A review of Religion and Republic, the new book by Miles Smith IV.
A review of Religion and Republic, the new book by Miles Smith IV
Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War, by Miles Smith IV (Davenant, 344 pages, $42.95)
B y any and every measure, Miles Smith IV’s first book, Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War, is a treat for the soul and a feast for the intellect. Not surprisingly, Darryl Hart, Thomas Kidd, Mark David Hall, Kevin DeYoung, and Albert Mohler, among other eminent scholars, have all praised it. All the praise is well deserved.
Delving deeply into the morass that surrounds the term “Christian nationalism,” Smith understandably finds little but confusion. Indeed, the term “Christian nationalism” has become so pervasive in public debates, especially on social media, as to mean everything and, consequently, nothing.
By intimately exploring the first half of America’s history, from her late colonial period to her Civil War and its immediate aftermath, Smith demonstrably reveals that the American Republic was, almost perfectly, Christian, and, specifically Protestant. Yet he, understandably, rejects the claims that America was a “Christian nation.” It was a republic, made up not just of individuals and the nation-state, but largely of communities — some natural and some voluntary. Given that, Smith prefers the term “Christian institutionalism,” though he only sparingly employs it in Religion and Republic. “The early United States was a republic of Christians committed to what I have termed ‘Christian institutionalism’ — that is,” Smith writes, “they wanted to maintain Christian precepts in their nation’s various social and political institutions without sacralizing those principles or subordinating the American republic to a church.” Further, he notes, “Christians in the United States saw their country as deeply committed to the maintenance of Christian institutionalism in state legislatures, the courts, Sabbath laws, diplomacy, missionary enterprises, and relationships with Native Americans, and in state colleges and universities.”
Having stated his preference for “Christian institutionalism” as the favored term, Smith does concede that, properly understood, “Christian nationalism” can be stated and even without hesitation. “Our survey so far has evinced clearly that the Early Republic was, undoubtedly, a Christian nation, and a Protestant one at that,” he concludes.
None of this should suggest that Smith does not take the opponents of his own views seriously. For example, one of his best chapters is the one on Thomas Jefferson’s deep skepticism about Christianity and his famous (or infamous) 1802 notions of a “wall of separation” between church and state. “While the Virginian might not have hated ‘religion,’ he loathed churchly institutions and Protestant clerics.”
With Religion and Republic, what Smith really does — and brilliantly so — is re-write and re-tell much of America’s history. To look at many of the most important historical works of the last half century, one would walk away from the historiographical debates believing in a Manichean fashion that America was either secular (as in created by the Enlightenment of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin) or was Evangelical (especially given the first and second Great Awakenings). As a via media, Smith argues, instead:
Wylie’s, Dwights’s, and Linn’s responses were not trying to contrive a story of a Christian America. Instead, they were trying to preserve one, fighting a rear-guard action against the beginnings of a new regime wherein the United States’ religious roots were reimagined as playing a negligible role in its creation. 1800 more properly saw the invention of a secular America, not a Christian one. There was no need to invent an explicitly Christian founding, largely because the Christian socio-civil foundation of the republic was already largely assumed.
Again, Smith wisely chooses a middle path — frankly, a conservative one — and comes away being far more innovative and insightful than those who have claimed either Enlightenment or Evangelicalism. “The history presented in this volume ultimately sees Protestant continuity in the Early Republic where evangelicals see transformation. Where they see a religious novus ordo seclorum, I see a lingering Protestant ancien regime built into American institutions like colleges and state laws and diplomatic practice, among other things” (xxii). What does this mean about the American founding, then? As Smith argues, it “wasn’t deistic or even Lockean, and it certainly wasn’t secular. It was a conservative revolution led by generally Protestant Anglophone North Americans.” Smith also wisely admits his own role in all of this. “Likewise I write in this work as a Christian and as an Anglican,” the author reveals, “and while that does not factor into my analysis per se, it does mean that I have chosen to write on religion in a way that reflects the irenic Protestant disposition I believe Anglicanism reflects.”
It would be hard to miss Smith’s emphasis on the Protestant nature of American Christianity. As he writes:
Yet the Protestant Founders — fifty-two of the fifty-five signers of the Declaration of Independence were Protestants, as were the majority of the Constitution’s signers — very purposefully rejected religious tests to sustain a specific type of religiosity. This rejection was not to actualize en masse secularism, but to establish a broad-based religious order that included Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and others. Their inclusion nonetheless rested on the Anglo-Protestant foundation of civil liberty.”
Throughout Religion and Republic, Smith shapes his arguments around the centrality of Protestantism, and he fascinatingly shows how it crafted not just blue laws but college curricula and, especially, American diplomacy. Catholics would eventually come into their own, but aside from the Carrolls, the Taneys, and a few others in the early Republic, they would not make their great mark on American history until after the Civil War.
In his famous essay “On Science Fiction,” C. S. Lewis rightly argued that reviewers should review only books, authors, and subjects with which they have some deep sympathies. Clearly, many who reviewed science fiction, a subject and kind that Lewis loved, did not share his passion.
For one thing, most were not very well informed [about science fiction]. For another, many were by people who clearly hated the kind they wrote about. It is very dangerous to write about a kind you hate. Hatred obscures all distinctions. I don’t like detective stories and therefore all detective stories look much alike to me: if I wrote about them I should therefore infallibly write drivel.
Someone who despises Ray Bradbury, for example, should not be reviewing his collected letters at the New York Times. It would simply not be just. True to form, then, Lewis also highly praised Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a masterful work of art. Lewis, to be sure, loved the book, the author, and the subject.
In that same spirit, I review Miles Smith IV. I love the book, the author, and the subject. Smith has been a cherished colleague, friend, and sometime co-author over the past decade. I happen to believe he is a great man, and I also believe he is producing great history. From everything I can see — and I write this as someone 16 years his senior — Smith is really at the beginning of a brilliant writing career, and so this first book is to be much celebrated. I had the privilege of reading it in manuscript, and I’ve read it twice through to prepare for this review. Each reading has revealed new levels and depths to this great book.