Attempting to count the “blessings” of the Great Isolation, I enumerated an opportunity to read more. One book I’ve read is Thomas S. Kidd’s God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution. It’s a study of the unlikely cooperation of “Deist” intelligentsia and evangelical zealots in crafting the new republic (not to mention fostering the revolution in the first place). I’m sure Kidd’s treatment of the Founders’ vision for the relationship of church and state will not satisfy every reader; I can envision both the religious left’s Barry Lynn and conservative radio’s go-to historian David Barton being unhappy with Kidd’s measured answer to the question: Did the Founders intend to create a Christian nation?
Overall the book gives new insights into the lives and thoughts of familiar heroes and introduces us to lesser known, but nonetheless important, individuals from a crucial period of our nation’s history. In helping his readers understand how that nation would one day be imagined to have “the soul of a church,” Kidd reminds us that both the skeptics and the devout were united in their belief that religion (of some kind) was needed to shape the moral climate of the new country. Related to this was the Founders’ conviction that the nation’s future depended on its having leaders who were men (this was the 18th century, after all) of character and integrity.
I’d encourage you to read the book while you’re waiting for permission to get on with normalcy (whatever that may mean in the near future). It would be an especially good read for an election year.
