How Religious Was John Adams?
In the event that Mike Nelson’s thoughtful analysis of the HBO’s seven-part biopic on John Adams did not satiate your appetite for all things colonial and revolutionary, I suggest you check out the dialogue between the historian (and Review contributor) John Patrick Diggins and Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com, taking place at The New Republic’s Web site. Waldman, who is out with a new book that examines the religious convictions of the founding fathers, lavishes praise on the production values of the film but questions why it “ignores the role of religion as a cause of rebellion even though Adams himself wrote that fear of British religious meddling contributed ‘as much as any other cause, to arouse the attention not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people.'” Diggins, a professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Adams biographer, writes in response that “many of the Calvinist ministers knew their John Locke and the righ
