The Character of a Nation: John Witherspoon and the Moral Foundation of the United States

What can the life and thought of an eighteenth-century clergyman and college president tell us about the political crises that threaten American democracy today, including institutional racism? The Character of a Nation explores the political ethics of American Founding Father and theologian John Witherspoon (1723-1794) and his ideals and failures, asking how a chastened understanding of this important historical figure might inform struggles over American political character in our day.

Reflecting the influence of two intellectual traditions, orthodox Calvinism and the Scottish Enlightenment, Witherspoon understood political virtue asa commitment to natural rights, benevolent other-regard, and the common good. Witherspoon thought good political character was essential to American independence and the health of the new republic, and he argued that religious, political, and educational institutions shared a vital responsibility to cultivate character in the nation’s citizens. For all his talk about human rights and benevolent virtue, however, Witherspoon was gravely inconsistent in his allegiance to his ideals, for he was complicit in the enslavement of Black Americans. As a result of this hypocrisy, Witherspoon personifies the mixed moral legacy of the nation he helped birth.

Through examining the moral ideals and tragic hypocrisy he represents, The Character of a Nation explains what it means in the 21st century to be a nation founded on progressive ideals of liberty but also the sin of institutionalized racial violence that continues to haunt this country.

James Calvin Davis is a scholar of theological and philosophical ethics and American religious history who serves as the George Adams Ellis Professor of Liberal Arts & Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont. He is the author of The Moral Theology of Roger Williams: Christian Conviction and Public Ethics (2004) and editor of the annotated On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams (2008), as well as In Defense of Civility (2010), Forbearance: A Theological Ethic for a Disagreeable Church (2017), and the more whimsical American Liturgy: Finding Theological Meaning in the Holy Days of US Culture (2021).