> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 June 2007
  • ISBN: 9780812976663
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $32.99

American Gospel

God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation



"An insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life."--Tom Brokaw  

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith—and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice.

At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well.

Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward.

Praise for American Gospel

“In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”—David McCullough, author of 1776

“Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation

  • Published: 15 June 2007
  • ISBN: 9780812976663
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Jon Meacham

JON MEACHAM is the author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. He is also most recently the editor of American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.

Also by Jon Meacham

See all

Praise for American Gospel

"Present[s] irrefutable evidence that our greatest leaders and thinkers knew where the work of God stopped and the need for human creativity began."--New York Times Book Review

"What has very much been needed is such a voice of [Meacham's] reasoned calm. American Gospel confirms that religion had a great deal to do with the genesis of the nation. . . [An] invaluable book."--William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review