Founding Faith

Steven Waldman, a veteran journalist and co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a religious web site, surveys the convictions and legacy of the founders clearly and fairly, with a light touch but a careful eye. <br> --New York Times Book Review <br> Waldman ends by encouraging us to be like the founders. We should understand their principles, learn from their experience, then have at it ourselves. 'We must pick up the argument that they began and do as they instructed - use our reason to determine our views.' A good place to start is this entertaining, provocative book. <br> --New York Times Book Review <br> Steven Waldman's enlightening new book, Founding Faith, is wise and engaging on many levels, but Waldman has done a particular service in detailing Madison's role in creating a culture of religious freedom that has served America so well for so long.... Founding Faith is 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. <br> -Newsweek <br> Well-wrought, well-written and well-reasoned--a welcome infusion of calm good sense into a perennially controversial and relevant subject. <br> -Kirkus Reviews <br> <br> 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, s