By Anonymous, Jul 29, 2009 in Musings, Pedagogy and Teaching
There is an interesting series of books coming out of Johns Hopkins Press, edited by Garrett Ward Sheldon: The Political Philosophy of.... So far it has covered Jefferson, Madison (both by Ward himself), Franklin (Lorraine Pangle), and Washington (Jeffry Morrison). All seem to subscribe to the basic idea of a synthesis of classical republicanism, British liberalism, and Christianity is the basic backdrop of the American Founding. I would be interested to know what other Lehrman fellows think of this collection and this synthesis.
They could definitely be useful teaching tools. There is however much to ponder in the rather insistent note struck by many historians who are trying to recover the religious influence in the American Founding these days...the insistent note that it was specifically "Protestant" Christianity that influenced the founders.
Is it Augustinian, total depravity, Puritan, Presbyterian, Great Awakening, sola scriptura, Bible Christianity that is the religious strain that should be recognized in the heady mix of 1776? Perhaps a figure like James Madison, educated under Witherspoon, or like John Adams with the remains of Puritanism clinging to him, might take their Christianity in this form. But it struck me recently, in reading John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent that his characterization of the tenor of eighteenth-century English Christianity is a rather perfect guide in this matter: "God's Providence...is nearly the only doctrine held with real assent by the mass of religious Englishmen." Beyond this, perhaps the best way of introducing students to the spirit of Christianity regnant at the time of the Founding would be to have them read Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ, one of the most well-read books of the eighteenth century, and perhaps the spur for both Franklin's "imitate Jesus and Socrates" and Washington's prescription of "humble imitation of the characteristics of the Divine Author of our Blessed Religion" for the ills of the republic. Further attempts to put a more particular theological coloring on the founders' religious views tend to verge on special pleading.
In some sense, each of the books in the series nicely emphasizes the strain that dominates in that figure: Madison's theological training, Washington's classical models, Jefferson and Franklin's varieties of enlightenment. Indeed, the more one considers, the more one thinks that this little collection has promise as a teaching tool...a dense thicket of intellectual biographies from which students could pursue primary sources like Cicero's De Officiis, Wesley's "Essay on Original Sin," and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (Jeffry Morrison's Washington volume has a neat little inventory of Washington's library, for example).
1 Response to "Christianity and the American Founding"
Anonymous on Nov 5, 2009
I haven't read Pangle's book on Franklin. I think a Christian interpretation of Franklin a real stretch. Same with Jefferson. And so I'm disinclined to agree with Sheldon about Jefferson. He makes a much more persuasive argument regarding Madison. In sorting out the relation of Christianity to the founding, I have found Mark Noll (America's God), Daniel Walker Howe (Making the American Self), Donald Lutz (The Origins of American Constitutionalism), Daniel Judah Elazar (the 4 volume series on covenant), Hugh Heclo (Christianity and American Democracy), John Witte (The Reformation of Rights), and Mark Hall (the book on Wilson, but also the forthcoming book on Sherman), in addition to the relevant primary sources, to be of great use. With the primary sources, I think it of great value not only to read works that seem to be works of political theory but also to read covenants and charters and early legal documents. And, of course, I think it considerably worthwhile to read theoretical justifications, such as Wise's, of the structure of church polity in New England. I think Lutz's book (the Origins book) is a wonderful teaching tool.