It has pleased the Providence of the first Cause, the Universal Cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world. John Adams, 1818
Jon Meacham’s American Gospel is a hidden gem of reflection on religion in American public life. His consideration of the role of religion in the founding and development of the United States takes a non-sectarian, yet spiritual view of history. He wrote this in 2007, when the fear of Muslim peoples was accelerating following the terrorism of 9/11 and the War in Iraq.
Meacham uses less-noticed documents such as Presidential letters and the insights of Presidential biographers to argue that, in tandem with Constitutional separation of church and state, the country has adopted a public religion, making an equation between the nation’s freedom and God’s providence. Current conflicts between Evangelical Christians and liberal American churches and politicians makes this book especially timely and relevant.
Even the sentiments of the Founding Fathers were at odds about religion in public institutions , Meacham writes. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams warred on numerous subjects, the role of religion in public life not the least. Jefferson popularized the expression “wall between church and state,” whereas Adams argued often for the invocation of God in public matters such as in a national day of prayer. Meacham’s position is that the Founding Fathers had an active dialogue on religion, which allowed them to agree on non-sectarian statements such as “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
On one occasion Adams rose in the Continental Congress to confront Jefferson’s opposition to a national day of prayer, as recounted by Benjamin Rush to Adams later:
in reply to Mr. Jefferson’s objections to Christianity you said you were sorry to hear such sentiments from a gentleman whom you so highly respected and with whom you agreed upon on so many subjects, and that it was the only instance you had ever known of a man of sound sense and real genius that was an enemy to Christianity. You suspected, you told me, that you had offended him, but that he soon convinced you to the contrary by crossing the room and taking the seat in a chair next to you. (84)
This minor incident illustrates the way in which the authors of the Declaration of Independence agreed to disagree and managed to forge a document out of diverse beliefs. The non-sectarian language of the Declaration owes its precision to the ability of men of good will to formulate a theology, which Meacham refers to as “public religion” throughout his book.
In the epigraph above, Adams describes a common origin of religion to Christians, Jews and Muslims almost two hundred years before the events of 9/11: “that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.”
In Chapter IV “Imperfect Though We Are,” Meacham traces the invocation of God on the perils of World War II, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement. With a little irony he shows how the almost vague faith of the Presidents over those two decades nevertheless influenced their public remarks at critical historical moments. When Eleanor once asked Franklin if he believed the tenets of the Episcopal faith, he replied, ” I really never thought about it. I think it is just as well not to think about things like that too much” ( 154). Yet he said of his secret meeting with Churchill in August, 1941 and the church service that ensued, ” If nothing else happened while we were there that would have cemented us. ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ We are Christian soldiers, and we will go on, with God’s help” (161).
John Kennedy was fond of quoting from the Bible in his speeches, yet when the writer Frank Pakenham once mentioned to a sister of the President that he might write a book about President Kennedy’s personal religion, she replied, “That will be a very short book” (182).
Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy’s biographer, argued that Kennedy believed most in a public religion, as illustrated by his inaugural address. “When he spoke of human rights coming ‘from the hand of God,'” explained Sorenson,” he was illustrating a big difference between us and the totalitarian system we were opposing, which believed that the rights were granted by the state” (186). In the inaugural address Kennedy addressed the Communist world with scripture:
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah–to ‘undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free’ (186).
For ardent Evangelicals the public religion seemed too innocuous to be taken seriously. If no content could distinguish it from another religion, it was no religion at all. Writing in The Reporter, William Lee Miller said, “the content of official religion is bound to be thin; the commitment to it is also apt, now and then, to be hollow. Where everybody professionally believes something, then for some the belief may be a bit more professional than real” (178-9). Unfortunately the alternative was to establish a specific religion above others in violation of the First Amendment. A slightly innocuous public religion was the preferred course of our government.
Meacham does not describe the faith that motivated Lyndon Johnson other than to say, “Johnson liked things big–big cars, big dreams, big ideas. America as nothing less than the New Israel was just right for him–his only regret, perhaps, was that God had used Moses, not him, as his interlocutory” (191). Yet Johnson presided over one of the most spiritually-driven revolutions of American history, the Civil Rights movement.
Meacham looks through the eyes of Congressman John Lewis to portray the resistance from the ground. Lewis was there that day in Selma, Alabama when voting rights marchers faced the state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Reflected Congressman Lewis:
Without religion–without the example of Christ, who sacrificed for others–as the foundation of the movement, it would have been impossible for us to endure the setbacks, and to hope and to go on. It was religion that got us on the buses for the Freedom Rides; we were in Selma that because of our faith. (192)
Meacham recounts the story of the marchers stopping in the middle of the bridge, kneeling to pray, and then falling to the battalion of troopers on horseback spraying tear gas, all while the television cameras rolled to broadcast the carnage to the nation. Ironically these images cut into the ABC broadcast of Judgment at Nuremberg later that evening,
“The images were stunning, scene after scene of policemen on foot and on horseback beating defenseless American citizens,” Lewis wrote. “Many viewers thought that this was somehow part of the movie. It seemed too strange, too ugly to be real. It couldn’t be real.” (194).
The events of “Bloody Sunday” (March 7, 1965) and the President’s televised address in response to these images were the turning point of the Civil Rights movement. Johnson’s appeal to the nation, using the words of speechwriter Richard Goodwin, was a fiery sermon to rouse the conscience. Reflecting on the incident and the issue of voting rights, Johnson declared:
And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, “what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Above the pyramid in the great seal of the United States it says in Latin, “God has favored our undertaking.” God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking we begin here tonight” (197).
The pantheon of Presidents during and after World War II contributed to the notion of a public, but not established, religion. During this same period the Supreme Court made a series of rulings forbidding prayer and Bible readings in the public schools, contributing to the argument that the country had lost its soul to atheists. Yet this judicial defense of the First Amendment did not prevent Presidents from invoking the blessing of God to defend the nation against its enemies, both external and internal. It did not prevent civil protest invoking the principles of Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi. God was invoked over and over again for execution of public justice.
Jon Meacham has given us a close reading of history to recognize religion’s contribution, without domination, of our story. His book also deserves a close reading, both for believers and unbelievers, to set the record straight on church and state.
Meacham. Jon. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Random House, 2006.