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Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Founding of America, edited by James H. Hutson, Rowman and Littlefield, 213 pp.; $22.95, paper
This volume of essays, growing from a June 1998 conference at the Library of Congress, addresses the relation of government to religion in the Founding period. The timing of its publication could not be better. With presidential candidates tripping over themselves to claim a religious faith—and, by extension, a religious American republic—the question of church and state has assumed a visibility, and vitriol, not seen since the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy.
What did the Founders of the American Republic intend when they drafted Constitutional amendments separating church and state and guaranteeing freedom of religion for all? In fact, the Founders differed profoundly over the meaning of separation of church and state, and have not turned out to be very good role models for their twenty-first century descendants. Despite their great wisdom in conceiving a new republic and designing its constitution, their clashing interpretations and personal behavior can only be described as deplorable.
Differences over religion in the public sphere helped anchor larger partisan debates pitting Jeffersonian "Republicans" against Adamsonian "Federalists" in an almost life-and-death struggle for hegemony. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, pushed through by an angry John Adams in an effort to arrest "disloyal" Republicans as seditious traitors, was merely the most conspicuous act of a very dirty war in which neither side would recognize the legitimacy of the other. Only at the end of their lives could Adams and Jefferson begin to apologize to one another for the folly of their ways.
Two centuries later, thanks in part to the Founders, the issues remain equally divisive. Major Supreme Court decisions, together with a vastly more empowered federal government, have prompted rancor and debate over church and state on a level not seen since Adams and Jefferson. Issues like prayer in the public schools and before football games, paid military chaplains, the posting of Ten Commandments in public schools, school vouchers, the charitable choice legislation, and our national motto have fueled ongoing debate. Of most immediate moment are the debates surrounding personal faith and politics in the current presidential election.
Inevitably, all sides on church/state issues claim that history is on their side, invoking the words of the Founders on a selective basis as if they were uttered yesterday—and eternally. But the actual history of church/state relations in early America is less well known, making it nearly impossible to draw any useful lessons from the past. Instead of actually exploring the history of what was said and done publicly by the American people and their leaders from the early Republic to the present, contemporary preachers, polemicists, pundits, politicians, and "public intellectuals" have simply manipulated the past with random quotes and examples (called "pre cedents") culled from a handful of sources in a shameless exploitation of the past to fit their current agendas.
In a marked departure from such practices, this volume of essays is de signed to replace heat with light, re storing some historical perspective to the vexing issues threatening to engulf us. From the start it is clear that the scholars are not of one mind, but in a refreshing departure from the op-ed pages of the press, they manage to explore their differences within a context of curiosity and civility rather than confrontation and denigration.
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