James H. Hutson is chief of the manuscript division at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

'Can an atheist be a good American?' Religion and the New Republic is a quite helpful and scholarly presentation of various ways to answer this important historical question.

• Chapter 1 "A Most Mild and Equitable Establishment of Religion": John Adams and the Massachusetts ExperimentChapter 2 The Use and Abuse of Jefferson's Statute: Separating Church and State in Ninteenth-Century VirginiaChapter 3 Thomas Jefferson, a Mammoth Cheese, and the "Wall of Separation Between Church and State"Chapter 4 The Revolution in the Churches: Women's Religious Activism in the Early American RepublicChapter 5 Evangelicals in the American Founding and Evangelical Political Mobilization TodayChapter 6 The Influence of Judaism and Christianity on the American FoundingChapter 7 Why Revolutionary America Wasn't a "Christian Nation"