Book Report: The Faiths of the Founding Fathers

I recently read The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes. It's an interesting topic for a few reasons--one is that the Founding Fathers are always good times (and you know how I feel about John Adams) and another is that it's a topic that finds its way into discussions about America and what it is to be American to this day.

I'll admit that I read the book partly with a view toward arming myself with knowledge for use in arguments, specifically the "separation of church and state" kind. My view is always "Separation of church and state = very yes" because the only thing worse than having religion all up in your government is having government all up in your religion. The common rebuttal to this involves the idea that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" by Christians and more specifically, the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights wanted people to be able to worship in whatever (Christian) church they wanted, but that they never intended for the nation to irreligious. So it was with a view toward finding an answer to the question of the Founding Fathers' beliefs and intentions that I read this book.

The book starts out pretty slowly--the writing in the opening section, in which the author explains the general trends of religion in the colonies, is pretty clunky. He also, throughout the course of the book, explains what Deism is two or three separate times. It's true that an understanding of Deism is indispensable in order to grasp the religious views of the Founding Fathers, but the organization leaves something to be desired. (The best explanation of Deism is still one that an English professor of mine gave--Deists believed in a "clockmaker God"; one that created everything in nature but then sat back to let it run on its own.) Once Holmes gets to the meat of the book, though, it picks up quite a bit. The chapters are very short, which makes for easy reading, but they aren't dumbed down--they just make the salient points about each Founding Father quickly and fairly efficiently.

I liked his methodology. What he does is research primary sources--letters mostly, but also diaries, speeches, and sermons. He includes material written by many different people, but makes clear which sources are reliable (such as the Founding Fathers themselves, their wives/daughters, or their close friends) and which are not (people writing far after the fact and/or with agendas). He meticulously pores over all the evidence of what the Founding Fathers wrote or said and what they did to try to compile the best possible assessment of what their personal beliefs were.

He emphasizes Deism so much because it was a very prominent school of thought among the generation of the Founding Fathers. However, Deism was not a uniform set of ideals. Some people, such as Thomas Paine, were radical Deists--Paine rejected Christianity and the Bible, thinking it all superstition and nonsense, but he saw his Deist tract, "The Age of Reason," as a refutation also of atheism, which was gaining popularity in Revolutionary France. Most of the Founding Fathers were Christian Deists, who may have discounted some Biblical stories or Christian traditions (such as the Trinity), but who maintained most of the beliefs of their churches.

The first three presidents of the United States are good examples of the variations that Holmes describes. George Washington never philosophized much on the topic of religion, but he clearly had some Deist leanings. He went to church regularly but would not take communion. He would participate in prayers but would not kneel.

John Adams described himself as "a churchgoing animal" but eventually migrated from the Congregationalist Church of his youth to Unitarianism (which was just taking off and much different than the Unitarian Church is today). Holmes sums Adams up by writing, "Reading and reflection caused him to discard such beliefs as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, total depravity, and predestination. . . . [H]e asserted that humans should study nature and use reason to learn about God and his creation."

Finally, no Christian I personally know would consider Thomas Jefferson's beliefs "Christian." He believed that Jesus was admirable moral teacher, but a human one. He even wrote a Deist New Testament called The Life and Morals of Jesus from which he cut all miracles and prophecies; the letters of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Jude; and the Last Supper and the Resurrection. However, Jefferson was also a regular church-goer and financial contributor to churches.

Holmes also examines the religious beliefs of Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and (consensus non-Founding Father) James Monroe. He spends less (but some) time on lower-tier Founding Fathers such as Ethan Allen, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Jay, and someone I'm afraid I had never heard of named Elias Boudinot. Samuel Adams and John Jay are valuable additions to the study because they were straight-up orthodox Christians, showing that even though very many educated men of that era were Deists, not all of them were. (Holmes also devotes a chapter to the wives and daughters of the major Founding Fathers, confirming the truism that women are more orthodox and religiously-involved than men.)

Near the end of the book, Holmes outlines the very debate I mentioned--though he examines it on a larger scale. He lays out what the sides are: the left wing that rejects the "Christian Nation" notion and the right wing that emphasizes the Christian devotion of the Founding Fathers. In other words, Holmes knows why I read his book. He also knows that his book will only be useful for fact-finding it is objective, and it is.

The strongest opinion that Holmes expresses does not explicitly favor one side or another; it seems simple, but is actually tremendously important to remember: "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." He goes on to say, "Writers need not revise history to align the founders' beliefs with their own. Americans can tell their story unhesitatingly, warts and all. To do otherwise is to be untrue not only to history but also to the founders themselves. 'The past is a foreign country,' a twentieth-century writer accurately observed in words that apply to the religion of the eighteenth century. 'They do things differently there.' "

It is wrong to assume that the Founding Fathers, because they were church-going, serious in their study of theology and the Bible, and believers in a God, were deeply Christian in the way we understand it today. To try to impose religiously-derived standards on the American people in the name of men who worked and sacrificed to create a country of free worship is also wrong. The point of keeping government free of religion is to keep it free from any particular religion, because to do otherwise is to prevent Americans from worshipping (or not worshipping) in accordance with their beliefs.