America, Biblical Religion, and Covenantalism

Steven D. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City is an important and unique contribution to the vast literature on the American culture war. Smith’s distinction between immanent and transcendent religion refines and deepens James Davidson Hunter’s famous analysis of this conflict. As illuminating as this volume is, however, it fails to fully appreciate the religious dimension of the American founding. Specifically, Smith does not acknowledge or account for the covenantal nature of the American founding, and thus does not recognize the full degree to which the American experiment was informed by the transcendent religions of the Western world, namely, Judaism and Christianity.