“Easy, often interrogative, almost conversational prose renders this an accessible text. . . . A poignant reminder that understanding debates about religion is essential to understanding America’s founding, history, and present. . . . Recommended.”
—CHOICE
Publishers Weekly
“Effectively interweaving legal and philosophical analysis, the author provides a fresh challenge to standard constitutional discourse, with implications for such issues as free speech, individualism, and religious freedom. This is sure to spark debate.”
“Steven D. Smith is one of the nation’s best students of religion’s role in American public life. In this excellent and timely book, he argues persuasively that the United States was founded on the providentialist view that God actively directs the destiny of nations. In doing so, he demonstrates that the Constitution is not a godless document, that the First Amendment does not require a religion-free public square, and that providentialism remained pervasive until the mid-twentieth century.”
—Mark David Hall, Regent University
“Steven D. Smith is arguably the most important scholar on religion and American Constitutional Law today. With the disposition of Socrates or Lieutenant Columbo, Smith interrogates—with wit, insight, and good humor—the platitudes, just-so stories, and truisms that have dominated law and religion scholarship and Supreme Court jurisprudence since the middle of the twentieth century. Although The Godless Constitution and the Providential Republic has much to commend it as a work of scholarship, it is also accessible for anyone interested in the relationship between religion and the Constitution in both history and the courts.”
—Francis J. Beckwith, Baylor University
“This book offers a penetrating assessment of the history, recent judicial decisions, and deeper considerations attending the intersection of American law and belief in God. Its conclusion, that ‘only a god can save us’ from contemporary confusions, is persuasively argued. Even more compelling is the exacting care with which the book parses the crucial but contested phrases describing that intersection: neutrality, pluralism, agnostic atheism, agnostic theism, secularism, providentialism, public atheism, liberalism, and more.”
—Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame
“Could I assign required reading for America’s religious leaders, Steven D. Smith’s The Godless Constitution and the Providential Republic might top the list. His is the critical insight so often missing in discussions of religion in America. Nowhere else will readers find a more insightful (and readable) account of how a historically Providence-oriented America morphed into the secular society we now inhabit, and what this profound transition may bode for the nation’s future.”
—Duane Litfin, Wheaton College
“Here is Steven D. Smith’s interim (one hopes) report on his career-long inquiry into the relationship between secular rationality and providentialism—the idea that we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being. In a brisk, witty and yet learned style, Smith demonstrates how difficult and unrewarding it is to erase the vision and hope of a United States marching under God’s banner.”
—Stanley Fish, Florida International University
