Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: God and the Founders 3 2 5
that the Madisonian non-cognizance approach, which so accurately predicts
modern results, has roots not so much in the Enlightenment, but, as Philip
Hamburger has pointed out in Separation of Church and State, among the
evangelical dissenters. These dissenters, and especially Virginia’s increasingly
numerous Baptists, were, of course, one of the primary target audiences for
Madison’s anonymously written Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious
Assessments, which is the canonical text from which Muñoz derives
Madisonianism. Yet, even among the dissenters, it was a controversial position:
Virginia’s Presbyterians waffled on the assessment bill that Madison
opposed in the Memorial, and his non-cognizance approach was a threat
to Quakers, Mennonites and others who wanted the state to accommodate
their desire to be exempted from military service. So, to the extent that the
establishment clause now reflects a considerable degree of Madisonianism,
we have inherited a viewpoint that, in the constitutional era, was shared
only by a fairly small number of dissenting Protestants. Of far greater concern
among the more populous Protestant groups at the time was the purely
demographic fact that no one denomination could be assured of preeminent
status throughout the new nation, and it was therefore safer all around to have
no national establishment than to risk the possibility that the wrong church
would become the legally favored one. The non-cognizance standard Muñoz
finds in Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance has been durable and longlived,
but, at the time of the founding, it was a distinctly minority view.
Not so with Washingtonianism, which was likely the dominant
perspective on God and government of America’s ruling class when the
Constitution was drafted. There may have been lively debates over dollarsand-cents
issues surrounding tax support for specific churches, but nearly
all could agree that a God-fearing citizenry was essential for republican government
to survive. Most states restricted public office-holding to Christians
or even to Protestants, and the most contentious issue involving religion in
the constitutional ratification debates was the absence of a religious test in
the federal Constitution. To give Washingtonianism its demographic due,
Muñoz could have added a lengthy catalogue of influential framers who supported
this position, a list that would dwarf the proponents of the other two
philosophies he discusses (and, interestingly, Washingtonianism would support
religious litigants in establishment clause cases 100 percent of the time).
Jeffersonianism, in Muñoz’s hands, becomes, in many respects,
a variation on Washington’s views. He too would let government promote religion;
the difference is that we tend to associate Washington with conventional