Reassessing Benjamin Franklin’s Life & Legacy

D.G. Hart perceptively notes that Benjamin Franklin was not a Deist, as popular memory claims, but rather a “cultural Protestant.” As such, he “applied much of what Protestants taught about work and study in the secular world without accepting all that the churches taught about the world to come.”

Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant (270 pages, Oxford University Press, 2021)

Several times at The Imaginative Conservative, I’ve had the chance to reflect on my early reading habits and loves and the little library—a detached trailer at Wiley Elementary School in Hutchinson, Kansas—that provided me with so much joy and so much bibliographic fervor, even in my pre-teens. The first book I ever checked out and read was a child’s biography of Lewis and Clark. I can still see that book, and I hold tight to it in memory.

When the school librarian realized that I loved early American history, she kindly recommended Ben and Me, a historical fantasy about a mouse who lives in Ben Franklin’s hat and advises him, especially in matters scientific and material. I devoured the book, quickly falling in love with it, Ben Franklin, and the colonial period of America. Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos originally came out in 1939 by author and illustrator Robert Lawson, but I encountered it sometime in the middle of the 1970s.

Jump forward a half century, and I find myself having fully enjoyed a much more recent biography of the great man, Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant, by D.G. Hart. Sadly, no mice appear in Hart’s extraordinary biography, but it might somewhat peculiar if they did. Still, there is lots of adventure as Franklin restlessly and purposefully moves to Philadelphia, leaving restrictive Boston behind, apprentices as a printer, founds his own very successful business, marries, travels to Europe, founds a number of vital voluntary associations, and becomes involved in the republican and patriot cause.

To be sure, Hart knows how to write, and he drives the narrative, captivating the reader from one chapter to the next, one idea to the next, one move to the next. Franklin was nothing if not on fire—entrepreneurially and intellectually—in his life, and Hart expertly captures that unique personality. It should be remembered that Europeans of Franklin’s day thought of him as a wizard, the man who captured electricity. Americans, too, devoured everything Franklin wrote and honored him with the highest honors possible, especially during the American Revolution and after, with his delegation to the Constitutional Convention.

Throughout his book, Hart perceptively notes, Franklin was not a Deist, as popular memory claims, but rather a “cultural Protestant.” In this case, American memory is just false; it labels Franklin, alongside Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson, as one of the three most important Deist and Enlightenment figures at the time of the American Founding. As a cultural Protestant, however, Franklin served in the same capacity to regard to Protestantism as non-practicing Catholics do in regard to Roman Catholicism or non-practicing Jews in regard to Judaism. That is, they exist essentially as members of their respective faiths without actually practicing the particulars of the faith. Raised a Presbyterian, Franklin early on did reject the fundamental tenets of orthodox Christianity and, with his wife Deborah, often attended services held by the Church of England. Indeed, if he was a Deist during his life, it was only in moderate form as a very young man. Otherwise, Hart convincingly argues, Franklin’s life and thought were deeply enmeshed in mainstream Protestantism, again in culture and thought rather than in orthodox practice. Hart is certainly worth quoting at length on this, as he has added something vital to our understanding of this critical figure:

For Protestants work became service to God and love of neighbors while waiting for Christ’s return. If Franklin qualifies as a cultural Protestant, he did so by receiving and applying much of what Protestants taught about work and study in the secular world without accepting all that the churches taught about the world to come. He internalized the dichotomy that Protestants drew between the sacred and secular. His endeavors as a businessman, scientist, author, and politician were not outworkings of salvation but part of the way that God had providentially arranged the world. As aa person who repeatedly affirmed divine providence, Franklin had a measure of confidence that the moon, the sun, and the stars followed their courses, plant and animal life adhered to prearranged patterns in the earthly exchange of life and death, and men and women presided over life on planet earth with the kind of dominion explained in the Genesis account of creation. Knowledge of the natural world, success in business, or skillful deliberations in civic and national life—all arenas where Franklin proved himself indispensable—were available to him as a cultural Protestant without having to register as a devout believer.

This year, I had the grand opportunity—as I have had for several previous years—to list my top books of the year at Carl E. Olson’s Catholic World Report. Though I would regard Hart’s biography as one of the three best books I read in 2024, I intentionally left out his book in the Catholic World Report list. For two reasons. First, Hart’s biography came out a couple of years ago, and I’m late in coming to it as a reader. I did, it should be noted, hear Hart give a brilliant talk on the book shortly after it first came out. He gave a rather mesmerizing lecture (he’s a really great speaker) on Franklin in Christ Chapel at Hillsdale College. Second, I really wanted to do justice to the book and offer a full-fledged review here at The Imaginative Conservative. Hence, this review that you’re reading now.

I should also note, in full disclosure, that Hart is not only a beloved colleague at Hillsdale, but also somewhat of a brother figure. As I look back over my now 26 years at the college, some of the finest conversations I’ve experienced have been with Hart over a good beer at the Hillsdale Brewing Company. So, again, I wanted Hart’s book to be as excellent as it is.

Cheers to Darryl and Ben.

And, maybe somewhere way back there, too, Amos the Mouse.

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