Article in the New Yorker this week by Jill Lepore:

[ New Yorker 4/14/2008 p. 71]

The article goes over 4 books:
“Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality” by Royall Tyler and
“Head to Heart: American Christianities” by Martha Nussbaum.
and two new ones:
“ Founding Faith:Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom by Steven Waldman
.[ Reviewed in 4/13/2008 NY Times Book Review]
“So Help Me God: the Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Churach and State” by Forrest Church

But New Yorker article is more of an independent discussion of how the founding fathers viewed religion and religious liberties.

The Founders believed that to defer without examination to what your forefathers believed was to become a slave to the tyranny of the past. Jefferson put it this way: “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

Tyler was ahead of his time. (1797)

Above all, Tyler used Islam to argue that faith, all faith, must answer to reason. In his view, this was Islam’s great failing: that every Muslim is “tenaciously attached to his own creed, makes his faith a principle in life, and never suffers doubt to disturb, or reason to overthrow it.”

That was a good read, thanks.

gary - 11 April 2008 01:28 PM

Tyler was ahead of his time. (1797)

Above all, Tyler used Islam to argue that faith, all faith, must answer to reason. In his view, this was Islam’s great failing: that every Muslim is “tenaciously attached to his own creed, makes his faith a principle in life, and never suffers doubt to disturb, or reason to overthrow it.”

That was a good read, thanks.

I added a NY Times Book review article from today for a book mentioned in the article
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/books/review/Brookhiser-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

This particular author is a theist:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/04/was-john-adams-an-anticatholic.html

I think the more you read about the history of the founding fathers (a) the more you can be convinced that the country was not founded as a “Christian nation” and (b) a secularist can get saturated and just lose interest in the topic— the writers need to do a better job explaining why we care....