Reviews

The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State by R. Laurence Moore, Isaac Kramnick

radbear76's review

5.0

A well written work that lays out how while the Founding Fathers may have been religious they purposely created a system of government that doesn't endorse any religion because the mixture of religion and government interferes with and cheapens both. An engrossing and engaging read.

suspendedinair's review

2.0

My favourite line from this book is: "Who are Baptists anyway?"

Really, who ARE they?!

covergirlbooks's review

2.0

I read this my Sr. year as a part of an American Lit. /Government course. Kramnick attacks the assumption that our country was founded on Religious principles. A good read for apologetic's sake, rather stale elsewise.

heyep's review

2.0

This book labels itself a polemic, so it's not surprising that it comes off as a little sound-bitey and shallow. But it doesn't fall over the edge into inanity, and it offers a pretty succinct answer to arguments that the founding generation intended America as a Christian commonwealth by tracing the fight to keep God out of the language of the Constitution from 1787 through the 19th century. I'm pretty sure the authors' method of arguing this would convince exactly no one who has fixed their mind on an opposite point of view. But polemics aren't really for changing minds, are they? I feel more set in my ways and better equipped to articulate them after reading this book, so in that sense it succeeded admirably.

holtfan's review

2.0

Wow!! I am so glad to be done with this book. While I certainly learned a lot, stretching my own opinions and the reasons behind them, I often found the authors tended to be full of their own opinion and blind in many areas. They bash Pat Robinson and President George W. Bush like punching bags, but also refer to Hilary Clinton with some pretty rude language that I wouldn't repeat.
Despite my general dislike for the book, I think it makes a challenging read and am greatful I had to read it for school.

ericwelch's review

4.0

It is axiomatic to argue the Founding Fathers had enormous respect for religion, believed firmly that human rights originated from a divine being, and accepted that democracy would benefit from a moral citizenry who believed in God. So why does the Constitution make no mention of a divine being?

Most states (with the notable exception of New York and Virginia) had religious tests for public office that were specifically designed to keep out Quakers and especially the dreaded Papists (Quakers were anathema for their pacifist and antislavery views). One anti-Constitution article widely distributed in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts worried that the proscription of religious tests for office in the new Constitution would cause the government to be overrun with "1st. Quakers, who will make the blacks saucy, and at the same time deprive us of the means of defense - 2dly. Mohometans, who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity - 3dly. Deists [Most of the Founding Fathers were in fact Deists, a non-doctrinaire group that rejected a supernatural, anthropomorphic God who intervened in human events, believing instead that God was a supreme intelligence who set things in motion to operate forever according to natural, rational and scientific laws.:] abominable wretches - 4thly. Negroes, the seed of Cain - 5thly. Beggars, who when sent on horseback will ride to the devil - 6thly. Jews, etc. etc. [sic:]."

There is a tradition the authors refer to as "religious correctness," which takes the position that America is a religious, especially Christian, nation and there is one correct religious persuasion that must exclude all others. The religious right has gone to great extremes to prove the Constitution was created to perpetuate "a Christian
Order," (James Dobson) and they would like to see a country "once again governed by Christians" (Ralph Reed) - I don't know what he considers Carter, Bush and Reagan.

Kramnick and Moore state flatly and demonstrate convincingly that this viewpoint is wrong. The Founding Fathers wanted to disassociate a person's religious convictions from the value of his political opinion. The Founding Fathers thinking originated from several traditions: the religious thought of Roger Williams, the Baptists of that era, and the English liberal tradition "that put at the center of its political philosophy individuals free of government, enjoying property and thinking and praying as they wished."

Roger Williams' secular approach to government was paradoxically religious in nature. Because "he believed that the number of true Christians would always be a small proportion of the population in any society, he rejected the concept of a nation under God. For England or for the Massachusetts Bay colony to make a claim that it was a Christian polity, a civil government party to a divine contract, was arrogant blasphemy. "

The authors suggest that the writers of the Constitution adopted this secular stance to protect religion from government, and to prevent the trivialization that "religious correctness" standards would cause. They wanted religion to do "what it did best, to preserve the civil morality necessary to democracy, without laying upon it the burdens of being tied to the fortunes of this or that political faction."