Regarding One Nation Under Law
Professor Johann Neem in the Journal of the Early Republic (Summer, 2006)
“Mark D. McGarvie’s One Nation Under Law is the most innovative recent study of church-state relations in the early republic. McGarvie’s argument is nuanced and sophisticated in ways that no summary can capture. His writing is clear and a joy to read.”
Professor Derek Davis in The American Journal of Legal History (July, 2005)
“This is one of the best scholarly works in years to argue effectively for the separation of church and state as part of the founders’ original intent. The book’s emphasis on the contact clause in facilitating separationism is instructive and makes this book one of genuine originality. McGarvie proves himself in this book to be a superb historian of law and the history of ideas.”
Professor Donna Spindel in The Historian (December, 2006)
“There is a great deal to digest in the study. The author does not shy away from laying out his own perspective, as controversial as it may be. But the scholarship is sold, the subject is timely, and the author’s arguments should help to inform the contemporary national debate about religion and government.”
Professor Robert Drinan in Journal of Church and State (Summer, 2005)
“This unique and valuable study reminds all of us of the complexities of the arrangements between religion and government in America. The use of the law about contracts as developed in the Dartmouth decision in church-state jurisprudence is new and creative. For those who specialize in church-state issues in America, this book is essential reading. They will find it to be subtle and sophisticated scholarship. For readers less involved directly in trying to fathom the place of God and Caesar in modern America, this book will show them the subtleties and the depths of what is at stake as civil and religious forces continue to seek to prevail in making operational their firmly held views on what constitutes the good society.”
Professor Timothy Hall in the American Historical Review (October, 2005)
“The law of contracts undoubtedly assisted in the restructuring of churches and religious schools from public to private institutions. Accordingly, McGarvie’s word is important for detailing the assistance and locating it within a broader historical context. McGarvie is most convincing when his analysis inspires readers to pay more attention to the law – contract law in particular – in understanding this historical process of disestablishment.”
Professor Charles Clark in The Journal of American History (December, 2005)
“The real constitutional source of American law on the relationship between church and state, claims Mark Douglas McGarvie in this insightful book, is not the First Amendment, but the contract clause in Article I, Section 10. McGarvie, a specialist in law as well as American history, presents a fresh and well-documented argument based on both a comprehensive investigation of contract law and a thoughtful discussion of the variant idealogies of republicanism. In a brief conclusion that alludes ever so gently to contemporary debates on this sensitive matter, McGarvie refutes the idea that the Founders did not contemplete the separation of church and state. McGarvie’s anaylsis, though some readers may feel the point is a bit streched at the end, will almost certainly provoke a serious reconsideration of the important issues this exciting book addresses.”
Professor Frank Lambert in the Journal of Ecclesiastic History
“In this insightful contribution to the debate, Mark Douglas McGarvie makes a separationist argument, but contends that, more than the constitution or culture, law fixed the place of religion in America. Like a good lawyer arguing before a jury, McGarvie offers a convincing brief for the separation of church and state. He summons evidence from constitutional debate, legal theory, and court cases and presents them within historical context. He is, however, judicious in the use of his evidence. Though arguing for separation, he acknowledges the importance and extent of religion in the early republic and the refusal of some sects to acquiesce in the principle of separation. Overall, this well-written book makes an important statement in the ongoing debate over the question of the separation of church and state and should appeal in particular to the general reader.”
Professor Richard Bradley in the South Carolina Historical Magazine
(January, 2006)
“Evangelist Pat Robertson once stated that “there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. It’s a lie of the liberal left.” Anyone who cringes at that statement would do well to read this excellent monograph. McGarvie has produced a well-documented and subtly informed descriptive analysis of the movement to separate church from state in antebellum America. As a case study in what happened during the early national period when civic virtue replaced Christian belief as the touchstone of American morality, the book is an important contribution to the literature of the republican synthesis. It is also an important critique of the “instrumentalist” school of American legal history. McGarvie argues that ideas, rather than social interests, were key in the reformulation of both social and legal policy in the Early Republic. Finally, it is important as a contribution to the general history of the early national period. Anyone with an interest in early national U.S. history or, indeed, with an opinion on current political debates about the separation of church and state in America would profit from this book.”
Professor Robert Calhoon in The Journal of Southern History (August, 2006)
“The extensively researched, well-written book narrates the “struggle” to separate church and state during the early national period. Trained in both law and history, the author suggests that the clinching phase of that struggle was the contract clause of the Constitution, which, he argues, transformed churches from quasi-public bodies into private associations whose founding covenants and subsequent actions were immune to political regulation.”
Professor Thomas Kidd in Church History (summer, 2006)
“In this creative and well-researched book, Mark Douglas McGarvie argues that the Constitution helped construct a wall of separation between church and state, but not primarily through the establishment clause of the first amendment. Instead, he believes that the critical section of the Constitution, used later by John Marshall’s Supreme Court to draw a clear boundary between church and state, was the contracst clause of Article 1. This clause protects private contracts from interference by the government. In the colonial period, Christian churches had been seen as having all manner of public functions, from being the guarantors of morality to the chief distributors of poor relief. By the early republic, as highlighted in the landmark Dartmouth College decision (1819), religious bodies became conceived as private voluntary organizations, and faith became seen as an individual, personal matter. The reenvisioning of faith was the critical precursor that allowed the separation of the public governmental sphere from the private realm of the churches.
In pointing to the ironic role of the Dartmouth College case, and contract law generally, McGarvie has provided a fascinating and convincing examination of the constitutional basis for the separation of church and state. Although the ever elusive matter of constitutional intent remains unclear, he effectively demonstrates that while “the Constitution did not directly separate church and state, it did provide the idealogical and legal structure” that made separation possible. Whether the contract clause also made separation “inevitable” is doubtful, for success by liberals seems to have been contingent upon their active use of contract law in the early republic. Nevertheless, McGarvie’s learned and compelling history opens a substantially new line of investigation in what had seemed to be a well-worn topic.”
Regarding Charity, Philantrophy and Civility in American History
Professor Conrad Edick Wright in the American Historical Review
“… a work that attempts nothing less than a new synthesis of its topic. [It] offers both historians and professionals in the not-for-profit world a valuable new account of the origins and development of the amorphous segment of American life that is neither commerical nor governmental.”
Professor John Schneider in the Journal of American History
“Charity, Philantrophy, and Civility in America” is a welcome addition to the literature. … arguably the most important piece in the volume, Mark D. McGarvie’s reexamination of the Dartmouth College vs Woodward case (1819), is more traditional in approach. His fresh reading of the decision and its impact shows that the case did not simply delineate the public and private spheres, it also made voluntary associations for religious and other causes more necessary, even desirable, thereby laying the groundwork for the symbiotic relationship between the growth of a robust nonprofit sector and the rise of programmatic philanthropy.”
Professor Axel Schafer in Reviews in History
“Considering that research has developed under the auspices of a wide variety of historical subfields with their own ways of conceptualising philantrophic action, the editors of this volume have largely succeeded in providing a well-designed, perceptive and stimulating book. The volume never loses track of the larger historical context and rarely gets bogged down in overly specialised case studies. Moreover, Friedman and McGarvie avoid the pitfalls of many edited collections, namely blatant qualitative differences between contributions and a lack of coherence. A rigorous selection process and pre-publication meetings helped give the volume the necessary substance and unity of focus.
Friedman and McGarvie chose to organise the book chronologically, but, as the introduction shows, the thematic foci of the contributions form its most thought-provoking component. Five themes in particular give shape to the volume and define its scholarly significance: the historical shifts in demarcating the public, private and charitable realms; the relationships between the state, private business and non-profit organisations; the institutional development of philanthropic entities; reciprocity and mutual construction of giver and recipient in charity relations; and debates about the political radicalism or conservatism of philantrophy. It is worth taking a closer took at the contributions some of the essays make in these four areas.Philanthropy, though commonly regarded as a separate space between government and private market, developed in relationship with both realms. Moreover, the borders between ‘private’, ‘public’, and ‘third sector’ are fluid and constantly negotiated. One of the most intruiging contributions in this area is Mark McGarvie’s essay (chapter 4) on the 1819 Dartmouth College case in which the Supreme Court struck down efforts of the New Hampshire state legislature to turn a religious college into a state university in the pursuit of republican and secular education goals. In his analysis, McGarvie shows that the Court’s assertion of the superiority of private contract rights over the public interest and its rejection of the colonial integration of church and state became the legal basis of modern philantropic organisations. In a manner reminiscent of J.G. A. Pocock, McGarvie views this as an example of a counterrevolutionary impulse which benefited Protestant churches and promoted the development of a liberal idealogy which elevated individual freedoms over the communitarian values of republicanism. The judicial insistence on church-state separatism and contract law thus recognised individual rights as superior to the public good.”
Professor Gerald Vaughn in Book Notes
“This collection of exceedingly valuable essays, edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, comprises a comprehensive historical review of charity and philanthropy, and civility in the United States. With contributions from thses editors and 17 other well-qualified scholars, the end product’s quality cannot be in doubt.”