Founding Faith
“If asked to recommend the best book on this controversial topic, I would choose Founding Faith.”
–Joseph Ellis
“Entertaining, provocative.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Steven Waldman’s enlightening new book, “Founding Faith,” is wise and engaging on many levels… an excellent book about an important subject: the inescapable—but manageable—intersection of religious belief and public life. With a grasp of history and an understanding of the exigencies of the moment, Waldman finds a middle ground between those who think of the Founders as apostles in powdered wigs and those who assert, equally inaccurately, that the Founders believed religion had no place in politics.”
–Jon Meacham
“Well-wrought, well-written and well-reasoned.”
–Kirkus
“Founding Faith takes up two central questions about religion in early America. First, what did such Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison usually believe? And second, how did it come about that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”? The answers to these questions carry implications for our lives today, since at stake is the flash-point principle of the separation of church and state.”
–Washington Post
“Steven Waldman does a great job describing the nuances of the Founders’ beliefs and the balances they struck, thus rescuing them from those on both sides who would oversimplify their ideas.”
–Walter Isaacson
“Steven Waldman recovers the founders’ true beliefs with an insightful and truly original argument. It will change the way you think about the separation of church and state.”
–George Stephanopoulos
“Steve Waldman makes the strong case that the culture wars have distorted how and why we have religious freedom in America. Americans can be inspired by this story–the extraordinary birth story of freedom of religion.”
–William J. Bennett
“An unusually well-balanced book on an unusually controversial subject. Not every reader will agree with Waldman that, of the Founding Fathers, James Madison’s conclusions about religion and society were best. But all should be grateful for the way Waldman replaces myths with facts, clarifies the complexity in making the Founders speak to present-day problems, and allows the Founders who differed with Madison a full and sympathetic hearing. An exceptionally fair, well-researched, and insightful book.”
–Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame, author of America’s God