摘要：[1]"This book argues that in deciding the place of religion in the new republic, the Founding Fathers, rather than designing a church-state framework of their own, endorsed the emerging free marketplace of religion." Thus Frank Lambert declares the purpose of his book. He reviews the work of two groups of founders, the Planting Fathers, who established English-speaking colonies in North America, and the Founding Fathers, who set up the constitutional structures that still control the United States. Lambert is eager to demonstrate the evolutionary distance between the two.[2]Part 1 of Lambert's book outlines the work of the Planting Fathers. Separate chapters address the English background, and the experience of Massachusetts, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. In each of these chapters, Lambert describes the efforts of a group of Planting Fathers to establish correct religious structures for their colony. Some of the perspectives he provides are useful correctives to traditional stereotypes, such as the notion that Massachusetts was founded by dour and gloomy fundamentalists, while Virginia was the land of tobacco and secular jollity
