Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

by Matthew Stewart

Longlisted for the National Book Award.  Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party―these radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as “infidels” and “atheists” in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion. The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “self-evident,” and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood. Stewart’s lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Spirituality

576 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2014

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prepare for a challenge when you pick this up, but it’s well worth the effort.

Matthew Stewart is, like many of us, confounded by the claim that the founding fathers intended the United States to be a Christian nation. The difference is, he has the tools to mount a meticulous argument to the contrary. Stewart starts with two of the more extreme agitators—Ethan Allen (Fort Ticonderoga) and Thomas Young (Boston tea party instigator)—and traces the roots of their thinking to radical enlightenment roots. That means Epicurus to Lucretius, through Bruno to Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume.

Stewart then explains essential aspects of enlightenment thought, including its definitions of natural law, metaphysics, epistemology, theology, government, and much more, and shows direct linkages from the European philosophes to not only Young but to the men who wrote the revolution: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. He argues that while the majority of the 1770s populace may have still attended churches that preached revealed religion, the men who wrote the declaration, the constitution, and the bill of rights only got to those ideas from a radical enlightenment position that denied revealed religion.

By quoting from their journals and letters, their deistic-to-atheistic views are made clear, even if they had to wrap the public versions of their ideas in a bit of religious prose to win wide backing. However, it’s important to note that the book covers the full range of the natural, political, and moral philosophy that influenced them, not just what pertains to whether God exists and if so what that means.

I listened to this, so I can’t offer any quotes, but I recommend it very, very highly. The ideas come thick and fast, but Stewart writes clearly and the logic is always clear. He does have a strong point of view, and stretches a point here and there to hammer it home, but even without those conclusions the argument is clean and incontrovertible. I am going to listen again, because there is far too much here to fully understand in a first pass.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

How The United States Became An "Empire Of Reason"

Matthew Stewart's new book, "Nature's God: the Heretical Origins of the American Republic" (2014) offers a wide-ranging history of the importance of philosophical ideas to the American Revolution and to American democracy. Stewart has written widely about philosophy, including his book "The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World." It will come as no surprise to readers of that book, that Spinoza emerges as one of the heroes of this new study. In his Preface, Stewart quotes the American Revolutionary figure Joel Barlow: "The present is an age of philosophy, and America the 'empire of reason'".

Stewart tries to explain the way in which America is an "empire of reason" and to show that Barlow was correct in his assessment.

"Nature's God" is a lengthy, difficult and multi-faceted book that demands a great deal of perseverance and attention to read. The distinction between "popular" and "academic" writing frequently becomes blurred, no more so than it is in this book. The book examines historical events, such as the Boston Tea Party, the Second Continental Congress, the Battle of Ticonderoga, together with a large scope of philosophical and literary books. The love of learning and the erudition are inspiring. Yet, for all its length, it may move too fast in places over the complex intellectual arguments it conveys. The book frequently is an uneasy mix between disparate components of history, both well-known and obscure, and philosophy.

Stewart's book has a passionate, teaching tone about the message it wishes to convey which I find admirable and with which I largely agree. The converse side is a tendency to polemic and perhaps to underestimate one's philosophical opponents. Sections of this long book are muddled and repetitive but the heart of Stewart's position is clearly stated. Stewart writes about Enlightenment thought and its influence on the American Revolution. He takes Enlightenment well beyond 17th and 18th century Europe to begin with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and the Roman poet, Lucretius in "The Nature of Things". Stewart argues that nature and ethics lack a supernatural base but instead rest upon reason, understanding, investigation, and what Stewart terms immanentism. He wants to reject Abrahamic theism and Christianity in favor of immanentism and understanding and he pursues and expands upon his path throughout the book.

When it comes to the Enlightenment, Stewart distinguishes between its "moderate" and "radical" as discussed in a series of important, controversial books by the scholar Jonathan Israel, e.g.Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750. Moderate Enlightenment for Israel reached an uneasy compromise with theism and is personified by John Locke among others. Radical Enlightenment carried the project of reason further and its key figure was Spinoza. Having made Israel's distinction, Stewart tries to collapse it. He tries to show that Locke was, in fact, a Spinozist and hid his commitment to Spinoza's philosophical programme behind the waffling, equivocal, contradictory language of his books that will be familiar to those who have struggled with Locke. Stewart doesn't look as closely as he might at Spinoza's metaphysics and its difficulties and at Spinoza's own use of language. In any event the heretical Spinoza, as captured for Stewart in the equivocations of Locke, becomes the founder of the ideas of the American Revolution. A difficulty with this argument is that there is little or no evidence that the American Founders knew of or had read Spinoza. It thus becomes critical for Stewart to transmit Spinoza to the Founders through the works of Locke. The Founders did know their Locke.

The book makes a great deal out of two early Americans whose achievements many will find unfamiliar. First, Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, wrote, or at least claimed to write, and obscure philosophical book, "The Oracles of Reason" which expressed non-theistic, immanentist thinking. Allen's friend, Thomas Young, was self-taught and a physician and a hero of the Boston Tea Party. Young gets attention in another new book of more historical than philosophical scope by Nick Bunker, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America. Stewart explores the parallel lives of Allen and Young in part to question the claim made by some scholars that Young wrote Allen's book. Some of this material on Allen and Young is fascinating. On the whole it is overdone and distracts from the flow and force of Stewart's presentation.

The book finds the glory and lasting significance of America and its Revolution not in the overthrow of a king but in its efforts to take a transcendental deity and claimed Revelation out of public life. The book is sharp, pointed and eloquent in this aim. Stewart draws another distinction, this time between the "radical" thought of the Enlightenment and the "common" thought of unschooled common sense. He tries to find the source of theism in "common" thought, so defined. The leaders of the Revolution, to a greater or lesser degree were committed to the "radical" project under the term of deism. The tension between "radical" and "common" thought was palpable in the Revolutionary Era and remains so in the United States today. Stewart attributes the American Revolution and the values that make the United States important to "radicalism" -- in freedom, intellectual curiosity, openness, economic opportunity, individual growth, and arts and culture. For the most part, Stewart stays relatively clear of current topical political issues which one cast one position as unequivocally right and the other position is unequivocally wrong.

The book brought to mind many discussions I have had with people about issues addressed in this book -- particularly a concern about the return of faith-based religions whether of a "conservative" or a "liberal" cast to American public life. For all their importance and complexity, the religious arguments in this book are done in places in an overly free-wheeling style. I have a great deal of sympathy with the approach and the argument and with Spinoza -- but that may be perceived by some as preaching to the choir.

Stewart has written a wonderfully challenging and provocative book for readers willing to make the effort. Not the least of it is his positive portrayal of America, its origins, and its promise, in face of an age of skepticism. Another large value of the book is its commitment to reason and understanding. Stewart rejects postmodernism, the "narrative" theory of understanding and history, and other forms of relativism which sometimes get used to provide an excuse for continued religious thinking. A commitment to reason and the pursuit of truth is refreshing. The book stresses the importance of learning, study, and the life of the mind. It is inspiring to see their importance and their pursuit in this book tied in so well with a discussion of the intellectual foundations of American life.

Robin Friedman

[Otto Lehto · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally great book about the history of ideas. Very scholarly and erudite, so some lay readers may find it dry, but is is written with such passion, eloquence and wit that a lover of truth will feel positively overpowered - and in a good way. For a philosopher, it melts on the tongue like a delicious frothy mouthful of whipped cream.

The Epicurean, Spinozist legacy of modernity deserves to be revived - and what better way to do it than by a necromancer of such caliber. The author is a wizard.

All hail the Radical Enlightenment! All hail the Empire of Reason! All hail Nature's God!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes this book was a joy. Sometimes I felt like a slogged through it. When the author, Matthew Stewart, wrote about the founding fathers, especially when he wrote about Ethan Allen, the book was lots of fun. When he wrote about philosophers, I felt like it was way over my head. I could read several pages about the philosophers and feel like I didn't understand what I just read. It could just be me, but I'm not a stupid person and I wanted to know about the philosophers--it was too much schooling.
But when he wrote about the founding fathers, people like Jefferson and Washington and Franklin, and Thomas Young who isn't remembered but should be, that's when the book felt exciting and flowed along. When he wrote about the men who brought about the American Revolution, it didn't feel as ponderous as the sections on philosophy. Sometimes they were even funny. Stewart had some good lines. I like this line about Newton's view of God. "Newton's vision has always had appeal among those who like their deity to win awards for scientific achievement but also want him to have a day job."
I'd like to share this interesting part of Colonial American history. Ethan Allen and Thomas Young were friends. Young was a doctor and also a major player in the Boston Tea Party. In the colonies it was illegal to be vaccinated against disease because people thought disease was a punishment from God and to vaccinate was taking God's right to punish away from Him. So Ethan Allen decided he would very publically get vaccinated in the town's square in front of everybody. He had Thomas Young vaccinate him against small pox. Young vaccinated him and immediately skipped town. Ethan Allen stayed in town and was arrested for blasphemy. Isn't it amazing how times change? Now we frown upon people who don't get their children vaccinated. Two hundred and fifty years ago, we'd arrest people for getting vaccinated.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who persist in the delusion that our country was founded as a "Christian" nation, I recommend an honest reading of this scholarly book. Several chapters of the philosophical concepts are heavy going but well worth plowing through. From Amazon: Longlisted for the National Book Award. Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy?
Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party—these radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as “infidels” and “atheists” in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “self-evident,” and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood.

Stewart’s lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.

[David Melbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb account of what was really going down in the eighteenth century (and prior) with respect to how our founders were motived by some of the great thinkers and philosophers of the ancient and modern ages. In essence, the American Revolution is, according to Stewart (and I wholeheartedly agree), an ongoing affair. As long as all of our freedoms are intact we should be able to keep this ship afloat.

[Drkshadow03 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matthew Stewart argues that the intellectual origins of deism and the American Revolution are to be found in the revival of Epicureanism as reinterpreted through the philosophy of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. This radical philosophy became the fundamental ideas about the nature of the world and the political order that the Founding Fathers used as the basis to create the United States. This radical philosophy of Epicureanism, the Enlightenment, Deism, and the Founding Fathers insisted that everything in the universe is explainable without reference to an outside force. It viewed humans as part of nature, subject to the laws of nature like everything else, replacing the soul with the idea of the self. It developed new concepts of ethics not based on judgement in the afterlife, but only on an immutable abstract principle of right and wrong built around the idea that pleasure is good and pain bad, and we seek after things based on our own own self-interest. Happiness is not to be found in the afterlife but in this life. It advocated an equality based on recognition that within nature all human beings are in theory equal since no principle in nature makes us subordinate to each other. They adopted anti-clerical positions, saw Jesus as a wise man rather than a savior and Messiah, and considered the proper role of religion as inculcating civic virtue rather than imposing artificial beliefs. The radical philosophy led to a political system in which all things had to be justified on understanding, not to appeal to some external transcendental being or force.

Stewart further suggests there are three key features of American deism.

1. a correlation between heterodoxy and revolutionary politics, although he recognizes it wasn’t a perfect relationship.

2. It was part of an international literary movement of subversive literature.
3. A variety of people from different background were deists, not just elites.

All writers and scholars have to challenge the views of others scholars in order to write something new, but it should be tempered by the perspective of other scholars and the consensus. Stewart spends an exorbitant amount of time trying to show Locke is really advocating the same radical philosophy as Spinoza, while also occasionally making flippant remarks about Locke hiding his ideas behind pious platitudes, despite the many scholars with peer-reviewed works who do view Locke as Christian. He needs to place Locke in his camp due to his extremely important influence on the Founding Fathers, despite alternative interpretations. In his desire to explain what he sees as the radical basis of liberalism and the American Revolution, Stewart seems too comfortable ignoring the scholarly consensus on quite a few issues and comes off as overly dismissive of other scholars (historians, political theorists, and fellow philosophers) who disagree with him or arrive at different conclusions of the evidence.

“Indeed, probably the most popular narrative concerning the very idea of America—one that unites Christian nationalists with a large number of sober historians—has it that the American Republic owes its independence and its individual freedoms to its Protestant Christian legacy. This narrative often comes with a distinguished lineage that traces the ideas of individual rights and freedom of conscience to seminal Protestant thinkers such as John Milton (1608-1674), and it characteristically represents Jefferson, Madison, and precursors like Locke as latitudinarian Protestants or . . . “Christian deists (72-73).”

He snidely equates the bad scholarship of Christian Nationalists with legitimate historians who have come to different conclusions than him. This attack on his fellow scholars happens repeatedly usually followed by self-assured declarations that they have it all wrong without any real discussion of the specifics of their arguments and why they are drawing the conclusion that they do.

Although he quotes copiously from the Founding Fathers when they agree with whatever point he is trying to prove and his general thesis, he also dismisses or ignores statements they make that don’t fit his arguments, which he readily admits.

“America’s revolutionary leaders naturally drew on a wide range of sources and experiences, and many of those leaders may be presumed to have been sincere in thinking that their assertions about natural right derived from God above were in conformity with the religion of their forefathers. But the success of the American Revolution turned largely on the fact that their intentions and beliefs on this point were irrelevant to the reality (353).”

In other words, Stewart doesn’t care what America’s revolutionary leaders said about the origin of their own views if it doesn’t fit his narrative, but this also hints why other historians might be drawing different conclusions than him.

“More often the revolutionaries made loud efforts to derive their rights from God—from which fact some historians infer that the Revolution was a theological project designed to fulfill a mission ordained from in high. But this, too, is pretty much the opposite of the truth. Almost everybody on the revolutionary side of the struggle claimed that their rights were founded in nature—and on this point they were correct, though not always in the sense that they imagined, for the political theory from which America drew its rights was deeply at odds with the common conception of things (338).”

This paragraph is emblematic of the book’s problems. Once again the revolutionaries who argue this are being dismissed as being wrong about their own ideas. We are told in the same paragraph that the revolutionaries both “made loud efforts to derive their right from God” and “claimed their rights were founded in nature.” It is possible as Stewart suggests that many of these radicals conflated nature and God, but another possibility is that many of them saw God as creating nature and the natural order, which could easily be adapted to more traditional ideas about religion. We also have another dismissal of historians who see in these statements a “theological project” with no citations this time to the work of these historians so we can read them and decide for ourselves who makes the better case. Although Stewart acknowledges the existence of more traditionally religious founding fathers such as Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, Elias Boudinot, and John Jay he mostly ignores their existence as inconvenient for his thesis; they occupy no more than a few sentences of the entire work.

Although the major founding fathers like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Washington are featured, the narrative focuses heavily on Dr. Thomas Young and Ethan Allen when it’s not getting lost in long-winded abstract philosophical analysis of the supposed similarities between Spinoza and Locke. While a case can be made for the overlooked importance of Thomas Young who was one of the leaders of the Boston Tea Party and a prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, Stewart at one point suggests the doctor and Ethan Allen have been deliberately written out of the history books because of their heretical deism instead of the more common sense notion that Ethan just wasn’t particularly important compared to other members of the founding generation (many of whom were also deists or heterodox, but who strangely enough are still included in the history books).

Another problem is the endless appeals to the so-called common view throughout the book. It’s repeated like a broken record. Who is this common view supposed to represent?Sometimes it seems to be the perspective of the majority of people of the 18th century. Sometimes it seems like it is supposed to be the perspective of people living today in the 21st century. Sometimes it seems like it is supposed to represent the common view of scholars. Sometimes it is supposed to represent the perspective of religious people in general. It is difficult to tell who exactly he means at times because Stewart very rarely offers citations to support the existence of this common view and not some straw man of his own devising.

“Paradoxical as it may sound to modern ears, many of the ideas in the books on Jefferson’s shelf also passed through doors of America’s churches. . . . Indeed, deists like Franklin and Washington thought that serving local churches could be a useful way to contribute to the community. The more important fact is that much of the preaching they heard in church was philosophically very close to deism (29).”


He claims churches preached deistic beliefs without any specific example provided, but assuming this is correct why not allow the churches were preaching enlightenment ideas or deist ideas that overlapped with Christian conceptions. As David Sorkin points out in his book The Religious Enlightenment, many members of traditional religions endorsed ideas of the Enlightenment, especially some of the religious ideas that supposedly only belonged to deists, and used these ideas to reform their religions. So it’s not shocking that we find certain ideas shared by both deists and traditional churches found in churches.

The book attempts to cover too much. The content is all over the place and sometimes feels like different books tied loosely together. Is this a genealogy of deism from Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke to the British deists to the Founding Fathers? Is it a defense of the origins of liberalism? Is it an argument for Epicureanism as the ancient roots of Enlightenment thought? Is it a reconsideration of the philosophical relationship between Locke and Spinoza? Is it a polemic against the outdated ideas of religion in a modern world? Yes, the book covers all these things, but each of these could easily be the topics of books in their own right, and often the book feels more like a pure philosophy book than a history book, while other times it takes on the role of political pamphlet for Stewart to pummel us with his own ideas about which philosophical views are the correct ones and which ones are flawed.

The biggest issue with the book is the polemical tone it sometimes adopts that invalidates it as a useful history. Stewart not only ignores the founders and their statements that don’t fit his thesis—or facts like Jonathan Edwards died by inoculation in a chapter ironically dedicated to Ethan Allen being a brave heretic for being inoculated against the opposition of those mean science-hating religious fanatics like Edwards—but throughout the narrative Stewart goes far beyond reporting the philosophical ideas of the time and outright starts making judgmental statements about religion or the shortcomings of trascendental-based philosophies. This might be philosophy, it might be political polemic, but it’s not history. Historians are supposed to reproduce as neutrally as possible an accurate representation of the people and their ideas of the past, not criticize or judge them, leaving the work with a strong whiff of moralistic “Whiggish” history. This attempt to identify the good ideas of the past with one’s own philosophy or to read one’s own philosophical predilections back into the past, offering moral judgments about the ideas of the past based on our own modern perspective, is generally considered a big no no in history and something real historians try to avoid. While I am sympathetic to wanting to counter Christian Nationalists and found some of the ideas of the Enlightenment having its origins in Epicureanism interesting, this isn’t really a history, but a polemic.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Advance Reading Copy review Publication date July 1, 2014

While I enjoyed this book more than 3 stars may indicate, sections of the book were just too dense and repetitive to really recommend it higher.

The premise is basically that America was never a Christian nation as many of the Founding Fathers were deists who believed in private, independent spirituality. Thomas Jefferson, for example, would be surprised that we haven't all become Unitarians by now. The book centers on Ethan Allen's auto-biography which bears a striking similarity to the writings of Thomas Young (one of the Boston Tea Party perpetrators). Young's writings, in turn, are based largely on the works of Spinoza and Locke who can trace their philosophies back to Lucretius and Epicurus. This is where the reader's eyes are likely to start glazing over.

The best parts are the when the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are interpreted to prove the founders' underlying deism. The chapter on the pursuit of happiness alone was worth the time and effort leading up to it. Unless you are a hardcore student of philosophy, best to skim over the deep end and head straight to the shallower, more enjoyable parts.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Stewart's book is not a comfortable read, but I think he does have some valuable things to say about the philosophical ideas in which several important members of the Founding Fathers were grounded. (I will note here that Stewart clearly has an agenda, and tends to view Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, et. al. as closet atheists. My opinion is that it's more complicated than that, though it's certainly clear that they had an understanding of the problems inherent in all sorts of organized religion. Anyway, since many historians have made facile religious connections for various of the Founding Fathers, seeing the situation through a different lens is valuable.) Certainly those who set out on the path of revolution were indeed heretics and radicals, whose ideas about freedom, government, and the nature of the world would change everything for future generations.

[Angie Boyter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread for Sunday Philosophers September 2025.
Good book for a group to discuss with lots of good ideas and fascinating information but to me poorly organized and often annoying.
The book does not focus sharply on the Revolutionary founders, although they are certainly present. As the book description says, it is a philosophy book as much as a history-focused book. There is LOTS and LOTS of good philosophical background from the likes of people like Epicurus, Spinoza, and many others, so be prepared.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book that probably has the right-wing, tea party fools frothing at the mouth. Mr. Stewart presents the truth about the individual philosophies of the "Founding Fathers". America's revolutionaries were a group consisting of men educated in the Enlightenment and who followed radical ideas, many of which originated in the classical pagan past. This is a well-researched, well-thought out book that is also surprisingly easy to read. I highly recommend it.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishingly good summary of the role of religion - or lack thereof, to be more precise - in the creation of the American Republic, with special attention given to the issue of Epicurean philosophy, Deism, and Jefferson's conviction that not a living man existed in America who would not die a Unitarian, so great was his belief in the power of reason and that liberal religion compatible with reason would triumph . . .

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I read The Management Myth a few months back, Matthew Stewart firmly established himself as one of my favorite contemporary authors. Witty, introspective, and exhaustively well-informed, Stewart brings philosophy to bear on the modern world in a way that most puffed-up academics are too obsequious to manage. Now having finished Nature's God, I think this book may be his most lasting contribution to literature (though we should all hope and pray that he only outdoes himself from here).

As someone who fell in love with Spinoza from the moment I first opened the Ethics, I adore the attention Stewart pays to him in the history of enlightenment political philosophy, and the intricate connections that he finds between Spinoza's thought and those of the American Revolutionaries. It would be no exaggeration to say that Spinoza is the most important thinker you've never heard of, a man whose quiet and uneventful life produced a series of works that utterly revolutionized religion, politics, and science forever. Though this book is fundamentally about the story of America, I see Spinoza as the hidden protagonist who floats across the whole breadth and span of the Age of Revolutions. Stewart does him consummate justice, and beautifully illustrates how the revolutionary thought embodied in Spinoza carrier through in the often-hidden and well-marketed writings of Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Pope, and that most moderate of radicals, John Locke.

This book is surprisingly dense, and may be a little intimidating to those with little or no background in philosophy, but the author's communication skills are exemplary. I think he has perfectly rendered these complex philosophical issues in a way that is comprehensible without being condescending.

You should read this book if:

-You have heard that America was founded by some less-than-pious people, but don't know the full extent of the story
-You've been told that deism is believing in a "watchmaker god" (how detestable!)
-You always suspected that dogmatic religion and rank conservatism are incompatible with the atheistic and socialist bent of America's founding documents
-You want to learn about some of the absolute best philosophy produced by the human mind so far
-You love freedom, guns, etc.

For those who have already done some deep-dives into early American history, I will point out that Stewart seems to have omitted the role that Freemasonry played in introducing deistic enlightenment ideas to the American continent. This is a little odd considering many of the big players in the story were, in fact, Masons themselves. I suspect the author simply didn't want to go through the trouble of untangling that vast web of uncertain information when the most important (and radical!) ideas of the age were already out in the open, if you know where to look. Quibbles aside, I highly recommend this book and guarantee you will come out of it with a new perspective on the ideas that underpin the American Republic.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: An argument that the key ideas at the foundations of our country were not Christian but rather traceable back to Lucretius and to European thinkers, the foremost of whom was Spinoza, whose ideas were shaped by Enlightenment reason resulting more in a materialist atheism or nature pantheism/deism.

There is an ongoing argument surrounding American beginnings as to whether these were Christian or more attributable to a kind of vague deism. While I as a Christian would love to believe it was the former, when I read the writings of Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and other founders, I find that while they recognize the place and importance of Christian churches, they are not Christian in any orthodox sense in the personal beliefs that shaped the thinking behind our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution (which omits even the mention of "God").

Matthew Stewart explores the intellectual genealogy of the founders, but does so in an unusual fashion. He starts out with a book, The Oracles of Reason, written by Ethan Allen, of Green Mountain Boys and Fort Ticonderoga fame. This inelegantly written book conveys Allen's repugnance of the idea of the Christian deity, argues for a god of nature, the place of reason ("self evident truths") and a state free of control by the church. Where did Allen get these ideas, as an uneducated man? From Dr. Thomas Young, who exists around the edges of the more famous founders. Stewart will weave these two characters throughout the narrative.

What I think Stewart is trying to demonstrate is how widely held these ideas, often classed under deism, but in fact were closer to pantheism ("all is god") or even outright atheism. He then follows back the lineage of these ideas to Lucretius, and Epicurean philosophy, which rather than being hedonistic, actually talked about the idea of living well, or moderately. Stewart follows these ideas into Europe to Benedict de Spinoza, Hobbes, and John Locke, who may clothe them at times in Christian language, but actually lays the groundwork for a view of reality that is sees God and Nature as synonymous (hence making this either pantheism, or outright atheism if nature is viewed simply as matter). Truth is "self-evident" in that what we think has an existence of its own that precedes all else. As with Lucretius, the pursuit of happiness is not wild pleasure-seeking but virtuous living. This leads to an "empire of reason," a rational rule of law that recognizes the equality of all, unalienable rights, government by the consent of the governed, the right to abolish governments that do not serve these ends and to institute new ones.

The concluding chapter is titled "The Religion of Freedom". It explores the fact that the founders, while protecting the free exercise of religious faith, believing that popular religion served a certain good in inculcating morals necessary for a good society, ultimately envisioned a government free of religion's control, where the individual could believe what he or she wants without constraint. Stewart argues that many of the founders were free-thinkers who might be classified as atheists today. And while religion went through a resurgence, and continues to play an important role, by and large it conforms to liberal ideals and only causes problems when it is not content to exist in a very privatized form.

One gets the sense in reading Stewart that he thinks that this is not only the truest account of the genealogy of ideas that formed our beginnings as a nation, but that this is as it ought to be, and that the continued existence of religion is an annoying hindrance. He writes,

"The main thing we learn now from the persistence in modern America of supernatural religion and the reactionary nationalism with which it is so regularly accompanied is that there is still work to be done. For too long we have relied on silence to speak a certain truth. The noise tells us the time has come for some candor. It points to a piece of unfinished business of the American Revolution" (p. 431).

What bothers me in Stewart's work is not the accuracy of the case he makes for the ideas that undergird our republic, but rather the selective treatment of Christian faith that presents a caricature featuring its most invidious expressions. Little attention, for example, is given to the educational enterprise, an extension of the churches, that brought together such a learned generation. No attention is given to another founder, Reverend John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), who thoughtfully sought to integrate Christian ethics and enlightenment thought, serving in the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1782. It seems to me that Stewart's intent is to marshal his evidence, as have some of our popular militant atheists, to make us want to eradicate "supernatural religion" (and one wonders if this also includes those who embrace it).

Likewise, for all it vaunting of reason and virtue, the tacit admission of the power of religious faith to foster morals, and public order suggests a certain weakness in this "empire of reason." Might a more constructive course be one that admits both the distinctive contribution of founders who articulated a vision of a public square not dominated by a single faith, but open to all, and the vibrant, but messy competing ideologies that seek to shape the minds, hearts, and moral life of our people that allows a thing rare in the annals of human history--freedom of conscience?

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review Title: In whom do we trust?

Based on the supposition that conspiracy theories are acceptable depending which conspiracy and whose theory it is, I suspect there is a segment of the political, historiography, and philosophy community that accepts and applauds Matthew Stewart's particular brand of conspiracy theory. He is writing directly to address those who he believes mistakenly misinterpret or maliciously misrepresent (and leaves no doubt he believes this the motive) America as a "Christian nation" whose founders had an explicitly orthodox Christian theology and intent in establishing the founding principles of the nation as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And no, that isn't the conspiracy part of his theory, and as far as a motive it is a valid one even if I and many other Americans don't accept the premise.

The conspiracy theory comes in when Stewart tries to prove his point. What we (that is, everyone not named Matthew Stewart) have come to believe was written into the Declaration and the Constitution was not a sincere deism but was actually radical philosophical atheism that was so far around the spectrum that it was sometimes akin to lukewarm Christianity but ultimately nothing like it at all. So every Founding Father whom everyone thought was either a raging Calvinist, a lukewarm deist, or a heretical atheist, was in fact according to Stewart one of these radical philosophical atheists. This revisionist approach also extends to the original sources of the Fathers' ideas: Spinoza, Hobbes, and Locke.

A key tenet of a conspiracy theory, Stewart tells us, is "credos and labels" that are worthless without context ("in isolation"), like the labels "atheism", "pantheism", and "deism" that conservative historians have created to identify the "them" in opposition to the "Christian nation" theory they represent (p. 195). Stewart then proceeds to create the credo and label "enthusiasm" for Calvinist Christians in the colonial era Great Awakening without context in isolation and then to write a whole book to attack the "them" he has just labeled.

While his "everybody else seems to have missed this" approach becomes off-putting because so often repeated in different ways and context throughout the book, the three tenets of deism as defined by Steward:

1. There is a (one) God
2. He wants us to be good.
3. He punishes, rewards, and forgives.

are straight forward and his conclusion of how that deism influenced the young American government is actually hard to argue and well phrased: "True piety in a reasonable world is the pursuit of happiness through the improvement of the understanding. Call it the religion of freedom." (p. 418) In Stewart's equation the pursuit of happiness equals the pursuit of good equals freedom which equals doing what is best or us individually and hence as a society, (p. 290), again not objectionable if somewhat utopian.

A major part of the book is taken up by interwoven parallel biographies of Ethan Allen, the backwoods leader who attacked and defeated Fort Ticonderoga, and Thomas Young, an itinerant physician and pamphleteer who popularized much of the philosophical basis of deism. Stewart tells their lesser known (in his conspiracy suppressed) stories to demonstrate the ubiquity of his theory amongst the Founding Fathers (handpicking references from Franklin and Jefferson to prove his point). He brings together all the threads of theory in the chapter "The Empire of Reason" where he uses the 1776 Pennsylvania election and declaration as models of the national Declaration soon to come and the Constitution to be written after ten long years of Revolution.

As an explication of the philosophical roots of the Revolution and the prevalence of deism amongst the Founding Fathers, this would be an acceptable history if not for the overreaching conspiracy arguments that force Stewart into unnecessary and obfuscating complexity that detracts from what could have been an interesting study.

When Stewart assesses the state of the American Republic today he concludes: "The persistence in modern America of supernatural religion and the reactionary nationalism with which it is regularly accompanied "is proof "that there is still work to be done" in completing the American Revolution of radical philosophical atheism. (quotes from p. 431) While accepting the validity of his motive on the one hand, and on the other the natural suspicion of conspiracy theories by which most have been rendered harmless throughout history, this conclusion is somewhat chilling. Let's hope our American ideals prevail.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book caught my interest at the library, but at the same time, grokking the introduction made this secularist see enough for the skeptical antennae to go up. With that, let's dig in.

First, I knew most of the Ethan Allen story. Interestingly, Stewart does not relate the Allen deathbed anecdote, whether it's true or not. Supposedly, an "orthodox" minister told Allen that the angels were waiting for him, and he replied: "Waiting, are they? Well, goddammit, let them wait!"

First of all, Stewart appears to be not just an atheist but quite possibly a Gnu Atheist, with all that entails. (I can't tell if he thinks this for sure, but his latest book, on U.S. slavery and emancipation? He may be one of those people who claims Lincoln was an atheist.) That gets you dinged right there. Second: His "The Truth About Everything" book makes me wonder how much of a scientism person he is. I think the first-in-order reviewer is themself.

Secondly, much of what I said about Epicurus and Epicureanism in my review of “The Swerve” deserves repeating.

First, the inventors of atomic theory, Democritus and Leucippus were pre-Epicurean and even pre-Socratic. Greenblatt never mentions this. Nor does he mention that Greek philosophers in general were anti-empirical, and therefore antiscientific, as we know science today. (Indeed, one could argue that Archimedes and Eratosthenes were the only two real scientists the Hellenistic world produced.)

Ergo, especially if we start "modernity" with the Enlightenment and not the Renaissance, Epicureanism was not "how the world became modern." Not even close.

Second, he cherry-picks who was influenced by Lucretius, and how much, and how much influence they had. The late Renaissance world didn't see a flowering of Giordano Brunos.

Extending on that? Epicureanism may be a very good moral philosophy. As some kind of philosophy of science? Bupkis. As a political philosophy, tohu w’vohu, as it just doesn’t really say anything. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers more on how not just Spinoza, but 17th century philosophy in general, was still mired in the Socratic world on many issues, and yes, mired is correct, and hence, Whitehead's encomium to Plato is wrong.

Related? Stewart’s note that Bruno became so infatuated with Lucretius that he couldn’t explain Copernican theory correctly. Gassendi had that problem, too. See here.

AFAIK, Copernicus himself was uninfluenced by Lucretius and Epicurus. Besides, heliocentric theories existed back in ancient Greece.

Also related? While Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons didn’t invent them into existence, nonetheless, it certainly offered the idea that Epicurean cosmology wasn’t the final answer. Even more so for Herschel's discovery of Uranus. I'm sure that if Napoleon had asked him about Epicurus, Laplace, whose nebular hypothesis of the solar system's origins put a wrap on Enlightenment-era science, would have said he had no need of that hypothesis, either.

Next? The idea that Spinoza was more important of an influence on American deism, the revolution, etc., than, say, Locke? Laughable. He may have been an influence THROUGH Locke; different story. And, it doesn’t fit with his Epicurean thesis, anyway; Epicurus had no real influence on Spinoza. That’s per a place like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where Epicurus isn’t even mentioned in the entry on Spinoza.

Per Gilbert Ryle, I could say that Stewart is committing something kind of like a category mistake, but that’s too charitable. Rather, he’s committing something kind of like a category conflation, which entails much greater willfulness.

Side note? Spinoza's first name actually is neither "Benedict" nor "Baruch." It's "Bento," from the Ladino.

Related? The idea that Locke was a sekrut radical is laughable. To riff on Cervantes, it’s tilting at Gnu Atheist skyhooks. And, it's no wonder that Stewart has to repeatedly talk about how other academics disagree with him. Later on, Stewart accepts that most American deists were the “clockwork god” folks, the “Newtonians” (this sets aside that Adam Smith was a “clockwork god” deist at the time of the American Revolution, which not only undercuts Steward but is also generally hated by classical liberal economists, no matter that it’s true.) But Stewart never extends that same courtesy, or whatever we should call it, to Locke. Why not? IMO, it’s because it upsets Stewart’s program. If Locke really was a Newtonian, that means American deists weren’t dissembling in their Newtonianism, nor that they "really" had some Spinozist semi-atheism as their Ultima Thule.

Somewhat related? The American Revolution, and Constitutional revolution, was a moderate, and politically focused, revolution. The Articles of Confederation took a pass on a federal state church, and the Constitutional finalized that. That’s it.

The French Revolution didn’t IMMEDIATELY attack and abolish religion in general. But? By the time of Robespierre and Danton, though, it did.

With that?

To the degree I determine a thesis in an ill-focused book, it’s that the founders wanted to inculcate a Spinoza-like semi-atheist deism, not just the Newtonian mechanical clock type. IF SOME of the founders (Jefferson, maybe Franklin) wanted this, let alone tried to get it, it was as private individuals, not as founders of the American state. There’s a second part to Stewart’s thesis, and that’s the insinuation they halfway succeeded. Anybody who’s read Antonin Scalia’s pronunciamentos from the Supreme Court bench about “civic religion” knows this is to laugh, as far as the American state. Anybody who knows most “Nones” are not atheists or agnostics knows this is to laugh in terms of private belief.

Related? Being long-listed for a book prize is nowhere near as big a deal as being short-listed. And, the use of the word "heretical" in the subhed is another — this time provocative or click-baity — instance of fluffery.

Per one other reviewer, who said this would make a great 300-page book or a great 800-page one? A la Paine, it might make a good but not great 150-page screed. And Stewart, IMO, could never write this into a great, quasi-academic 800-page book. That’s simply not his interest, and I doubt he would change that. He could have dropped his philosophical incorrectnesses, though, and perhaps written up a straight 300-page history of deism and the American Revolution.

Note: For quotes from Allen that may not be in this book, and references to the likes of Elihu Palmer who is not at all in this book, go to this piece from non-Gnu secularist Ed Buckner.

Anyway, despite me grokking around here and there, it's not a total meh, because it had me doing some philosophical mind-honing. And, it's not a disappointment, per what I said at the top of the review. I wasn't expecting five stars when I picked it up, and by the time I grokked the intro, I wasn't expecting much more than a high three stars.

==

And, per the editorial blurbs for "The Courtier and the Heretic," his calling Leibniz "foppish" and claiming late 1600s Amsterdam was "licentious" is enough reason right to pass on anything else he's written.

This, near the end of that blurb?

For Stewart, Leibniz's reaction to Spinoza and modernity set the tone for "the dominant form of modern philosophy"—a category that includes Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and "the whole 'postmodern' project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought.

That one word, in case you're wondering? Invented by Derrida. Nuff ced.

Well, no. Unlike the scene of "Wittgenstein's Poker" or the ongoing action of "Rousseau's Dog" in the David Edmonds treatment, nobody knows what Leibniz and Spinoza said to each other, so this is historical fiction at best anyway in that book. And, the two one-star reviews of it make clear that Stewart is a "good" strawmanner.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some in this country believe the U.S. is a "Christian nation," having been founded by Christian believers on Christian principles. Others believe that the religion of the founders was "Deism," a largely rationalist piety that nonetheless focused religiosity on morality. Stewart's book falls in neither category, and in fact, it thoroughly refutes both points of view regarding the views that gave birth to the founding of this country.

The book is a deep and thick historical treatment of the antecedents of the content of the founders' "faith." Stewart makes a compelling case for the notion that the "religion" of the founders wasn't "Deism" unless we qualify that -ism with it's origins in Epicurus and Lucretius and its development in Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibniz. In short, it was not reasoned belief in a non-theistic but benign cosmic machinist, but rather an enlightened and committed atheism that was largely dissembled for purposes of assuaging ecclesiastical and political authorities. In this work, Stewart offers extraordinary references to these philosophers and their views in the works of all the founders -- Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, ... and Thomas Young and Ethan Allen. Overall, the argument and the sourcing demonstrate that the American Revolution is a work in progress, and the United States is the fruit not of rational piety or Christian faith, but of reasoned social and political philosophy that gave rise to the modern world.

Rarely do I rate a book with five stars. but this one most certainly deserves it.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

amazonia

"spends a major part of the book on historical information that is only vaguely related to the origins of the American republic"

"It is unclear how many of the Founders/signers of the Declaration of Independence actually fall within the scope of the author's conclusions on the origins of America's religious beliefs"

"does a good job of going back to the origins of deism, but his writing style is somewhat bulky"

"[takes] the popularity of the American Revolution to present a sort of history of Philosophy with an emphases on Spinoza. The deists he spoke about were already known, but only Jefferson and Franklin were the big names of the Founding Fathers"

[Bill Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously annotated, informed by imposing erudition, Matthew Stewart's book is a lively chronicle of the years leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, especially noteworthy for detailing the unsung contributions (in word and deed) of such revolutionary figures as Ethan Allen and Thomas Young. It is also an admirably lucid survey of radical philosophical thought on the nature of man and the cosmos,

[Barry Belmont · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have made a great 300 page book or a great 800 page book. The problem is it's a 500 page book. It's too dilute to have an impact and too short to have any inertia. Instead of a strong gust or a powerful storm front, this feels like a forgettable windy day, despite the author's laudable huffing and puffing toward the end.

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only made it about 250 pages in. While it's fascinating stuff, and well written for the most part (that is generally accessible to relative novices in American history and philosophy) it was a little esoteric and rambling at times. I think it's an important book, if not a little speculative.

[Damon Glassmoyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you truly want to understand the foundations on which the American experiment rests, read this book! Stewart traces the history of thought and philosophy which formed the thoughts of the Founders. A densely-packed read that amply rewards your effort.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital.

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extensive, multifaceted, and ambitious study of the religious and philosophical ideas that underpinned the foundation of the United States. The book easily weaves together the early history of the USA with the development of modern philosophy. Adventures of Ethan Allen and Thomas Young are followed by meticulous, scholarly passages about the lasting influence of Epicurus and Lucretius. While it may seem like an unconventional way to structure a book, it works surprisingly well, making it highly readable. Overall, the book is somewhat less about the titular "republic" and more about the philosophical "origins". It is a detailed study of Epicurus, Bruno, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke and Hume, along with British deists, liberal religious reformers and American Founding Fathers. Not focused purely on religion and political philosophy, it also delves in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and development of natural sciences.

Stewart argues that the American elites of the Revolutionary era were heirs to a radical philosophical tradition that can be traced all the way back to Epicurus, with Spinoza as its most significant modern proponent. Among the key points of the book are arguments for a Spinozistic, radical interpretation of Locke. This interpretation reveals that, despite his more moderate and reconcilable phrasing, his works contain statements that closely resemble passages from Spinoza's writings. However, many revolutionary-minded Americans did not arrive at deistic conclusions through scholarly readings. Instead, they reached them through instinctive revulsion toward the petty and vicious god presented by zealous preachers. Their freethinking emerged as a reaction to the religious revival, as mass fanaticism led to general saturation and embarrassment among the educated elites. Protestant criticisms of superstitious traditions and priestly oppression easily expanded toward the criticisms of Christianity itself. The revolutionary political upheaval also provided an ideal opportunity to question other conventions and reform religion along more liberal and democratic lines.

The majority of Enlightenment philosophers, and especially American intellectuals, did not deny the existence of God. Instead, they were questioning the traditional concept and attempted to rationally explain the divine nature. In many ways their idea of God, identified with nature and reason rather than mysticism and revelation, is quite similar to what many orthodox believers would label as atheism. However, most of them did not wholly reject popular religion. They considered it useful, especially for the uneducated masses, whose limited reasoning abilities were mended by simple moral instructions. While denying divinity and miracles of Jesus, many saw him as a wise, undogmatic reformer who used simple parables to morally instruct the illiterate. He fought against the priestly oppression and supposedly promoted a deistic religion of evident, reasonable truths – exactly the same type of thought that liberal, middle-class WASPs are naturally attracted to. Although Stewart does not delve into the subsequent evolution of American religiosity, he concludes that the reformist vision of the Founding Fathers was essentially successful. Contemporary popular religion in the USA incorporated many ideas of liberal, popular deism and moved away from the rigid, traditional Christianity.

This is an excellent book, particularly if you are interested in the intellectual background of the modern era. The primary focus on philosophy is skillfully intertwined with the religious, social, and political issues that played a significant role in the formation of the United States. All of this is supplemented by interesting stories and personal details about the American founders. Stewart's positions are generally moderate and convincing. In cases where he presents bolder interpretations of certain authors, he articulates and supports his positions effectively. It is a very interesting, detailed, thought-provoking, and highly recommended book.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ambivalent about this one. Easily 4 stars for depth of research and for overall argument. Much less appealing as a reading experience. It is overwritten. I started skimming about Pg. 50 and got the essence by reading only the first sentence of a number of paragraphs, then returned to fuller reading about 80-100 pages from the end. Was also lukewarm on the writing style and thought there was too much mix of intentions.
The main purpose is to show how Enlightenment ideas, some with origins in ancient Greece, helped shape the American Revolution. But that comes at the cost of an overly long and detailed history of philosophy focused on Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and a few other figures. The intellectual history is also sandwiched into stories about lesser known Revolutionary names, mostly featuring Ethan Allen and one Thomas Young (hadn't known about Young before and found his career remarkable and the book very informative about him).
Stewart makes a very good case for the importance of ideas as movers of historical events. He makes a very good (overly long) case for the importance of ideas in the American Revolution. I'd want a wider perspective to go along with that. Also, he describes in detail what should be the generally known perception that the thinkers behind the founding of U.S. constitutional and political norms were definitely aiming at a commonwealth free from the organized supernatural religion that informed their immediate past. The book was published in 2014. The context of U.S. politics in 2023 raises questions about how sturdy the concept of America as the "empire of reason" has proved to be, and about how important its survival against internal corrosion and foreign challenges will prove to be. Worth the slog, but reading it is a slog.

[Carl Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This deeply intriguing and engagingly written book by Matthew Stewart begins as a personal detective story regarding how rough-hewn patriot Ethan Allen could possibly have authored something so esoteric as "Reason: The Only Oracle of Man"—a curious book that promotes what Hume called "Natural Religion." The answer involves a certain Thomas Young, a intellectual physician and notorious deist who mentored the Allen when they lived across the New York-Connecticut border from each other. Young later moved to Boston, where he became a fiery member of the Sons of Liberty, an instigator of the Boston Tea Party, and subsequently a member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. With this as the opening frame, Stewart proceeds to examine the manifestations and origins of the Natural Religion and its poorly understood connection to Natural Law and the God of Nature so frequently invoked in writings by key figures of the Revolutionary Era.

Stewart's meticulous analysis of the chain of thought running from Epicurius, by way of "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius; through "Leviathan" By Thomas Hobbes, the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" by Benedictus Spinoza, and both "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and "Two Treatises of Government" by John Locke; to "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and "Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary" by David Hume. Stewart then elucidates how the language of conventional Christianity was co-opted by luminaries of the Revolutionary Era such as the polymath Joseph Priestley. These various threads are then tied back to the discussions of Natural Law and the God of Nature in writings of the Revolutionary Era, showing that the pious language frequently cited as evidence of a Christian founding likely reflects an ambiguous mix of Epicureanism/Deism (God as indistinct from Nature), Stoicism/Theism (God as arbiter of Justice), and Christianity.

[Patrick Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone knows that the United States was founded on Christian principles, it's taught in our schools, it's believed by most adults today.....but was it really?

This book delves into the beliefs and thoughts of the founding fathers regarding religion and the religion of the new nation. Most of the founding fathers were deists, which is the belief that God created the world and has since left it alone. It is the belief founded in reason and non believing in "supernatural" happenings. As you read through this book you can see that they relied heavily on the thoughts of Spinoza and other European "enlightened" who came before them.

The inner thoughts are revealed in both actions and private letters that are studied in the book. At times this was a tough read, bogging down and repeating itself as they went from founder to founder however taken as a whole it will be very enlightening to some folks. At tie it reads like a text book but this lends to the fact that it was thoroughly researched and is a scholarly book.

I recommend this book for those who want to know about the religious thoughts of John Locke, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Young, Ethan Allen, Joseph Priestly and other important men in and after the Revolutionary War.

As John Adams said, "This world would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it" - founded on Christian views?

[kevin kvalvik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enlightening book in 100 ways. The title and description make it seem like more of a history of take on the founding fathers and their actual religious leanings. But it is a great deal more as Stewart gives the long explanation to not only every primary American leader in the late 1700's but he shares a encyclopedic overview of pretty much al the philosophers who may have informed them.

The author just cant help himself. He keeps sliding out of a historical narrative into deducing what every philosopher in history thought and said and how this likely influenced thinkers a and b, and how that likely influenced leader c and d, ad infinitum. I'm not saying i didn't find it compelling and radically eye opening, but it is a tome about raw philosophy. I mean start to finish. Hume, Hobbes, descartes, locke, Epicurus, Lucretius and mostly Spinoza (Who should be listed in the title.)

"Wowie... Hume, who gave up supernatural religion near the end of his life, describes Locke's insight in chapter eight with this bitingly accurate summary of the proposed belief structure in the New Testament, saying in an egregiously backhanded compliment that Locke seems to be the first Christian to openly assert 'Faith was nothing but a species of reason,' [and that] religion was a branch of philosophy - epistemology of certainty, 'not the bare authority of him who speaks, but the clear conception of the form of what he says.'"

It's tough sledding, but worth it.

[Caleb]

Helpful for tracing the philosophical roots of the founders specifically through the lens of their deism. If you're looking for more like this, J.C.D. Clark's works are worth checking out (English Society, 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Regime, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution).

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to start this book after reading Emancipation of the Mind. That book was an easy 5 stars and one of the best reads I had in 2024.
Nature's God starts off like gang busters but for me started to spiral into never ending circles of philosophy. Where as Emancipation of the Mind was a balance of history, sociology and some philosophy. Nature's God became repetitive for me.
I did enjoy the focus on some of the lesser know actors from the period (Ethan Allen and Thomas Young) but I felt like I never got enough.
Long chapters... each one starting out with a tale of someone like Ethan Allen, that moved into some sociology type context and then quickly spiraled into one to many pages of Philosophy for my taste.
So if that is your thing you might like this book! Stewart is a great writer but I would reach for Emancipation of the Mind first!