Bonds of Affection examines several of the mountaintops of American thought—Winthrop's “Model of Christian Charity,” Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence and his First Inaugural, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Appendices (261–290) reprint these documents. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his commentary on the Puritans, is almost as much a presence as the three luminaries of the title. The book is a meditation on the importance of charity and on some of its limits in modern society. Winthrop, secure in his faith, noted the importance of charity in society, and Jefferson and Lincoln, far less orthodox in their religion, came late in their lives to agree with him.

Without charity, neither an individual life nor a social organization reaches its full value, according to both the men studied and the author of Bonds of Affection himself. “It still matters today,” Holland writes, “that a number of key moments in the making of America were fashioned by the memorable words and deeds of political figures of uncommon intellect and skill who took New Testament teachings on love seriously, both personally and publicly” (241).

Holland constructs a dialogue over time concerning the function of charity. Winthrop was so concerned with the social cohesion encouraged by charity that he was intolerant of dissent, while Puritans in general were secure in their faith in a God who commanded not only love but also the punishment of sinners. Jefferson was tolerant (as the Puritans were not), but his notion of charity was so secular that the biblical God was absent—nothing that might have been a problem, perhaps, had it not been for the Civil War. Lincoln fulfilled the ideas and values of his predecessors by understanding that the biblical God does sometimes command punishment yet that the thinness of human knowledge of the divine will suggests that we should forgive transgressors and aim for renewed social cohesion on higher moral ground. In other words, the North should not be possessed by pride either because of its abolitionism or its military victory, and ex-slaveholders should be reincorporated into the Union. As Holland notes, this view is, in its emphasis on the inscrutability of the divine will, true to the core of Puritanism.

Scholars will find Bonds of Affection unsatisfying because it picks haphazardly not only at scholarship on charity but also at writing on the misuse and limitations of the social affections. The book would have been stronger and its omissions less deleterious had it consistently engaged scholarship. However, this book immediately recommends itself for two audiences. One is undergraduates in an American religious history course. Bonds of Affection is an accessible monograph showing that three past American leaders thought seriously about religion and that their ideas and values engaged public matters. The other is laypeople who would enjoy reading a work focused on the virtues and (to a lesser degree than scholarship suggests should be the case) the vices of important public figures who thought deeply about religion and society. For those two groups, this book is strongly recommended.