Since 2015 I have maintained a warm fraternal, intellectual, and scholarly relationship with the men and women of The Davenant Institute. In 2024 our relationship grew closer when the Davenant Press published my book, Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War. Davenant’s staff made the publication process a joy, and confirmed for me the institute’s unique and vital place in the Protestant and evangelical intellectual world.
Initial conversations with the press came about because of my own desire to write a work that prioritized Protestant history without falling into anachronistic or sectarian readings of that history. Davenant defined itself from the beginning as being committed to an irenic understanding of Protestant intellectual life, and it delivered on that commitment. Davenant’s irenicism has also been complemented by a healthy internationalism that honors Protestant voices in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere. My editors—an American and a Briton—made sure that although I wrote largely about the United States the book could be understood by Anglophone audiences around the world.
Rhys Laverty and Mark Hamilton ably guided the project in the early months of 2023. Rhys in particular—a British evangelical—pushed me to make the work’s thesis more clear, and it was Rhys who helped a book that was undeniably an intervention in the contemporary political theology discourse in the United States to make its essential point: Christian civil institutions were far more important for maintaining public religion in the 19th century United States than was any status as an ideologically Christian nation.
I’m not sure that point could have been made or come across as seamlessly in a project with another press. American evangelicals have a traditional squeamishness about institutions in general, and especially the church, while simultaneously baptizing the church as the only morally ordered, divinely sanctioned institution. As someone who identifies as a theologically conservative Protestant, and an Anglican in particular, I nonetheless knew I didn’t want to write a book recycling American evangelical arguments over “church and state,” a subject that had been litigated endlessly by academics and clerics for well over two centuries. I wanted to write a book on religion’s impact in non-ecclesiastical contexts, especially as it pertained to the political life of the American republic, and I’m incredibly grateful The Davenant Institute Press let me write the book I wanted to write.
My choice of topic fit Davenant’s commitments, but there was still the question of whether I should publish a book for scholars or laypeople. Here again Rhys and Mark came to the rescue by proposing with their customary cheerfulness, “why not both?” The intellectual seriousness of Davenant’s earlier works made the decision to publish with them easy. David Haines, Daniel Hyde, Brad Littlejohn, Michael Lynch, and Joe Rigney, had written academically serious books for the press while also positioning their works in such a way as to make them useful to both scholars and pastors, and it was my hope to offer a history of American religion in the 19th century that would do the same.
Finally, there was the question of the book itself. From the moment I saw Rachel Rosales’ magnificent mockups of the book’s cover, I knew it was going to do well. Davenant did a significant amount of legwork on publicity and helped me with my own efforts to get the work out amongst potential readers. Davenant proved to be a joy to work with throughout the process, they let me write the book I wanted to write, and they delivered on the final product. There are plenty of worthy evangelical publishing outlets, but I could not—and still cannot—think of another that weds intellectual seriousness, Protestant irenicism, and a magnificent staff in the way Davenant does.
It has been a privilege for this scholar to work with Davenant in 2024, and I am already excited about another manuscript I will be handing them in 2025 (God willing!) If, like me, you want to see Christian scholarship that is both faithful and serious continue to thrive in service of both the church and the academy, I’d encourage you to support Davenant with a financial gift as 2024 concludes.
Miles Smith
Assistant Professor of History, Hillsdale College