The American Deists

Challenging carved-in-stone tenets of Christianity, deism began sprouting in colonial America in the early eighteenth century, was flourishing nicely by the American Revolution, and for all intents and purposes was dead by 1811. Despite its hasty demise, deism left a theological legacy. Christian sensibility would never be quite the same.

Bringing together the works of six major American deists—Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, Elihu Palmer, and Philip Frenau—an...