Overview

What can the life and thought of an eighteenth-century clergyman and college president tell us about the political crises that threaten American democracy today, including institutional racism? The Character of a Nation explores the political ethics of American Founding Father and theologian John Witherspoon (1723–1794) and his ideals and failures, asking how a chastened understanding of this important historical figure might inform struggles over American political character in our day. Reflecting the influence of two intellectual traditions, orthodox Calvinism and the Scottish Enlightenment, Witherspoon understood political virtue asa commitment to natural rights, benevolent other-regard, and the common good. Witherspoon thought good political character was essential to American independence and the health of the new republic, and he argued that religious, political, and educational institutions shared a vital responsibility to cultivate character in the nation’s citizens. For all his talk about human rights and benevolent virtue, however, Witherspoon was gravely inconsistent in his allegiance to his ideals, for he was complicit in the enslavement of Black Americans. As a result of this hypocrisy, Witherspoon personifies the mixed moral legacy of the nation he helped birth. Through examining the moral ideals and tragic hypocrisy he represents, The Character of a Nation explains what it means in the 21st century to be a nation founded on progressive ideals of liberty but also the sin of institutionalized racial violence that continues to haunt this country.

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9780567726568

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Reviews

John Witherspoon skillfully straddled the worlds of Calvinism and Scottish liberalism, theology and revolutionary politics, morality and American republicanism, shaping two generations of American statesmen and churchmen from his Princeton pulpit and lectern. But, like many other founders, he betrayed his own best teachings by owning slaves and condoning chattel slavery. This lucid and learned volume offers a powerful portrait of one of America’s great preachers and teachers, while candidly exposing the clay on his feet and the blood on his hands. -- John Witte Jr. * Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law and McDonald Distinguished Professor of Religion, Emory University * James Calvin Davis has crafted a significant study that works on a variety of levels—filling a gap in the historical knowledge of one of the founding figures, politically considering a model of colonial and early republican ideal of Christian and Enlightenment moral support for the nation, and culturally discussing how John Witherspoon’s contributions can still provide a guide through the polarized morass in which the United States finds itself. Unfailingly sharp, deeply researched, and eloquently argued, this work presents Witherspoon in his glories as well as his foibles. The “chastened history” that Davis presents—an argument that family, religion, and higher education have a place in today’s America, offers a set of models for reviving the virtues that would renew the nation’s democratic strengths, while valuing all people who live in the multicultural nation that is America. -- R. Ward Holder * Professor of Theology and Politics, Saint Anselm College *

Author Information

James Calvin Davis is a scholar of theological and philosophical ethics and American religious history who serves as the George Adams Ellis Professor of Liberal Arts & Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont. He is the author of The Moral Theology of Roger Williams: Christian Conviction and Public Ethics (2004) and editor of the annotated On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams (2008), as well as In Defense of Civility (2010), Forbearance: A Theological Ethic for a Disagreeable Church (2017), and the more whimsical American Liturgy: Finding Theological Meaning in the Holy Days of US Culture (2021).

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