Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, writes Mark David Hall, the Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics at George Fox University, is the “first systematic study” of Connecticut's most famous Founder “that takes seriously his political theory and his theological commitments” (4). Aside from his well-known role in crafting the Great Compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, there is little scholarship on Sherman, and what little there is neglects Reformed Christianity's immense impact on him. Hall's book, not a biography but a chronological study of Sherman's political contributions and thought, argues that Sherman's political views (and those of many other Founders, especially from New England) were largely shaped by his Calvinist faith.

According to Hall, Reformed Christians believe that “humans are created in the image of God, are sinful, and possess God-given rights” (151). They also believe in natural rights, religious liberty, limited government, the rule of law, republican political institutions, consent of the governed, that government must promote the common good, and that the people have the right to overthrow tyrannical rulers. Most literature on the Founding credits John Locke for originating these political concepts, even though they existed in Reformed Christianity long before Locke. Hall points out that Reformed writings—especially the Bible—were much more widespread in Revolutionary America than Locke's writings were, and that a majority of Americans at the time “associated with Calvinist churches” (29). As is the case with Lockean liberalism, many political ideas commonly attributed to classical republicanism—such as the importance of virtue—can also be found in Reformed writings.

A self-made and self-educated man, Sherman became a lawyer and businessman before turning to politics. After holding a variety of local offices, including justice of the peace, he entered Connecticut's General Assembly in 1755. He advanced to the state's upper house and joined the Superior Court just over a decade later. Hall shows that Sherman, a Congregationalist church member well versed in the Bible, often cited Reformed theology in his speeches and writings, for example to justify his opposition to slavery, which he helped to end in Connecticut. In 1783 he and Richard Law revised the state's laws, and ushered the new code through the legislature.

Sherman believed that church and state should be “mutually supportive” (84) and that while dissenters should worship freely, the state government must promote Christianity as “necessary for public happiness and political prosperity” (87). Thus Connecticut's “Act for Securing the Rights of Conscience” required church attendance, supported established religion with tax revenue, upheld the Sabbath, required families to own Bibles, and demanded that officeholders take Christian oaths. Hall suggests that Sherman's faith led him to favor wage and price controls, sumptuary laws, and sin taxes to promote morality among a sin-prone population.

As early as the Stamp Act in 1765, Sherman “denied that Parliament had any authority whatsoever over the colonies” (58). He and other Calvinists expressed alarm over the 1774 Quebec Act extending absolutist Catholicism into the Old Northwest, and feared the British government would appoint an Anglican bishop in America. Sitting in Congress from 1774 until 1784, Sherman was among the longest-serving members of that body. Hall admits that Sherman's role on the Declaration of Independence drafting committee is not clear, but insists the document's political ideas fit well with his Calvinism. Sherman's part in composing the Articles of Confederation is similarly unclear, though he was also a member of the committee to draft that document. In the floor debate over representation, he suggested that legislation should require majority support of both delegates and states, foreshadowing his 1787 Connecticut Compromise. After initially defending the Articles in the name of state sovereignty, Sherman by 1787 conceded that Congress needed the power to tax and control commerce.

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Sherman spoke more times than all but three of the delegates. Wanting the federal regime to resemble Connecticut's government as much as possible, he favored a weak executive to be chosen by Congress and lacking veto and appointment power. He also thought that congressmen chosen by the state legislatures would be much more qualified than ones chosen by the people. Expecting to revise the Articles, Sherman, argues Hall, was “appalled” by the Virginia Plan (93), which proposed to replace the Confederation with a wholly national federation. Hall maintains that Sherman's successful crusade for the Great Compromise was motivated more by a desire to protect the states qua states than to protect the little states. Although an opponent of slavery, Sherman accepted the Constitution's proslavery provisions to keep the deep South in the Union, and he did not fight to have the Constitution protect Christianity because he saw religion, like most matters, as a state issue. Sherman wrote half a dozen newspaper essays supporting ratification, and argued at the state ratification convention that Congress's enumerated powers posed no threat to Connecticut's sovereignty.

The oldest member of the First Congress, Sherman opposed a federal Bill of Rights as unnecessary, but served on the House committees that prepared amendments, and he successfully fought to have them added to the end of the Constitution rather than to incorporate them into the document's original text. Hall contends that Sherman did not intend the First Amendment to create a “wall of separation” between church and state, as evidenced by Sherman's support for federal proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving, the appointment of chaplains in the army, and requirements for troops to attend church. One exception to Sherman's belief in a limited federal government is his backing of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's proposals to fund the national debt, have the federal government assume the state debts, and to create a national bank, all of which Sherman felt was clearly implied in Congress's enumerated powers. Sherman served in the Senate from 1791 until death in 1793.

Madison is often cited as the definitive authority on the establishment clause of the First Amendment, but Hall maintains that Sherman better represents the Founders on the subject. Although it is not Hall's thesis, the Sherman-Madison rivalry evident in the book left its mark on US history. Sherman often proved a formidable opponent to Madison. Time and again, the two went head-to-head during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, with Sherman usually winning. To Madison's consternation, Sherman secured the states' equal representation in the Senate, and the election of the Senate by the state legislatures. Sherman also successfully opposed Madison's quests for a congressional veto of state laws, and for an executive-judicial council of revision to review proposed federal legislation. Sherman's victories transformed Madison's Virginia Plan into a compound (partly national, partly federal) republican constitution capable of winning ratification. Ironically, Sheman thus made it possible for Madison to become recognized as “the Father of the Constitution.” By not leaving behind a body of writing to match Madison's Federalist essays, however, the “rhetorically handicapped” (3) Sherman ensured his own fate as a forgotten Founder.