28 Great Inaugural Addresses or So Help Me God

28 Great Inaugural Addresses: From Washington to Reagan

Author: John Grafton

Compelling, powerful, and often inspiring remarks provide insights to 16 presidencies, from George Washington's somber comments in 1789 and John Adams' substantial discourse — which included a 727-word sentence — to Ronald Reagan's well-written, masterfully delivered first inaugural address stating his political mission. Includes Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and more.

See also: The Good Eater or Fluid Physiology and Pathology in Traditional Chinese Medicine

So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State

Author: Forrest Church

Today’s dispute over the line between church and state (or the lack thereof) is neither the first nor the fiercest in our history. In a powerful retelling of the birth of the American body politic, religious historian Forrest Church describes our first great culture war—a tumultuous yet nearly forgotten conflict that raged from George Washington’s presidency to James Monroe’s. On one side of the battle, the proponents of order—Federalists, Congregationalists, New Englanders—believed that the only legitimate ruler of men is God. On the other side, the defenders of liberty—republicans, Baptists, Virginians—cheered the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and believed that only the separation of church and state would preserve man’s freedom. Would we be a nation under God, or with liberty for all?

In this vigorous history, Forrest Church offers a new vision of our earliest presidents’ beliefs, reshaping assumptions about the debates that still reverberate across our land.

Kirkus Reviews

Religious historian and minister Church examines freedom of religion in late-18th- and early-19th-century America. Discussion about the separation of church and state often devolves into one-sided, black-and-white debate-either America was founded as a "Christian nation" or every last framer was deeply committed to secularism. In this fascinating and subtle study, Church (The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders, 2004, etc.) shows that the matter was not nearly so simple. Some early Americans believed that the new nation needed "a strong Christian government" to survive, and others favored a clear separation between church and state. Central to the victory of the latter view-and thus to the story Church tells-is Thomas Jefferson's drafting of the "Statute Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia," which disestablished the Anglican Church and created a model for the religious freedom later enshrined in the First Amendment. Church is especially good at revealing small but significant episodes: George Washington's insisting his troops honor the Sabbath during the Revolutionary War, James Madison's thoughts on the constitutionality of chaplains in Congress. Perhaps the most fascinating character in this narrative is John Adams, who, though himself disdainful of orthodox Christian teaching, believed that religion was necessary to maintain virtue in the new nation. Church also investigates the seeming irony that a nation with no established religion should remain so religious. There's no contradiction there, he suggests; in fact, disestablishment guaranteed that churches would not be manipulated by politics, and thus freed them to focus onmatters of faith, not statecraft. The author's discussion of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists-a letter that includes the phrase "a wall of separation between church and state"-would have been enriched if Church had made better use of recent scholarship tracing the origins of that phrase. Nonetheless, an important, nuanced book, likely to overshadow titles like David Holmes's The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (2006).

Table of Contents:

contents

Introduction  1

act i

george washington

1. Out of Many, One  17

2. With Liberty and Order for All  54

3. Unum Versus Pluribus  83

act ii

john adams

4. A Churchgoing Animal  117

5. Black Cockades and Tricolors  146

6. “Order Is Heaven’s First Law”  170

7. “The Grand Question”  187

act iii

thomas jefferson

8. The American Dreamer  223

9. “For Jefferson and Liberty”  244

10. Utopia Meets Reality  273

act iv

james madison

11. Constructing Freedom’s Altar  299

12. Defending the Empire of Liberty  326

act v

james monroe

13. All for One and One for All  361

14. Considerations of Humanity  391

Epilogue  415

Appendix: Did George Washington
Say “So Help Me God”?  445

Acknowledgments  451

Endnotes  453

Bibliography  497

Index  515