“Now, nearly two and a half centuries after the Founding, the religious and political climate in America would seem a prime exhibit to support the Old Testament’s lesson that there is no thing new under the sun,” writes Jon Meacham.
In 1822, Meacham explains, Jefferson worried aloud: “The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all.”
Jon Meacham writes about religion in his book American Gospel—God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation.