Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War by Christopher Grasso (review)

On the cover of Christopher Grasso’s new book about American Protestantism, the stately torso of George Washington hovers in the clouds with outstretched arms while Abraham Lincoln ascends toward him, getting crowned by angels as the two figures approach union. The apotheosis painting is an ideal image to suggest what Grasso has accomplished in this impressive work, which spans the period from the Revolution to the Civil War and explores the vast and misty role of Christianity in the making of the nation. Both the image and the book float above the complicated landscape where relationships are messy and life is unfair; both suggest the loftiest of feelings and ideas.

The wars themselves, and their causes, are largely absent from Grasso’s work, however, and Washington and Lincoln are minor figures in his history. The book nonetheless ends with Lincoln, a Lincoln who helps clarify Grasso’s purpose in the book. Lincoln’s absorption in the published sermons of William Ellery Channing—the most important liberal Christian in American history—goes unmentioned, as does the public faith in democratic ideals that Lincoln expressed throughout his political life. Grasso’s Lincoln instead matures from youthful skepticism into religious conviction, into “a Calvinism without Christ” (489). Throughout the book Grasso plays a dialectic between skepticism and faith, using Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address to conclude that rather than any “simple arc toward a more religious or more secular American future,” the relationship between faith and skepticism is a constant of American life, so affixed that “the continued dialogue of skepticism and faith, like death and politics, may be a certainty, too” (491).

For Grasso, the dialogue of skepticism and faith transcends history, then, as an immobile feature of the American landscape. He makes this fatalistic view even clearer in his fascinating appendix, “Grounds of Faith and Modes of Skepticism.” Here Grasso engages in an extended analysis of his archive, which includes the papers of a dozen major figures plus hundreds of pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers published between 1775 and 1865. His immersion in the periodical literature enables Grasso to access a “public commentary” on matters of faith that goes beyond “canonical philosophers and theologians” (493). Of course, a public that includes the likes of Frances Wright and Orestes Brownson transmits and converts the ideas of philosophers and theologians, but Grasso is most interested in the “patterns of discussion” that seem to repeat among this “middling literate” sort across time (493). He then summarizes his findings on the foundations of faith and varieties of skepticism that prevailed across the period and finds four basic modes of skepticism, including “lazy doubting,” the “expression of infirmity, disease, or sin,” and immaturity. As he explains, “Religious believers had antidotes for all of them: scripture, the inner witness, and the faithful community” (505).

As the last line of the book, this pious testament must give some readers occasion for a satisfying nod of assent. For other readers, it confirms the sense that the only fixed point in Grasso’s history is a certain kind of Protestant Christianity, which he calls “the Christian mainstream,” “mainstream Christian,” or “orthodox.” The trouble is that there never was any such thing as orthodox Christianity in the United States. Even in colonies with established churches, like Massachusetts—which, as Grasso notes, maintained church establishment well into statehood—and no matter how much some ministers tried to police church doctrine, heterodoxy was normal; heterodoxy is built into Protestantism, and especially into New England Congregationalism, which never had a central administration. Many of Grasso’s so-called skeptics were deeply faithful Christians whose very faith called them to ask questions and to believe their consciences were more divine than the frozen letter of any codified creed. As I argue elsewhere, these Christians called themselves “liberal” because they thought fellowships should include diverse believers. Those who objected called themselves “orthodox,” a claim to righteousness Grasso supports with...