Founding Faith by Steven Waldman

Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America by Steven Waldman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Steven Waldman has written a very informative and fairly balanced book on the Faith of the Founders, majoring on five (Franklin, Adams, Washington, Jefferson and Madison) although touching on others.

My version had 274 pages with 16 in the introduction. There were 208 pages of writing with the rest being notes and index.

Waldman boiled down the important points in the last chapter of the book:

1. Liberal Fallacy 1: Most Founding Fathers were deists or secular.
2. Conservative Fallacy 1: Most Founding Fathers were serious Christians.
3. Liberal Fallacy 2: The Constitution [and Bill of Rights] demanded strict separation of church and state throughout the land.
4. Conservative Fallacy 2: Separation of church and state is a twentieth-century invention of the courts.
5. Liberal Fallacy 3: Separation of church and state was designed mostly to protect religious minorities.
6. Conservative Fallacy3: Advocates of separation are anti-religion.

And the last: The Founders had this all figured out.

A correlation I would add, is that the Founders were some monolithic bloc who agreed on everything.

You may not agree with his conclusions, but he backs it up with lots of quotes and notes and takes on the fallacies of both sides.

Highly recommended.

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