or whoever, that refers to God in this way; this is offered as conclusive proof of our country's foundation in Christianity. This is a way to quickly identify someone who needs to read more American history.

... Deists despised political and religious despotism. Their fundamental belief in reason and equality drove them to embrace liberal political ideals. In the eighteenth century, many Deists advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state.

(emphasis mine)

The next few sections are an in-depth analysis of the religious views of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Holmes has gone through much of these men's correspondence and compiled an excellent overview of their belief systems. Next is a look at the wives and daughters; excepting for Abigail Adams, most of the Founders' wives were far more orthodox than their husbands. In a later section, Holmes discusses why Deism failed in the U.S., and this turns out, at least in part, to be that because while Deism took hold among the men, it failed to gain traction with the women. Children were almost exclusively raised by their mothers, especially during the Revolution. Of course, there were orthodox Christians in the revolutionary movement, and Holmes takes a look at three -- Samuel Adams, Elias Boudinot, and John Jay. Holmes closes the main sections with a few pages looking at how the past is different; included in this is:

Today many Americans are concerned that their presidents be sincere men and women of faith. These founding men and women were often sincere believers. But their faith differed -- often markedly -- from that which many Americans have held in later centuries. Writers need not revise history to align the founders' beliefs with their own. Americans can tell their story unhesitatingly, warts and all.

The implication here seems to be that the Founders' religious beliefs are a wart -- something I'd take issue with. The epilogue is then a depressing illustration of recent presidents' evangelism and how much religion has played a role in presidential elections. Today, American politicians pander to the religious crowd. We've come far since the Revolution, but in the wrong direction.

I was hoping for a more direct analysis of the "Christian Nation" nutjobs, and I'm always on the lookout for a comprehensive book on the subject (instead of random snippets around the web). This book makes a strong and convincing positive argument for the U.S. being founded on secular principles, and a positive argument is critical to any position -- an opinion cannot be formed on a negative argument alone. Yet, reading a negative argument against a position you disagree with is so much more fun.

¹ I'm going to commit my own nomenclatural blunder here, and use the convenient term "Dominionists" even though there are clearly people in the U.S. today who do not necessarily want an all-out theocracy, but still believe in the "Christian Nation" concept.