John R. Vile | Rowman & Littlefield | 2020

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern

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“...for pathos of narrative; for the selections of incidents that go directly to the heart; for the picturesque of character and manner; the selection of circumstances that mark the individuality of persons; for copiousness, grandeur, and sublimity of imagery; for unanswerable cogency and closeness of reasoning; and for irresistible force of persuasion; no book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible,” wrote John Quincy Adams in a letter to his son, George Washington Adams, in 1813.

As John R. Vile demonstrates in his encyclopedia, The Bible in American Law and Politics, Adams, and his son’s namesake, were among the countless American leaders who turned to the Bible to speak to, and about, the American project. An invaluable tool for all those interested in the role the Bible has played in American public life, Vile’s work provides relatively short and immensely useful entries surveying and distilling scholarship on a tremendous array of subjects. The author, professor of political science and dean of the University Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University, leans heavily on recent seminal works on the role the Bible has played in American political and legal thought, including by Harvard University’s Eric Nelson, American University’s Daniel Dreisbach and the University of Haifa’s Eran Shalev, to provide the most up-to-date research on the topics covered. Dreisbach, as Vile notes, has documented at length how rhetorical uses of the Bible by American politicians enrich a common language and cultural vocabulary, enhance the power of their speech, evoke ancient and transcendent rules, and illuminate the role of Providence in American history in numerous articles and Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. Many of The Bible in American Law and Politics’ entries center on the concept of America as a new Israel, including Puritans comparing their arduous sea journey to the ancient Jews crossing the Red Sea, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson contemplating depicting the Exodus from Egypt as part of the American Seal, and jeremiads in which American leaders would thunder rebuke to their constituents as the prophets of old. Plenty of quirky and lesser-known topics sit alongside expected subjects like the Scopes Trial, the Liberty Bell (on which Vile authored an entirely separate encyclopedia), George Washington’s comparison to figures such as Moses and Gideon, and verses cited in presidential inaugural addresses. We learn that biblically inspired “days of humiliation, fasting and thanksgiving” were undertaken both in early America and George III-led Great Britain. During the “Bible Balloon Project” between 1953 and 1957, helium balloons from West Germany dropped bibles into Eastern European nations controlled by the Soviet Union. The Bible has been used to defend environmental efforts and argue for and against capital punishment. Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, wrote multiple books on the Bible, including 1834’s Value of the Bible and Excellence of the Christian Religion: For the Use of Families and Schools. And multiple American figures have been compared to the evil queen Jezebel depicted in the biblical book of Kings. Students of American history, biblical interpretation, and political rhetoric, as well as all those seeking a fuller appreciation of the immeasurable impact the Bible has had, and continues to have, on the American story, stand to gain much from Vile’s exhaustive and engaging work. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.