The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
By David L. Holmes
Oxford University Press
Reviewed by the Rev. Thomas Margrave

I read this book with great interest as the author’s thesis is that conservative evangelical Christians cannot make the claim that America needs to return to the true Christian roots of the Founders
because many of them including Washington and Jefferson were hardly Christian and in fact were Deists—believers in a non-Trinitarian God, the chief manifestation being divine providence. His conclusion is that the separation of government and religion which he maintains has been blurred of late was the result of Deistic beliefs rather than an effort to create an America where all were welcome to worship, or not, in the manner they desired.

I found his survey of religious expression in the American colonies prior to the Revolution and its astonishing diversity very well crafted. His short biographies of well-known and lesser known luminaries of the Founding period were also helpful. I particularly enjoyed his willingness not just to discuss the religious views of our Founding Fathers but to explore the religious experience of their women whose contributions to the initial direction of this nation will never be fully known. As becomes apparent as the book continues, much of the evidence that Holmes assembles to support his thesis that the core leaders that framed the Constitution were primarily Deists is fragmentary or interpreted based on a set of suppositions which are only laid out toward the end of his book.

Failing to establish his criteria for judging the religious persuasions of the Founders until late in the book is a major organizational difficulty. But his criteria as to what constitutes an “orthodox Christian” versus Deists of varying stripes is more than a bit troubling. While a good case can be made for Jefferson’s drift into Deism or at least eccentric Christian adherence with his personally edited Bible, I found myself wondering how many members of my own parish would meet his demanding criteria for American Anglicans of that time. Evidently regular attendance at church and serving on a church Vestry were not sufficient to be considered a good Anglican Christian (Washington). Holmes lauds John Jay who helped found the American Bible Society as well other Founders who conducted daily prayer services for their families and house servants and in their writings and speeches constantly invoked Jesus Christ or the Trinity.

For those in the nascent Episcopal Church, Holmes gives great weight to the reception of Holy Communion in defining who was truly a Christian. Yet Robert Pritchard in his A History of the Episcopal Church (1991) makes the point that few bishops outside of Seabury before John Henry Hobart stressed confirmation or made visitations to churches in their dioceses, their principal occupation being
to lead the church or churches where they were rector and to ordain new clergy for their dioceses. It makes problematic Holmes’ assertion that few of the Founders took the opportunity to be confirmed and receive the Lord’s Supper because they were Deists. For Holmes, to write or speak of ‘Divine Providence’ was invariably
a sign of a person’s Deist leanings. However, I did not find his argument convincing. He points out Washington’s frequent references to Divine Providence when reflecting on the American victory over Britain and the progress of the new nation. Yet anyone familiar with the War and the terrible odds which the rebels faced in fighting the finest land army in the world at the time would certainly acknowledge that Divine Providence had preserved them through their struggle. Beginning with Aquinas, the concepts of general and specific providence have been well founded in Christian thought and reflection.

Holmes concludes his work by describingthe politicization of religion in the current era focusing on the usage of ‘born again’ as a self description by American Presidents from Gerald Ford up to the present and the marshalling of conservativeChristian forces to “take back” America for the Christianity of its Founding
Fathers. His point is that America was much more diverse religiously and much more concerned about taking religion out of the political realm than some would want us to believe in the present day.

The book’s extensive endnotes and bibliography amply demonstrate that the subject of the religious piety of the Founders is a field well plowed on many previous occasions. While clearly the religious fervor of some of the Founders has been romanticized and includes the stuff of myth, I am not convinced that this is the definitive work on the subject for our time.

Sunday Funnies
By Jay Sidebotham
Morehouse Publishing
102 pages
Reviewed by the REV. CANON ANDREW DIETSCHE

Used with permission.

Jay Sidebotham’s cartoons are already very familiar to most in the Episcopal Church, as they regularly appear on the pages of church publications and periodicals.

In fact, as Jay is the long-time cartoonist for the Church Pension Fund annual calendar, it might be difficult for one to peer into most parish offices and not see his amiable cartoon characters and gentle humor looking back. Jay’s cartoons have long ago become part of the conversation our church has with itself, and part of the way we understand who we are and our life together.

Cartooning is a complex art, combining as it does both a verbal and visual language to articulate one idea, often quite profound, in the sparest of word and picture. In a recent documentary, Tintin and I, the cartoonist Daniel Clowes makes this observation: “Surely comics require more effort on the part of the reader than movies or television. I’m always learning new things you can do with comics that wouldn’t work in any other medium, and often they require the need to process a lot of dense information. Of course, the trick is to make the complicated seem effortless and spontaneous.”

That is Jay’s gift. His drawings are simple, and the text of the joke told in the briefest of dialogue. Line and letter come together as servants of one central purpose and message, and it seems to me that in Jay’s cartoons, that purpose and message is to reach out especially to the new Christian or the new Episcopalian, and to make accessible and friendly what otherwise might seem bewildering or off-putting.

Through the lens of these cartoons we see the experience of the religious seeker confused by the jargon, the rites and customs, the practices and seasons, and the assumptions of a community which can be difficult to enter and even more difficult to understand. We also see the struggle of those who live almost all of their lives of family and work out in the world, yet in the hope that they will find meaning for those lives through the experience of Sunday morning.

Jay’s cartoons serve as a non-threatening, gentle passage into the culture of the Episcopal Church and our parishes, with the implicit and comforting message that not all that is needs to be taken seriously. One of the ways that we know who we are and that we are accepted and part of any community, including the church, is that we know the language and “get the joke.” It could be said that Jay’s cartoons, through humor, are a great teaching aid, and a kind of primer into the life and ethos of our parishes. This book might profitably be included in the newcomer’s packets of any congregation, or a pleasing addition to a confirmation curriculum.

Sunday Funnies is a collection of new and old cartoons out of the body of work Jay has built up. For those coming new to his work, it is a good introduction, and for those already familiar with him, there are themes and ideas which feel like old friends. For those trying to figure out the Episcopal Church, this book is a light-hearted companion on the way.
Used with permission.

The Word on the Street:
The Photographs of Larry Racioppo
Museum of Biblical Art
1865 Broadway at 61st St.
June 15 - August 20
Review by THE REV. Ellen Francis Poisson, OSH

Christian devotional art as found right out “on the streets” of New York City is the subject of an exhibit of large format, color photographs by Larry Racioppo at the Museum of Biblical Art.

These photos have been taken over a 15-year period, and all the boroughs of NYC are represented. Included are street memorials, devotional art in the workplace, outdoor walls of buildings, portable devotion such as jewelry and tattoos, and altars and shrines in both public and private spaces. The photographs are beautifully displayed in large format and crisp, brilliant color.

The photographer’s eye seems sensitive and respectful, and open to a wide range of expressions of religious piety from the playfully exuberant, to the sweet and sorrowful, to the angry energy of graffiti. Sometimes the religious imagery starkly contrasts with the larger setting, such as we see in a sweet wall mural of Mary and the dumpster in front of her.

There are subtle images, such as the steps which have one word written on each step: “Jesus” and “Saves”. There are surprises: an ordinary-looking shop, “Vinnie’s Iron Works”, has a glassed-in statue of a saint on the roof. There are very eclectic devotional set-ups, such as the parking lot shed which is covered on all walls and ceiling with portraits of Jesus and saints, a plastic turkey, a POW/MIA sign, toys, and the sign, “Warning: Irish temper and Italian attitude”. One personal devotional space on the top of a refrigerator includes a Bible, a statue of Jesus, and plastic trolls. Another personal altar includes statues of Jesus, St. Michael, a laughing Buddha, the infant of Prague, and many candles. On the wall of a pizzeria, there is a print of Jesus, a photo of the pope, and a cluster of garlic and red pepper.

My favorite photo is of a memorial cross on a column in the middle of the street on Rockaway Beach Boulevard. The cross is at the center of the photo, and the eye is led to the cross by lines leading directly to it: the receding lines of the street, the tops of the trees on the left and the edge of the elevated subway tracks above. The colors are muted. The inscription on the cross reads, “In memory of Pablo.”

This exhibit is at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) located one flight above the bookstore of the American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway at 61st, and will be on display until August 20. MOBIA offers free admission and is open six days a week. For more information, see www.mobia.org or call 212-408-150

Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace
By Miroslav Volf
Zondervan 2006
256 pages
Reviewed by Peter Jordan

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard a sermon in an Episcopal Church draw upon the writings of Martin Luther. While many of us have some vague recollection of being taught about Luther’s 95 theses being posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517 (for those of you who need to brush up on your theses, #75: “To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God – this is madness”) and the ensuing Protestant Reformation, few of us can claim to be acquainted with the large corpus of theological writings that Luther left behind.

While it may not be your lifelong dream to become well versed in Luther’s theology, there is much to be learned from those who are. In his new book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Yale Divinity School theologian Miroslav Volf draws upon some of Luther’s greatest insights into the nature of God, Christ, and humanity as he reflects with great sensitivity upon two of those important tasks that we humans undertake nearly every day yet rarely do well: giving and forgiving.

At the heart of the Christian story is an understanding of God as giver. God’s gifts do not, however, come without obligations. We are, according to Volf, to receive God’s gifts in faith and gratitude, to make ourselves available to the Giver, and to participate in God’s giving by passing these gifts on to others. As Volf points out, “God in Christ … is the source of gifts and the model for human giving”. Luther’s key insight is that Christ is also the agent of our giving. We become indwelled by Christ – according to Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” – meaning that “God is in the ‘space’ of ‘I’”. Christ’s indwelling presence thereby “free[s] us from exclusive orientation
to ourselves and open[s] us up in two directions: toward God, to receive the good things in faith, and toward our neighbor, to pass them on in love.”

The notion of Christ living in us and working through us is the key to Volf’s examination of giving and forgiving. Building upon this, much of the book is spent insightfully analyzing the multitudinous
ways that our sinful selves get in the way of Christ’s acting through us, preventing us from giving and forgiving well; this is the source of much of the book’s practical wisdom (and perhaps the reason for its back-cover classification as “Christian living/spiritual growth/spiritual formation”). While we will only be able to overcome these tendencies in their entirety when “we land in God’s perfect world of love on the other side of this world’s history,” an honest awareness of our limitations will allow us to be better givers and forgivers in the mean time.
Beyond examining how to conceive of and live out the practices of giving and forgiving, Volf sees them as “a particular sort of lens through which we can survey the whole landscape of the Christian faith from a fresh vantage point”. Free of Charge is therefore also a celebrated theologian’s rigorous yet accessible treatment of many aspects of Christian doctrine. With the help of such diverse sources as Aristotle, Barth, Conrad, the Brothers Grimm, Marx, Nietzsche, Roth, and Solzhenitsyn, Volf discusses such key Christian doctrines as the Trinity and atonement with clarity and lucidity, helping the reader to see the interconnectedness and all-encompassing nature of Christian thought along the way.

More than an academic treatise, however, Volf is also offering us an “invitation to faith as a way of life.” As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, writes in the foreword, “This is a book about worshipping the true God and letting the true God act in us.” In the imaginary conversation with a skeptic that constitutes the postlude of the book, the advocate of the faith encourages his interlocutor to “slip into a way of life you say you like, as you might slip into a church building. I want you to sit in it, or rather, walk around inside it for a while. There, you just might discover a living God – not at the end of an argument, but in the midst of a life well lived.”
As Volf portrays it, a life well lived, one characterized by giving and forgiving, is a thing of great beauty. Walk around inside this book for a while – you’ll be surprised by what you find.