American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Meaham

Blogger Note: At the beginning of January 2017, I found myself unexpectedly, and abrasively unemployed for the first time in my 28 years of working professionally. This put quite a jolt on my well-being, and I found myself not wanting to read, much less write about what I’ve read.  Fortunately, I now find myself once again happily employed and up to the task of taking up my indulgent hobby.  The upshot of this is that some of these books (such as this one) were read before my above-mentioned travails, causing me to not to remember many of the intricate details of the particular work.  Believe it or not, this was one of the main reasons why I started this project – to have some sort of record of my thoughts while they were still fresh in my mind. So some of these reviews won’t get the due diligence of mass recollection.   And so it goes….

This particular book seems incredibly appropriate for the times, but I’m willing to bet the same could be said for most periods of history in the United States.  It seems as though there’s quite the division amongst the populous as to what role, if any, the Supreme Creator should play in our government.  There are those of the Christian faith (not all Christians, mind you) who believe that all the problems that are nation endures is because we have somehow turned away from God. Once you take God out of schools and government, you can’t reasonably expect anything but a fierce decline in the morale of civilization.  Then, there are those of the Godless (again, not all) that think that religion is, in fact, THE cause of all our problems. Once you take God and religion out of the equation, these folks on the fringe seem to think that man is smart enough to resolve his own issues, and life will one day be peachy keen.

Author Jon Meacham believes neither of these extremes, and recognizes what the founding fathers of our country were smart enough to realize. While God is definitely important for the core of our culture, it is imperative that the church and state remain detached.  This book isn’t so much an argument of such a position, but rather a reflection of how our brightest, smartest leaders have all realized such an important concept. He doesn’t just focus on the founding fathers, but also on leaders throughout our country’s history that have wisely felt the same way. He includes many instances of when such sentiments were reflected in famous speeches and orations by these leaders.

Extremism, on either side, is never a good thing. Maybe it’s the advent of social media and individuals masking their presence behind e-Walls of anonymity that have made it such a prevailing factor, but it seems as though we’re exposed to more and more rhetoric on both sides.  Observe someone making a statement about religion (pro or con) on the World Wide Gossip-Web, and you’ll stir up quite the hornet’s nest.

Calmer heads must prevail, Meacham argues, and fortunately, it seems as though we tend to eventually drift back to the center in the “religion” department.  I seem to remember a quote in the book (and to be fair, maybe I heard it somewhere else. Again, it’s been too long since I’ve read this) that makes the comment that if Jesus didn’t force people to love and believe in him, how can a mere mortal man expect to accomplish the same thing?

I found this to be a great book, but I’m sure that there are those on both sides of the religious fence that will be radically opposed to Meacham’s message.  It’s a shame that both of these camps can’t see themselves in the mirror when they view their “enemy”.