Dustin Gish teaches ancient, early modern, and American constitutionalism in the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at the University of Oklahoma. He has published articles, book chapters, review essays, and reviews on topics in the history of political philosophy on the political thought of Homer, Xenophon, Plato, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Jefferson. His work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, History of Political Thought, Perspectives onPolitical Science, Polis, The Review of Politics, and Bryn Mawr Classical Review. He is also contributing co-editor of two volumes on Shakespeare’s political thought (Souls With Longing:Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare and Shakespeare and the Body Politic), and of The Political Thought of Xenophon.Daniel Klinghard is associate professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches American national government. He is the author of The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880-1896 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which was awarded the Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award by the Political Parties and Organizations section of the American Political Science Association. He has published in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Polity, and The Journal of Politics.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1The Mutual Influence of Biblical Religion and Enlightenment Reason at the American FoundingDustin Gish and Daniel KlinghardPart I — Reason and FaitChapter 2: Faiths of Our Modern Fathers: Bacon’s Progressive Hope and Locke’s Liberal ChristianityRobert FaulknerChapter 3: The Radical Enlightenment’s Critique of the American RevolutionJonathan IsraelChapter 4: “Nature’s God” as Deus sive Natura: Spinoza, Jefferson, and the Historical Transmission of the Theological-Political QuestionJeffrey BernsteinPart II — Biblical Rhetoric and RepublicanismChapter 5: Benjamin Franklin, Virtue’s Ethics, and “Political Truth”Carla MulfordChapter 6: Evil Counselors, Corrupt Traitors, and Bad Kings: The Hebrew Bible and Political Critique in Revolutionary America and BeyondEran ShalevChapter 7: Biblical Narratives and Enlightenment Methodology: Religion, Reason, and Republicanism in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of VirginiaDustin Gish and Daniel KlinghardPart III — Religion and PoliticsChapter 8: Charles Carroll, the American Revolution, and Catholic Identity: Constitutional Discourses in Revolutionary MarylandMaura FarrellyChapter 9: The Founding Founders’ Disagreements about Church and StateVincent Philip MuñozChapter 10: Alexander Hamilton, Religion, and American ConservatismPeter McNamaraPart IV — LegaciesChapter 11: In the Valley of the Dry Bones: Lincoln’s Biblical Oratory and the Coming of the Civil WarDanilo Petranovich and Matthew HolbreichChapter 12: Enlightenment Philosophy, Biblical Religion, and Tocqueville’s New Science of PoliticsAristide TessitoreContributorsIndex

Was America a city upon a hill, or was it just a skirmish in the larger battle between Ancients and Moderns? The essays in this volume reject these familiar alternatives and propose a third way. In so doing, they contribute to our growing understanding of the Enlightenment while at the same time forcing us to consider early American political thought in its own terms. Gish and Klinghard have put together a volume that should be essential reading for students of the early republic and for students of the Enlightenment.