Mark David Hall - Did America Have a Christian Founding? Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth

PRAISE FOR DID AMERICA HAVE A CHRISTIAN FOUNDING?

Marks excellent book is so needed. Many do not understand the basics of religious freedom. Marks book, though written by an academic, is a great beginning, helping citizens begin to understand the crucial issues of our first freedom.

KELLY SHACKELFORD, ESQ., PRESIDENT, CEO, AND CHIEF COUNSEL, FIRST LIBERTY INSTITUTE

In Did America Have a Christian Founding?, Mark David Hall debunks widespread secularist myths and provides a lively, illuminating account of the role of Christianity in our nations founding. Everyone who cares about our nations founding can benefit from this valuable and insightful book.

LUKE GOODRICH, VICE PRESIDENT, THE BECKET FUND FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, AND AUTHOR OF FREE TO BELIEVE: THE BATTLE OVER RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN AMERICA

Since Justice Hugo Blacks opinion in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), we have been told that a deist wall of separation between church and state defined the relationship between government and religion established by the American Founders with the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Now Mark David Hall, leading expert on American church-state relations and author of the best biography of Founder Roger Sherman, shows that Black erred, and wildly. The American Revolution was a Christian revolution, the American Founding was a Christian founding, and the religious freedom of the First Amendment is a product of Christian thought at the time of the Revolution. Freedom of religion was intended for people of all faiths, but it was not anti-religious. Hall gives us a bracing corrective to a pernicious mythand shows us how his conclusions are applicable today.

KEVIN R. C. GUTZMAN, JD, PHD, AUTHOR OF THOMAS JEFFERSON: REVOLUTIONARY AND JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA

The American republic was not founded in 1787 as a unitary, confessional, Christian state. But it was founded within the context of an overwhelmingly Christian population, and nearly all the Founders adhered to, or were influenced by, Christian moral teachings and practices. Most importantly, the Founders recognized that if their new regime of ordered liberty was to survive and prosper, it must be sustained by the indispensable pillars of religion and morality. Professor Halls lucid volume illuminates these often-overlooked influences on the Founders and corrects many modern misconceptions about their political philosophy and achievements.

GEORGE H. NASH, HISTORIAN, LECTURER, AND AUTHOR OF THE CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT IN AMERICA SINCE 1945

Mark David Hall has provided a decisive, readable, and scholarly answer to the perennially debated question, Did America have a Christian founding? Herein, a distinguished American historian demonstrates far beyond a reasonable doubt that Americas Founders were deeply influenced by the Christian faith. If you have time to read only one book on the subject, this is categorically the one you should choose.

PETER A. LILLBACK, PRESIDENT OF THE WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PHILADELPHIA, AND THE PROVIDENCE FORUM

After years of reading overstatements from both sides of the Founding debate, I enjoyed Mark David Halls calm and thorough analysis. Mind readers and diary extrapolaters may still fight over questions of sincerity and personal faithfulness, but Hall clearly shows whats most important: that Christian ideas profoundly influenced the Founders, and through them all of us.

DR. MARVIN OLASKY, EDITOR IN CHIEF OF WORLD AND AUTHOR OF FIGHTING FOR LIBERTY AND VIRTUE

In this beautiful book, Mark David Hall fully debunks the pervasive myth that Americas founders were deists. As I turned each page, my smile grew larger to know that here, in a single short book, history was being set aright, in a way that should hush the voices of those who have too long declared that our founders were not really men of faith. As Dr. Hall ably demonstrates, Americas founders were driven by a deep sense of religious conscience, founded in their Christian faith, to establish a new nation conceived in liberty.

RODNEY K. SMITH, STIRLING CHAIR AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL STUDIES, UTAH VALLEY UNIVERSITY, AND AUTHOR OF JAMES MADISON: THE FATHER OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Carefully researched and skillfully nuanced, Mark David Halls Did America Have a Christian Founding? challenges the view that Americas founding was more secular than religious. For those who want to understand the influence of the Bible on the American founding, Hall offers a readable and compelling case for the linkages of Christian faith and American liberty.

ROY L. PETERSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY

In his new book, Did America Have a Christian Founding?, Mark David Hall makes the compelling case that the majority of the Founding Fathers were not deists who openly rejected Orthodox Christian doctrines, and who advocated the strict separation of church and state. On the contrary. Hall persuasively argues thatwith the exception of Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Painethe Founders were influenced by Christian ideas, and that even Jefferson and Madison (who have often been portrayed as doctrinaire deists) did not want a high wall separating church and state. He also discusses the Christian faith and views on church-state relations of some of the lesser-known Founders, such as Roger Sherman, James Wilson, and John Witherspoon. While Christianity was not the only significant influence on the thought of Americas Founders, Christianity had a profound influence on the founding generation. The Christian faith of the Founders, beginning with George Washington, influenced and shaped their political beliefs and actions.

Halls beautifully written and immensely thoughtful new book should be read by anyone interested in the role of religion in the founding of the American Republic. Rich in its insight and analysis, Halls book brilliantly illuminates the interplay of American politics and religion during the founding era, and explains how and why the Founders ideas are still relevant to our understanding of the role that religion should play in American public life today.

DAVID G. DALIN, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY, AND AUTHOR OF JEWISH JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT, FROM BRANDEIS TO KAGAN: THEIR LIVES AND LEGACIES

In Did America Have a Christian Founding?, Mark Hall grants the modern reader a window into the predominant worldview of our Constitutions many framers and ratifiers, through dozens of original sources and hundreds of scholarly references. In contrast to the bias-driven mythologies he exposes, Hall leads his readers to reasoned conclusions about historical truth through objective scholarship in the vein of storytelling. He is humble enough to acknowledge legitimate separationist claims, while bold enough to demonstrate how the preponderance of historical evidence begs an affirmative answer to his title question. With many implications for todays challenges, Did America Have a Christian Founding? is history that is relevant for our time.

ROBERT LITTLEJOHN, PHD, COAUTHOR OF WISDOM AND ELOQUENCE: A CHRISTIAN PARADIGM FOR CLASSICAL LEARNING

Of debates about the principles of the American Founding there is no end; which is no surprise, since the character of our country has its origins in that period when America won its independence and established its Constitution. What is surprising is how many scholars enter the discussion with presuppositions that limit their field of vision and color even what they do see. Thus, in one standard version of the American founding, the fathers of our country were all in the grip of notions of political life variously characterized as liberal, secular, Enlightenment, and even anti-Christian. Evidence to the contrary, then, is either ignored or creatively reinterpreted to fit the scholars presuppositions.