Harvard Square Review Home | Harvard Square Library Home

REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS:
The Enlightened Faith of America’s Founding Fathers
By GARY KOWALSKI
BlueBridge      New York, N.Y.     2008

The author of this work, Gary Kowalski, is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School who knows how to tell a tale which is fun to read and is reliably researched. Six revolutionary heroes founded the United States of America not as a Christian nation but as an Enlightenment Age nation.

Here are delightfully informative stories of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison: six fighters against both Great Britain and anti-liberal forms of Christianity. Jointly the six helped to create a durable nation in the New World. They were later often scorned and attacked as unbelievers by some “true believers,” who falsely claimed that America’s founders created a Christian nation. Here then are six lively brief biographical portraits of the enlightened liberal religious founders of the USA.

1. Benjamin Franklin, a friend of fellow inventor, Joseph Priestley, was a Deist who opposed the doctrine of the Trinity. In addition to his work as a scientist and diplomat, he helped to create the University of Pennsylvania, a nonsectarian institution of higher education.

2. George Washington, a largely self-taught admirer of Seneca, was a Freemason who urged his troops to act as Christian soldiers, but in his vast correspondence he never made a single reference to Christ. General Washington affirmed God as the Great Architect off the Universe.

3. Thomas Paine coined the phrase “the United States of America.” Though now inadequately recognized, he was the premiere spokesperson for independence who wrote Common Sense and The Crisis, which George Washington quoted to inspire his troops to victory. Proclaiming himself a Deist, Paine said, “I believe in one God and no more.”

4. John Adams, the primary advocate for the Declaration of Independence, was accused of infidelity even though he was a liberal Christian. Adams protested that the church has wandered far from the parables of Jesus and the practice of love for God and one’s neighbor. He declared that, “our country has brilliant and exhilarating prospects before it” despite what religious pessimists preached.

5. Thomas Jefferson was guided by Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and John Locke. He invoked nature and nature’s God, identifying God as Giver of Life and Infinite Power. He repeatedly read Joseph Priestley’s two volumes on The Corruptions of Christianity, and he admired Seneca, Cicero, and Epicurus as well as Jesus, whose teachings he collected without the miracle stories. Jefferson penned the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.

6. James Madison, Jefferson, Jefferson’s closest collaborator, spent his life creating structures to assure durable government, uncoupling church and state, and advancing the free exercise of religion. He affirmed natural religion and helped to plan the United States Constitution. He, like other spirits, was sympathetic to Unitarianism. In his eighth decade, while rector of the University of Virginia, he was asked to draft a list of religious books for the library. It included the Koran and the Bible as well as works of Locke, Priestley, and Jonathan Edwards.

Following the founding of the United States, religious revivals swept the nation. The American Bible Society and American Tract Society were organized. Altar calls and pulpit showmanship flourished. ”The Age of Reason” was in retreat.”

This splendidly written book encourages religious liberals boldly to celebrate the founders of America’s Enlightenment epoch. Here is delightful, memorable, strongly recommended reading filled with exciting new details. The author,Gary Kowalski, Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Burlington, Vermont, sounds reveille for liberals.

by Herbert F. Vetter,
Minister at Large, Emeritus
The First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Unitarian Universalist