Jon Meacham\'s Book, American Gospel:

Jon Meacham's book, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, is certainly a book about religion. However, it is even more so about the early history of the United States. Meacham's book talks about religion, but in the process he reveals just what an amazing event it was when the former British colonists gave birth to a new nation. Those colonists had a chance to reinvent the idea of what a country could and should be, and they took advantage of it. The result was a country that was radical for its time. The rights and freedoms of individuals were defined and protected by the new nation's constitution in a way never seen before.

Part of that remarkable invention called the United States of America was a concept the new citizens labeled "Freedom of Religion." Meacham's book explores what that concept really meant to America's Founding Fathers in a balanced and insightful way.

Meacham's book was written at a time when Americans have hotly debated exactly what role religion should play in public life. Some people want the words "Under God" taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and references to God taken off our currency. A town in Alabama was required to remove the Ten Commandments from a public government display. Even many who believe the concept of separation between Church and State wonder if such decisions are what the Founding Fathers intended. That is what Meacham looks at: what the Founding Fathers believed about God and God's place in the government of the new country.

After detailed information about what the Founding Fathers believed about God and religion, he leads the reader through the religious history of the country into the 21st century. He discusses the problems of reconciling religion and slavery, the long history politicians have as painting opponents as sinful, which was occurring by the year 1800 (p. 104), and especially, the use of religion in important events of the 20th century. He explained the crux of religious debate in the late 18th century, of whether God had actually helped humankind determine what is right and what is wrong (p. 106). He then discussed the American struggle to come to grips with the moral issue of slavery.

A significant section of the book is dedicated to the issues around slavery, including when slavery was legal, the struggle that brought its end, and government policy following the end of slavery. Throughout this long history, religion was used both to argue for change as well as to defend the status quo throughout that period of change.

In spite of the country's philosophy since its inception that church and state should be separate, it wasn't until 1962 that the Supreme Court ruled that the state of New York could not have an "official" prayer to be read in the public schools (p. 187). The New York Board of Regents, that state's governing department for public education, had written a prayer that they felt was nondenominational, and therefore acceptable for use in the schools: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country." (pp. 188-189) the issue of the New York school prayer focused directly on the constitutional issue of how much religious separation there should be between Church and State. During this time people such as Madelyn Murray O'Hare were arguing that freedom of religion also meant freedom from religion, and that people should not be forced by any government body to participate in public prayer of any kind (p. 236).

Throughout the book, Meacham gives examples of how various factions have attempted to use God and religion to further their particular agendas. One of his more dramatic example was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. To both those who believed in the Civil Rights movement and those who opposed the movement, God was frequently invoked. The Civil Rights movement had strong roots in religion, with its leaders and followers often meeting in churches. The movement's most prominent leader, Martin Luther King, was an ordained minister. Meacham describes the famous confrontation at the bridge leading into Selma, Alabama, where Civil Rights marchers were faced with a small army of Alabama State Troopers, who insisted that the marchers had two minutes to "return to their church" (p. 193). The marchers could not move forward, and they could not retreat, so they knelt and began to pray. The police moved in and viciously beat the praying demonstrators. It was a visual image flashed around the world, and eight days later, President Lyndon Johnson took his Civil Rights Act to Congress (p.195) Many of those who opposed the Civil Rights movement, including those who attacked the marchers on that day in Selma, were undoubtedly religious people who believed that God agreed with them and not Martin Luther King. It is remarkable that even in such a divisive event, religion played an important part in changing major laws and policy of the country.

Throughout the book, Meacham argues for moderation. He points out that President George Washington promised religious freedom for all to a synagogue in Rhode Island in 1790 (p. 101). The Founding Fathers were largely religious men, but men who saw no superior virtues in one religion over another. They would not have agreed with the religious leaders of the later 20th century, such as Jerry Falwell, who viewed the United States as an inherently "Christian" country (p. 235).