Founding Faith

Newsweek has a book review of "Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America" by Steven Waldman. Southern Baptists should be wary about claiming America was founded as a Christian nation because at the time of our founding "Christian" meant Anglican and Calvinist. Baptists were seen as dissenters. James Madison, whose father was a church official, believed that if government was indifferent to religion, belief would be stronger, not weaker. He was proven correct -- "law is not necessary to the support of religion." The book pokes holes in various myths, one of which is that Evangelicals want less separation of church and state. Actually, it was evangelicals who pushed for the idea. This has resulted in an America that is "among the most religious and the most tolerant of nations." Some of this reminds me of my time in Germany, which has state sponsored religion. To many of my office colleagues religion had no meaning in their lives. A state religion could not compel belief and made many less inclined to bother with it.