Daryl C. Cornett - Christian America?: Perspectives on Our Religious Heritage

Kudos to Daryl Cornett for organizing this symposium. The Christian America debate usually yields more heat than light, as its participants have different goals, employ different methods, and define their key terms in different ways. In this volume, however, the debaters engage each otherdirectly, with honesty and charity. May their conversation continue and expand to include others committed to genuine historical understanding.

Douglas A. Sweeney

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Christian America? Perspectives on Our Religious Heritage should be required reading for anyone even casually interested in this subject. While none of the authors articulate a view analogous to mine, I found their perspectives well-argued and thought-provoking. Readers will find the back-and-forth exchange among the authors to be both enjoyable and instructive.

Richard Land

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC

Too often, professional historians and popular history writers talk past one another, but this provocative volume on Americas Christian roots helps to bridge the gap between them. It shows that even among believers, there are major differences of opinion on whether America was founded as a Christian nation. Anyone looking for a substantial, lively debate on religion and Americas founding will want to read this book.

Thomas Kidd

Baylor University

Daryl Cornett is to be commended for bringing together this thoughtful and engaging symposium on the important topic of Christianity and American Identity. This multi-authored work offers a significant step forward in this longstanding debate. Readers will recognize the complexities involved as the contributors wrestle with these multi-faceted and challenging issues. The differences in perspectives regarding the place of the Christian faith in American history will be obvious; the commonalities, however, create a window for readers to take a fresh look at the place of faith for our twenty-first-century world. Christian American? Perspectives on Our Religious Heritage is a vitally important and informative contribution to the field of American Christianity.

David S. Dockery

President, Union University

Christian America? Perspectives on Our Religious Heritage

Copyright 2011 by Daryl C. Cornett

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8054-4439-1

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 261.1

Subject Heading: CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS \ UNITED STATESRELIGION \ CHURCH AND STATEUNITED STATES

Scripture quotations from the Holman Christian Standard Bible Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are from the American Standard Version (1901).

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

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TO THOSE WHO HAVE

SACRIFICED, BOTH PAST

AND PRESENT, TO PROVIDE

AMERICAN LIBERTY.

Contents

George Marsden

David Barton

Jonathan D. Sassi

William D. Henard

Daryl C. Cornett

Jonathan D. Sassi

David Barton

William D. Henard

Daryl C. Cornett

William D. Henard

David Barton

Jonathan D. Sassi

Daryl C. Cornett

Daryl C. Cornett

David Barton

Jonathan D. Sassi

William D. Henard

Contributors

David Barton is the president of WallBuilders and is the author of numerous books, including Original Intent,American History in Black and Whit e, and The Bulletproof George Washington . The subjects for his writings are drawn especially from his massive personal library that houses 100,000 documents predating 1812. He serves as an historical expert both in courts of law and state legislatures and has been selected to help guide the writing of the standards for history school books in states such as Kentucky, Texas, and California. His writings appear in national publications and law reviews, his works are used as texts on many university campuses, and he has helped produce history textbooks now used in public schools across the nation. David has received numerous national and international awards, including Whos Who in Education, the Medal of Honor from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.

Daryl C. Cornett holds both a Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy in church history from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is an ordained minister with more than 20 years of experience in the local church. In addition, he served as associate professor of Church History at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee, before re-entering local church ministry full time. He has authored various articles for scholarly journals and church curriculums. Christian America? Perspectives on Our Religious Heritage is his first major published work. He resides in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in Hazard, Kentucky, where he serves as pastor of First Baptist Church and lives with his wife, Cindy, and their two children, Justin and Elizabeth.

William D. Henard serves as assistant professor of evangelism and church growth at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and as senior pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. He is a former president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and first vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention, along with having served two years as chairman of the board of trustees for LifeWay Christian Resources. He holds the Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Philosophy from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is married to his college sweetheart, Judy, and they have three grown children and two grandchildren.

George Marsden (BA, Haverford College; BD, Westminster Theological Seminary; MA, Ph.D., Yale University) is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame. His books include Fundamentalism and American Culture, The Soul of the American University, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship , and Jonathan Edwards: A Life. He is coauthor (with Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch) of The Search for Christian America. He taught history at Calvin College from 1965 to 1986; the history of Christianity in America at The Divinity School of Duke University from 1986 to 1992; and history at Notre Dame from 1992 to 2008. He and is wife Lucie live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is scholar in residence at Calvin College. They are members of the Christian Reformed Church.

Jonathan D. Sassi is associate professor of history at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York and a member of the faculty of the Ph.D. Program in History at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of A Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; trade paper, 2008). Articles of his on revolutionary-era antislavery have also been published in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Journal of Early Modern History , and Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography . He is an active member of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He resides with his wife and two children in New Jersey and is a member of the Presbyterian Church at New Providence, where he has served as an elder and clerk of session.