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Book Review: Darrell L. Guder. Called to Witness: Doing Missional Theology

It is this latter class of self-proclaimed historians, and their claim that secular historians are warping the story of our nation’s founding, that are the objects of Frank Lambert’s criticism in Separation of Church and State: Founding Principle of Religious Liberty. Lambert, a veteran American historian associated with Purdue University, is not subtle in his criticisms of David Barton, John Eidsmoe, and other historians who claim an explicitly Christian origin for the United States. Not only do these men generally lack proper historical credentials, they also ignore standard historical methods as they write, assuming, for instance, that the United States was founded as a Christian nation simply because the founders said positive things about the Christian faith. After criticizing the methods of his opponents, Lambert spends the rest of the book outlining the actual ideological origins of the United States with an eye towards the claims of Barton and others like him. The author examines colonial Massachusetts as an actual example of a Christian commonwealth, and Lambert is at his best when he demonstrates that the government of that corner of New England asserted a right to regulate economic life that contemporary American conservatives could never affirm today. Later, during the eighteenth century, the influence of the Enlightenment on some and the Great Awakening on others created a broadening consensus among Americans that religion was profoundly personal and therefore beyond the pale of government regulation. Although some colonial religious establishments and religious tests for public office remained into the 19th century, Lambert demonstrates that these habits of government were holdovers from the past, disappearing during the decades following the ratification of the Constitution. Lambert’s book bears the marks of having been written quickly. He misattributes Massachusetts’ 1691 charter to James II, and occasionally makes statements that lack nuance, as when he claims that “one who sees the world through a Fundamentalist prism cannot interpret the past as anything but a Christian narrative” (p. 24). In fact, the entire book is written in a polemical tone, a fact that will repel some readers who might most benefit from the information that Lambert offers. With that said, Lambert has offered a volume that presents a concise, readable refresher course on the secular origins of the United States. It will appeal to the general reader and to sympathetic members of church-based small groups.