The Last Word

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, by Jon Meacham (Random House, 416 pp., $23.95)

THIS book is a great poultice on the simmering antagonism between the ultra-separationists (we must not be required to say “under God” in our pledge of allegiance) and those who plead co-existence. No-Jon Meacham documents-religion was hardly extraneous to the development of the Constitution or the birth of the Republic. But the Founders did not incorporate religion in the Constitution. Church and state would be separate (and only contingently unequal). There was not even, in 1787, church/state division over the philosophically sundering question of slavery. There wasn’t anything like a significant corporate challenge by Christian stalwarts to a Constitution that protected slavery, nor was there any serious effort by strict-enforcement zealots to disavow Christian overtones in the republican enterprise (Meacham usefully supplies the Biblical passages selected by every president at oath-taking time). What happened in the 20th century was a polarization on church-state over such issues as busing children to church schools. In some quarters, constitutional hygiene was taken to preposterous lengths. Justice William O. Douglas pointed out that the absolutist position would require the conclusion that public firefighting facilities could not constitutionally be used to douse fires in churches.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, by Jon Meacham (Random House, 416 pp., $23.95)

THIS book is a great poultice on the simmering antagonism between the ultra-separationists (we must not be required to say “under God” in our pledge of allegiance) and those who plead co-existence. No-Jon Meacham documents-religion was hardly extraneous to the development of the Constitution or the birth of the Republic. But the Founders did not incorporate religion in the Constitution. Church and state would be separate (and only contingently unequal). There was not even, in 1787, church/state division over the philosophically sundering question of slavery. There wasn’t anything like a significant corporate challenge by Christian stalwarts to a Constitution that protected slavery, nor was there any serious effort by strict-enforcement zealots to disavow Christian overtones in the republican enterprise (Meacham usefully supplies the Biblical passages selected by every president at oath-taking time). What happened in the 20th century was a polarization on church-state over such issues as busing children to church schools. In some quarters, constitutional hygiene was taken to preposterous lengths. Justice William O. Douglas pointed out that the absolutist position would require the conclusion that public firefighting facilities could not constitutionally be used to douse fires in churches.