Faith of Our Fathers: New Books Explore Convictions of Nation’s Founders

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) America’s founders were principled men who struggled with their personal convictions in crafting the structures and documents ensuring the nation’s tradition of religious liberty, according to three new books on the founders’ faith. Two of the books _ “Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty and the Father of Our Country” by […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) America’s founders were principled men who struggled with their personal convictions in crafting the structures and documents ensuring the nation’s tradition of religious liberty, according to three new books on the founders’ faith.

Two of the books _ “Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty and the Father of Our Country” by Michael and Jana Novak and “George Washington’s Sacred Fire” by Peter A. Lillback _ portray the first American president as a serious though reserved Christian whose thoughts and actions were shaped by being a lifelong Anglican.


The third, “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation” by Jon Meacham, stresses how the founders viewed faith, and then applied it to create a country in which belief in God is a matter of choice, not coercion.

The books debut at a moment when matters related to religion often polarize the nation, a reality the authors view as no accident. In such a political climate, they say, many Americans want to understand how the founders envisioned faith’s role in the public square.

Each author painstakingly re-examines the words and writings of the founders. But each arrives at different conclusions on what the founders intended, and differ on what that means for the role of religion in public life today.

Lillback seeks to correct what he sees as misconceptions about Washington, striving to prove that he was a devout and practicing Christian who spoke of “the Providence of God” more than 270 times. The Novaks, meanwhile, stress that the first president’s belief in divine providence was central in shaping his public and private life. Both cite Washington as a role model for people of faith today, a time they see as marked by secular attacks on religion in the nation’s courts, media and politics.

In contrast, Meacham explores how faith _ specifically belief in a higher power _ led to the creation of a nation steeped in religion, but one built on the concept that each American may practice his faith or no faith at all.

The founders in many cases were “intensely devout” in their private lives, said Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek magazine and author of other books. They wanted a public culture respectful of God, he said, but one allowing for “plenty of room for doubters, people of different traditions and atheists to feel just as comfortable as the most traditional 18th century Christians.”

Near July 4 and the nation’s annual birthday celebration, Lillback would encourage Americans to remember that Washington “looked up to heaven seeking God’s providential help” as guns exploded during the Revolutionary War.


“I can distinguish Washington as the most faith-friendly to historic Protestantism of our founders. Jefferson is the least friendly because he calls himself a Unitarian. Benjamin Franklin is sort of in-between,” said Lillback, an author, president of Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pa., and president of a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting the nation’s spiritual roots.

“Every time a president is inaugurated, we see Washington’s sacred fire of liberty at work,” Lillback said, noting that the first president added the words “so help me God” to his inaugural oath. “It is not found in the U.S. Constitution, but every president since has repeated those words,” he said.

In their book, the Novaks _ a father-daughter team made up of well-known conservative thinker Michael Novak and his daughter, Jana, a writer and poet _ seek to debunk historic notions that Washington was a deist and, at best, a lukewarm Christian.

Michael Novak says that in practice, deism in Washington’s era was not a creed per se, but more of a tendency or style that reached across faith lines. Many religious people in Washington’s time had a deist sensibility, preferring to use philosophical language in religion.

Yet strict deists did not accept a God who intervened in history.

“It’s very clear Washington is not a deist in the strict sense. He believes in the `interposition’ of God in history,” Novak said, noting that the first president’s pastor described him as a model parishioner, and that Washington on eight occasions took on the religious responsibility of serving as a godfather.

Novak said Washington tried to keep his personal religion private and out of politics and be as inclusive as possible. “But, in fact, he was the inventor of the public language for discussing religion in the American army and in the American politic,” he said.


Re-examining the founders’ outlook follows a natural tendency to seek the wisdom of the past at a time when people are conflicted over religion’s role in public life, Meacham said.

“I think both the left and the right feel that the other side is winning,” he said, “and therefore the battle for historical benediction from the past for one’s own views is a particularly pitched battle.”

(Cecile S. Holmes, longtime religion writer, is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of South Carolina.)

KRE/PH END HOLMES

Editors: To obtain author and jacket photos for all three books, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Also see sidebar, RNS-FOUNDING-QUOTES, for excerpts from each book, transmitted June 29, 2006.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!