Several years ago, while I was a fellow at Monticello, I had the pleasure of regularly discussing James Madison with a scholar who was working down the hall. One day I remarked that his perspective on Madison was different from anything that I had read in the historiography; he laughed and let me in on his secret: He was a political scientist, not a historian. As a junior and somewhat naïve academic, this was a revelation. Since then, I have realized how significant the academic communication gap across disciplines is, a pedagogical problem exacerbated by over-specialization within fields and the proliferation of new departments. This problem is evidenced by the differences in Professor Goldford's and my approach to the establishment clause of the First Amendment: We both conclude that a separationist reading is appropriate: he for reasons of political science; I based on the historic record. Each approach has great value; both can benefit from the insights of the other's discipline; neither, standing alone, is wholly adequate for all purposes.

Professor Goldford's primary concern with my book seems to be that it never directly engages the political science question that was central to his volume, that is, not what Jefferson (or other Founders or American citizens or opinion-leaders in the 19th century) understood the First Amendment to mean, but how it is best interpreted in light of political realities, textualism, and jurisprudence. Of course, my book was never intended to engage those issues, and I certainly never suggest that Founders' original intent is normative because they intended it to be so (a proposition fraught with both historic and intellectual difficulties, as Goldford notes). A myriad of texts address the question of whether the original understanding of constitutional provisions should bind the modern Supreme Court, an issue that I simply touch upon. A short volume of essays featuring a paper by Justice Scalia and responses from leading legal, philosophical, and historical scholars provides an excellent introduction to this topicFootnote ⁴ — but a broad bibliography could be provided. That, though — the jurisprudential value of originalism — is a separate issue which neither Professor Goldford nor I address at length.

Nonetheless, care must be taken here in recognizing the different contributions of the “other” field, political science or history. This may not simply be a case of “ships passing in the night.” As noted in my review, Professor Goldford is not wholly consistent in his disregard of a historic analysis, and at times, he seems to endorse, even if inadvertently, poor history by suggesting, as he does again in his review, that “we still face competing historical accounts.” Of course there are competing accounts; that is why careful analysis and review of the evidence is essential to reaching sound conclusions. It should go without saying that we also face competing views of the text and political science, but that does not justify simply concluding that political science cannot assist on the issue — a proposition which Goldford's book disproves.

Good history matters, not only in its own right as an academic matter, but since judges and lawyers will rely on originalism (for political science and jurisprudential reasons that, admittedly, I only touch upon) it is essential that the history be based on proper contextual analysis, careful parsing of the historiography, and sound evidence. Justice Rehnquist's attacks on the centrality of the Jeffersonian vision (joined by Justices Thomas and Scalia and a group of modern historians (and pseudo-historians)) are based upon bad history, and it is important to make that clear. As I observed in my book in response to an exchange on originalism by Jill Lepore and Gordon Wood, “[t]he real issue is good versus bad originalism, and historians need to take ownership of that discourse” (217). How, then, good history is used by the courts is, as Professor Goldford quite rightly notes, a different matter.

Turning to one other specific concern, Goldford quotes Richard John Neuhaus for the proposition that a “state and society must draw from the same moral well,” and suggests that this observation, if correct, would be inconsistent with Jeffersonian notions of separation of church and state. Professor Goldford addresses Neuhaus' concerns in his own work; for these purposes, suffice it to say that in a Jeffersonian sense the moral foundation of a religious society and a secular state are certainly the same — both recognize the voluntary principle and the limited role of the state which, appropriately, is secular. One might note Jeffersonian John Leland's “give to Caesar” and “gates of hell” admonitions to those who try to mix church and state. As I make clear in Religious Freedom and my early work to both Jeffersonians and eighteenth century evangelicals, there was no inconsistency here.Footnote ⁵

Perhaps much of this discussion is not surprising. In fact, one suspects that someone familiar with the fields would have anticipated the different approaches by a historian and political scientist and, conceivably, much of these essays might have been anticipated without reading the books or the reviews. Still, it is a useful exercise. If nothing else, we need all be deeply cognizant of the lack of communication across disciplines and seek to address it when possible. We should encourage inter-disciplinary discourse across departments, institutions, and the lunch table. Hopefully these review essays will provide more light than smoke in that regard and encourage further inter-disciplinary analyses.