Academic

Stone on the Nature of the Founders' Christianity

By propertyprof

I have just learned that Geoffry R. Stone's Nimmer lecture, "The World of the Framers: A Christian Nation?", has appeared in the UCLA Law Review (thanks to a pointer from our friends at co-op).  He makes the important--and I would have thought obvious, except that it hasn't been much discussed of late--point that our country's founders where often liberal protestants.  They took a very broad approach to their belief in God--many were deists.  They were children of the Enlightenment.  As I say, I don't think that's news to people who work in early American religion; but disciplinary barriers are mighty high and so I suspect this is an important insight for us in the law businesses.  And Stone's synthesis of the learning of the last generation of historical scholarship helps lawyers understand the religious context of our Constitution.

I might add one other point to this, which I rarely see discussed in legal literature: that the context of religious war in Europe framed our founders' approach to religion.  They had seen the violence that grew out of religious strife and wanted to contain it, to the extent that they could.

Alfred L. Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on October 22, 2008 (boomark / email).