Today is New Year's Day, so Happy 2024. I spent a bit of the late morning/early afternoon finishing up a read of Jon Meacham's American Gospel. As this book came out in 2007 and considering the fact that I focused on American religious history in my doctoral program (and my later ThM program), I'm surprised that I had not read it yet.
The book was very readable, although it felt a bit dated because of its origin in the era of George W. Bush, a somewhat less contentious time in American history. Of course, those who remember those days understand that many of the undercurrents that presently engulf social media and the political landscape existed at the time. But this was before the last eight or nine years and the increased emphasis in Christian nationalism by some on the right of the religious landscape, which has largely been accompanied by an increasing hostility to religion by some on the left (although this is not a necessary feature of the American left and some otherwise right-leaning Americans oppose religion as well; additionally, not all on the political right adhere to Christian nationalism).
Meacham borrows the concept of a civil religion (what he generally refers to as public religion) that Robert N. Bellah articulated in his important essay on "Civil Religion in America". I first became aware of this concept when reading Harry Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation, a book that the author framed as a moral history of the Civil War. Stout pointed to Bellah's influence on his won work. I probably read Stout's work around 2007 or 2008.
Meacham correctly points out that the Founding Fathers attempted to navigate the space between reason and religion and came up with a public religion that focused upon God. While theistic, the "God of Nature" referred to by Jefferson was quite ambiguous. He (or it) was not God the Father of the Holy Trinity, as Meacham notes on more than one occasion. This God (or god) was active in human affairs; some Founders like Washington referred to Providence. However, such a higher being will not meet the theological understanding of very devout, and orthodox, Christians who hold to the deity of Christ and a belief in the Holy Trinity.
The wisdom of the Jeffersons and Adamses of the early Republic lay in the fact that they understood the religious nature of their society and did not wish to overturn it. Indeed, they believed in the deity, albeit in a heterodox way. Yet, they also understood the problems that come with extreme sectarianism when wedded to the power of the state. The Constitution's First Amendment and state statutes like the one supported by Jefferson and Madison in Virginia were attempts to protect religious minorities from persecution which had all too often reared itself in the colonial era, including in Virginia.
This compromise has largely held throughout American history, and even those presidents who would not currently be popular with those on the political (or religious) right felt the need to compose public prayers and bring religion into the public sphere. These included well-known liberals like FDR and LBJ. Meacham basically argues that the "center" of the American populace is happy to allow for religious expression in the public sphere, as long as there is not too much emphasis on specificity or a requirement of a specific view of Christianity (or any other religion). Of course, there have been examples of politicians who have attempted to add explicitly Christian verbiage to the Preamble to the Constitution or otherwise return the US to its Christian roots. The latter are more focused on, to borrow language from John Fea, nostalgia, rather than good history.
American Gospel also notes that the Civil Rights movement largely used religious arguments in making the case for the end of Jim Crow. Martin Luther King Jr. noted the "moral arc of the universe" in arguing for justice, for example. Meacham points to the religious motivations behind John Lewis and the others who endured a severe beating on the Pettus Bridge. Figures on the right and the left have long utilized religious and biblical imagery in making important points.
Meacham effectively provides a narrative account of this "American Gospel". He emphasizes the significance of true religious liberty in American history, pointing to the ways in which Jewish and Catholic Americans have advocated for the concept from the nation's founding. However, it would be interesting to see how an updated edition might view the last fifteen years and the increased desire for dominionism or Christian nationalism that has increasingly become a part of the political and religious discourse. Regardless, it's worth a read.
