Did America Have a Christian Founding?: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth

by Mark David Hall

A distinguished professor debunks the assertion that America's Founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and instead shows that their political ideas were profoundly influenced by their Christian convictions.

In 2010, David Mark Hall gave a lecture at the Heritage Foundation entitled "Did America Have a Christian Founding?" His balanced and thoughtful approach to this controversial question caused a sensation. C-SPAN televised his talk, and an essay based on it has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

In this book, Hall expands upon this essay, making the airtight case that America's Founders were not deists. He explains why and how the Founders' views are absolutely relevant today, showing


that they did not create a "godless" Constitution;
that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state;
that most Founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and
that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons.
This compelling and utterly persuasive book will convince skeptics and equip believers and conservatives to defend the idea that Christian thought was crucial to the nation's founding--and that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack of faith).

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christian, Law

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 29, 2019

About the author

Mark David Hall, is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics and Faculty Fellow in the William Penn Honors Program at George Fox University.

Reviews

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title asks the question, and the book answers it in the affirmative. The answer is definitive. Great book.

[Ben House · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, the issue was settled back in 1975 when I first started reading about the Calvinistic influence on American history. There was a history professor at our local community college who was the most scholarly teacher on staff and a thorough-going Calvinist. A friend told me to take his class because "he teaches the Five Points of Calvinism, and you need to know that for American literature." She was right, for American literature is a tug of war between Calvinists (beginning with the Puritans) and those retreating from Calvinism (from Hawthorne to Twain to Crane to Hemingway).
Since 1975, the issue has been raised in a number of ways regarding the question of America's founding. Did America have a Christian founding? By founding, do we mean colonial America or the independent American Republic? What does it mean that America did or did not have a Christian founding? And, what difference does it make now?
I am guessing that I have read or heard over 100 full length books, essays, and lectures on the topic of Christianity and America. I even gave a few of those lectures and have written on it myself in my book. So, Mark David Hall's newest book Did America Have a Christian Founding?, published by Nelson Books, is a welcome guest to the discussion. But Dr. Hall is not a late arrival to the party. He has written and contributed to more than a dozen books on the relationship between religion and politics. These studies include a thorough study of Roger Sherman, who is often overlooked among the Founders and yet was a solid believer. This book, therefore, is not an author's exploration of new ground, but rather the scholarly contribution of one who has combed the sources repeatedly.
I will not at this time attempt a chapter by chapter survey of the book, but will instead focus just a bit on the opening chapter. The issue is Deism. I once heard someone say, "Whether history repeats itself is not clear, but historians repeat each other." Both specialized books and monographs and history textbooks assure us that by the time of the American War for Independence and the writing of the Constitution, Deism had supplanted Christianity as the prevailing religious and philosophical worldview. And, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and a few other key figures were all basically card-carrying Deists.
This whole contention is problematic. (I have long waited to use that stuffy word "problematic.") There was not a denomination or church group that adhered to the title Deist, but that is not the real issue. The language attributed to Deism and that attributed to Christianity is identical at points. I might say, "It is going to rain today." One might interpret that to mean that I believe that the falling of rain is not the direct intervention and providential control of weather by God, but is the acting of laws of nature that God created, but doesn't direct minutely. Should I say, "God is going to send rain today"? Nothing wrong with that. As James 4:15 points out, we ought to couch all of our language in terms that indicate God's present, active control.
I don't think James is giving us a directive so that we have to be this mechanical. But there should be an underlying presupposition, a worldview, a philosophy of life, that indicates and reinforces our conviction of God's presence. Yet, the Founders were not writing about an "it" or a force or laws of nature. They used terms like Providence, Governor of the Universe, Architect of the world, and so on. This language was no more denying orthodox Christianity than my saying "Jesus is Lord" denies the Trinity.
A few people of the time did prescribe to Deism. These included such men as Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine. Allen, best known now for his name being attached to furniture, played a minimal role (heroic though it was) in the war. Paine was a brilliant, quirky wordsmith with erratic tendencies. The "best known" Deists, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were either the two worst Deistic hypocrites of all time or were personally inconsistent in their practice. R. J. Rushdoony demolished the myth of Franklin's and Jefferson's Deism for me when I read the first of This Independent Republic decades ago.
Dr. Hall begins each chapter with a list of quotations from prominent historians and sources that go against his theses. He provides more quotes and references in the ample endnotes to the book. Then, he begins systematically answering and refuting the claims. There are no strawmen here. The best and most reputable scholars only are allowed in the ring in these matches.
I highly recommend this book. If you are a history teacher or student, get it immediately. If you are a pastor, get it quickly. If you are a patriot, get it soon. If you cannot buy it right now, ask your personal Santa Claus for the book. Don't end 2019 without this work in your hands and on your shelf.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a dangerous proposition to critique a “distinguished professor” but I do so as a practicing historian in both public and academic worlds who also holds a Ph.D. in American History. Mark David Hall has attempted a history of the founding generation of America to prove that it had a Christian founding. My finding is Hall had ignored better research to satisfy the groups supporting Christian Nationalism. Coming from an evangelical and Christian nationalist background myself, I understand how tempting it is to embrace this interpretation. However, the founding era is much more complex than Dr. Hall depicts, and it shows a lack of long-term research into the nature of public Christianity and cultural history. It is better written and researched but it follows the “David Barton school of historiography.” He cherry-picks documents to prove his point instead of swimming in the documents as a whole AND reading previous works by those who spent decades in this field. It is not a history but an argument. It is written by a legitimate scholar but, working outside his area of expertise.
Colonial America was on the historical edge of what we call “Christendom”. A society was Christian because its leaders identified as such and supported a Church. The American Revolution generation was part of a society that was very Biblically literate, even if they ignored its commands. The elite of that age, who led the Revolution and drafted our founding documents, were a mixed bag of personalities influenced by their culture which included Christianity, Enlightenment writings, and old radical Whig ideals. I also reject the other side claimed that America was only radical and religiously unorthodox. It was both. Historian Mark Noll noted after his decades of research into American religious history that the United States was a very religious country, very religious but vaguely Christian. Better research into this theme has been provided by historians such as Mark Noll, Thomas S. Kidd, John D. Wilsey, John Butler, and John Fea.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Did America Have a Christian Founding?, Mark David Hall has written a book that is as useful as it should be unnecessary. To anyone approaching the American founding (apologies to Russell Kirk) without ideological blinders, the religious faith of the founding generation is patently obvious. This is not to deny that there were varying levels of commitment to the Christian faith among that generation, nor that some prominent members of it held less orthodox views. But it cannot seriously be questioned that the generation that declared independence, fought the Revolutionary War, and wrote and ratified the Constitution was deeply Christian. And, as Hall shows, that faith influenced them at all points along that journey.

Hall, the author and editor of several scholarly works on religion and the American founding, addresses this book to the layman, and in each chapter rebuts a common claim of those who he calls the "separationists" - the people who believe that the Founders sought to strictly divide all religion from political society.

First, he addresses the claim that the Founders were all, or were at least predominately Deists, people who believed in the existence of a God, but did not believe that He intervened in the affairs of men. In order to claim that the Founders were Deists, separationists focus on a select few men who, while undoubtedly prominent, did not comprehensively comprise that generation, and in fact were not representative in their religious beliefs of the Founders specifically, or American society more generally.

Indeed, in an era in which over half of Americans, and dozens of political leaders, were Calvinists, Hall numbers those who are claimed to be Deists at only eight. What's more, the evidence for the alleged Deism of some of these eight (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Maidson among them) is wholly unconvincing. Others, like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, doubtlessly had unorthodox views and were given much more to Enlightenment rationalism than religious faith; yet these men still occasionally referenced the actions of God in the affairs of men and nations. Of the eight, says Hall, only Ethan Allen was unequivocally a Deist. All of this added together, Hall says, does not support the claim that "all" or "most" of the founding generation were Deists, and in fact such claims ignore the evidence that the vast majority of the generation, including prominent figures such as Roger Sherman (of whom Hall has written an excellent biography) and Samuel Adams, were orthodox, typically Reformed, Christians.

Next, Hall challenges the notion that the Constitution is a secular document that expels all notions of religious faith from the federal government. The evidence often cited for this view is the lack of references to God in the actual Constitution, yet Hall points out that this exclusionary evidence ignores the publicly-stated beliefs of civil leaders that good government goes hand in hand with religious instruction and public morality. Hall notes that the Founders believed that religion was necessary to the maintenance of public morality upon which peaceful, republican government depends. Washington, for instance, admitted the possibility that some few people could, using reason alone, develop positive moral virtues, but believed that society as a whole needs religion to inculcate these things broadly, an opinion he was joined in by many other of his contemporaries. The claim, then, that the Constitution is a "godless document" that presumes nothing about society's religious beliefs is false. Indeed, Hall shows that the Founders' attitudes on human nature, the necessity of limiting government power, and the idea of rights - all of which contributed to their political theory - were informed by Christianity.

In the third chapter, Hall addresses the elephant in the room, the claim that the First Amendment created, in Jefferson's phrase, "a wall of separation" between church and state (which separationists always extend into a complete separation between all religion and all politics). These claims are almost always buttressed with appeals to Jefferson and Madison - to their work on religious liberty in Virginia, and their private opinions on religion - the implication being that it is the opinions of these two men, and them only, that gives context to the First Amendment's Establishment clause.

But, says Hall, this ignores the influence of the many other men who participated in the construction and revision of the First Amendment while simultaneously overstating the importance of figures like Jefferson and Madison. He surveys the influence, or lack thereof, of Jefferson and the 1786 Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom on the First Amendment, noting that the Virginia Statute was not widely referenced at the time the First Amendment was being debated (Hall says it was "ignored"), and that even in Virginia the Assembly did not consider the statute an incentive to sever the ties between the state and religion.

Similarly, Hall finds the claim that Madison was the sole or primary influence on the First Amendment to ignore the fact that his "Memorial and Remonstrance" (1785) in Virginia, which fought Patrick Henry's attempt to secure taxpayer funding for churches, was not as influential as is claimed, and was actually less influential than an explicitly Christian argument against Henry's bill. Of importance is that this Christian argument, which Hall notes had more signatories and was written seven months before Madison's, fought against Henry's bill in order to protect religious faith rather than to reduce its influences.

Separationists also refer to Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists (the origin of the "wall of separation" phrase) and a private letter written by Madison in 1833 in which he references "a line of separation between the rights of Religion [and] the Civil authority." But these comments do not provide the kind of support for their ideas that the separationists suppose. Hall writes, "Jefferson and Madison wanted a greater degree of separation between church and state than most of their colleagues. But they did not support the sort of strict separation advocated today..." He concludes that focusing solely on Madison and Jefferson ignores the influence of figures such as Sherman, Fisher Ames, and dozens of others who worked on the First Amendment and who did not have the views that modern anti-religionists impute to Madison - which is likely the point.

Next, Hall makes the case that the Founders believed that government and civil society should support religion and morality. He again points out how intimately connected the founding generation believed freedom and civic order were to religious, specifically Christian principles, and how they thought that the government (not necessarily the federal government) had a supporting (not primary) role to play in their preservation and dissemination. State governments routinely passed legislation designed to curtail vice and encourage virtue, with some even mandating Bible ownership and church attendance. Hall's point is not that these would be appropriate measures today (he thinks they're not), but that in the founding era religion, morality, and civic order were all tied up together and not thought to be strictly separated, or separable.

Finally, Hall argues that the Founders' believed that true religious belief required the freedom to worship God according to one's own conscience, and that this commitment to religious liberty was often explained in explicitly Christian terms. Because of this, Americans argued for "the sacred rights of conscience," even when this meant offering protection to minority religious groups (though, due to social and political differences, this principle was not applied uniformly across the states).

Practically, this resulted in a sincere attempt to accommodate the beliefs of religious minorities, notably Quakers, particularly in relation to military service. This tradition was extended throughout American history to include the beliefs of both Christians and non-Christians believers, but Hall observes that particularly since the turn of the 21st century the idea of accommodating religious beliefs is quickly going out of style. Hall admirably attempts to apply the Founders' spirit of accommodation to today's issues, noting that the consciences of, say, bakers and florists can be respected without harming the general principles of plurality.

I think Hall is right to point out that proper government, being based on attempts to find compromise between different people and groups of people, requires offering as much latitude as possible to people of different religious beliefs. However, I also wonder if such levels of accommodation require a significant degree of common sentiment that is increasingly rare. The founding generation was, after all, overwhelmingly Christian and was without the dramatic differences in first principles that we now encounter in American society. Richard Weaver believed that "a culture is a shared thing, which cannot exist without consensus." For Weaver, "culture is like an organic creation in that its constitution cannot tolerate more than a certain amount of what is foreign or extraneous. Certain outside values may be assimilated through transformation or reworking, but fundamentally unless a culture can maintain its own right to its own choices—its own inclusions and exclusions—it will cease." The question of whether there is a limit to how much difference of belief can exist within the same society is one of increasing pertinence.

Further, if religious liberty and freedom of conscience are, as Hall says, essentially Christian ideals, as they were in the founding era, what becomes of these concepts in a post-Christian world? Indeed, we see all around us today a notable lack of tolerance among people with non-traditional, and sometimes explicitly anti-Christian views. The question, then, is not so much whether religious liberty is the proper political principle, but whether or not that political principle has cultural limitations beyond which it disintegrates.

Hall himself seems to answer this question in the affirmative. Earlier in the book he quotes Jedediah Morse, a prominent minister and geographer, who in 1799 said, "All efforts to destroy the Foundation of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them." How ironic it would be if, in neutering the effect of Christianity in social and civic life, the separationists were to destroy the very foundations of the liberties they (and we) enjoy.

Did America Have a Christian Founding? makes a very good case that, in attempting to separate religion and government, the separationists are departing from, rather than upholding, the principles of the American founding. In this way, the book is a smashing success. However, the gathering question is to what degree the enemies of religion in American life even care about those principles anymore.

[Moses · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hall speaks briefly about the tendency of the founders to speak about God with terms such as "Supreme Being" or "Divine Creator" without getting into the important history of deism and enlightenment Christianity that these terms often denote. Of course the founders were Christians in many ways - it is the SORT of Christian that they were that matters. Many Enlightenment Christians had very warm feelings about a sort of "rational religion," a mental process by which they accomplished in their minds something which Jefferson needed scissors to do: prune religion down to what was harmonious with enlightened thought. I believe Hall ignores clear signs that many of the Founders were this type of Christian.

That being said, I agree with his conclusions about the Founder's intent when it comes to religious freedom and why Christians should support it for all Americans, not just the ones we agree with.

Did the Founders want an explicitly Christian Constitution? It seems not. If they had, the preamble might have looked more like that of the Irish Constitution, which I'm enclosing below.

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,

We, the people of Éire,

Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,

Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,
And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,

Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent primer that pushes back on the idea of a deistic founding. It’s not meant to be a deep scholarly book. It’s written for laypeople. While I might quibble with a couple things here and there, Dr. Hall makes a great case that the Founders were in many ways convincingly Christian. I’m perhaps not as convinced they were particularly “interested” in religion, but to Dr Hall’s credit he states very clearly his aim is to show that the Founding was not deistic or secular. In that, he succeeds and does so convincingly.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hall makes the briefest definitive case establishing America was founded by Christians and a few non-Christians happy to see Christianity voluntarily flourish. His discussion reveals how free speech, freedom of religion and more are part of a Christian founding. These values and freedoms are eroding as Christ and the church are marginalized.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The evidence is so abundantly clear that Christianity had a direct influence on this nation. If we are to remain in denial its either by willful ignorance or deep commitments to revisionist history.

The author does an excellent evidence based job to display this historical reality. What really should be common knowledge based on primary historical sources.

Did our founders create a "theocracy?" Absolutely not. Did a Christianized people create this nation....no doubt about it. When John Adams said " Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." No one from that era questioned what morality or religious perspective he meant.

When at the constitution convention Benjamin Franklin said "I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that "except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel." No one was ignorant of the allusions he uses, nor of the God he was referring to. Even though Franklin was not an orthodox Christian. He certainly wasn't a deist who believed God was so detached from America's creation.

This book is a direct and concise read. It rightly tackles the myths modern devout secularist lay upon our founding fathers and corrects those errors mostly with primary sources. I highly recommend it and view it as an important read as religious liberty seems to be on the chopping block by many elites. In truth our progressive friends don't realize that religious liberty gave way to the idea of tolerance. An ideal progressives claim to love......so long as they are the ones who only get to define it.

Pick this book up it's worth your time!

[Maggie McKneely · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next time I hear someone argue “but Jefferson wanted a wall between church and state!”, this is the book I will throw at...erm, kindly ask them to read.

Hall does an excellent job of undressing the most common arguments against a Christian founding and repudiating them in easy-to-understand terms. He uses the Founders’ own words and writings to make his points, which makes his points pretty indisputable. And it’s a short, digestible read, so well worth it.

[Josh Danzeisen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not convinced by most of chapters 4 and 5, but the rest of the book gives a thorough understanding of the founder's political thought in relation to Christian principles. I especially enjoyed the amount of primary sources the author employed, lots of great quotes.

[Jeremy]

Mentioned positively here (at the very end).

[Farris Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Answer: yes, of course.

Good debunking of the debunkers.

It was shorter than I expected and would have preferred, and I disagreed with his appraisal of the historical facts some of the time, but he made his overall case well.

[Angie]

If nothing else, this book make it abundantly clear how little I actually know about the founding of America.

[Zachary Wilke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great historical analysis. Pretty conclusive on the question. Some of his propositions for contemporary politics fall flat, however.

[Kyle Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

The answer is yes

[Alex Kearney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, it did.

The notion of the “separation of church and state” is used today as a psyop to suppress Christian influence in politics. Militant secularists like the ACLU and leftist Supreme Court justices would’ve thrown the book at every founding father were they alive today (yes Jefferson included).

The conclusion was far too tame. In it, Hall defended religious liberty for Christian cake bakers and Muslim mosques on the basis of the Christian founding of America. That’s a nice start, but I would’ve liked to see him draw modern applications from the title of his third chapter: “The Founders Believed Civic Authorities Should Protect, Promote, and Encourage Religion and Morality.” We’re a long way away from the US government promoting the Christian religion the way Hall excellently demonstrated they did in the founding era. However, that should be the aim of conservatives, not mere religious liberty.

[Brice Karickhoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! For my review just see Noah Meyer’s review. Retweet everything he said!

Would suggest this book to anyone interested in how Christianity influenced the Founding Fathers as they built the ideological foundations of America

[Clint Lum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, it did.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, America had a Christian founding. Hall does a wonderful job defending and explaining it. He pulls out lots of key quotes and sources to support his argument. This is a key work for American Christians to read in order to understand our own country better and then work to maintain the liberties that we love: religious freedom, etc. Written interview with author here: https://crosspolitic.com/did-america-...

[Miron T Boland]

I was nearly finished with the book when I came across Andrew Seidel’s book, “The Founding Myth”. Here is an excellent debate between Hall and Seidel.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?463878-...#

[Caleb Plattner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes your mind’s presuppositions make all the difference in how you interpret history. Using 21st century tinted glasses, it’s common to suppose that all the founding fathers were nominal Christians at best, deists/agnostics at worst. Hall here helps replace those glasses with ones more accurate to that period. I’m sure there are some quotes he chooses to use and others he ignores, but there can be no arguing that the US was formed out of and through Biblical, Christian principle rather than despite it. Understanding religious liberty and separation of church and state through the context of catholic vs Protestant dynamics is particularly helpful here.

[Josh Hedgepeth]

I'm fairly certain the author of this is himself a christian nationalist, which makes me very dubious about whether there is value in reading what will probably be a very biased history. Perhaps if I read it along aside a seemingly more reputable book such as The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes. Either way, I'm adding it as I consider wither or not to read it.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure he proves his case that America had a "Christian Founding," but he more than makes the case that Christianity was very much bound up in the founding. A civic religion of a sort existed in the beginning and it is hard to overlook the role of public religion in American life. That said, I am still not convinced that many of the founders were fully orthodox. Not many may have been deists in the actual sense of the term, but I have often understood their views as a sort of Calvinistic providential rationalism (not sure if that is an actual category, but it captures how they seem to have understood God), which is not necessarily full orthodoxy.

[Jonathan Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was spectacular! I did not know how many assumptions and myths I had believed involving the founding and the founders. This book was a much needed corrective. Professor Hall takes each myth and dispels it with clear and concise arguments based on the mutually agreed on evidence. This book is a very well researched book and one many Americans need to read! Highest recommendation

[Jeremy Peyton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. The modern misconception that America was founded by deism or secularism has no valid basis, which Hall confirms in his work. Modern scholarship maintains that America did not have a Christian founding simply because they do not want America to have had a Christian founding.

[Shawn Ritenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent summary of American history on the topic. Hall successfully defends his thesis that while not even close to being a Theocracy, American did indeed have a Christian founding.

[Xenophon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent slab of popular history providing the highlight reel on the Founders' relationship with religion. It's well told and well cited. A fine introductory text for students on the subject.

[Connor Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful and easy read. A passionate assertion of historical fact that isn’t obnoxious or mean spirited.

[Dann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating historical retrospective, Did America Have a Christian Founding? challenges the modern conception that the Founding Fathers were deists that intended to create a secular state. Author Mark David Hall looks at the lives of the Founders that are often cited as deists and sees if they actually fit that definition. He also examines who and what actually influenced the writing and passage of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. Additionally, Hall analyzes the actions of the Founders as heads of state (declaring days of prayer and thanksgiving, funding the building of churches and hiring of clergy) to see how they interpreted the Constitution that they created. Extraordinarily well-researched, a number of notations and supplements are included for further study, and the tone is professional and unbiased; reframing from making judgements about Christianity’s role in the founding or the researchers who have ignored or suppressed it. Did America Have a Christian Founding? reveals the true heritage of the nation free of political agenda.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hall contends "that an excellent case can be made that Christianity had a profound influence on the founding generation" (xxii). This is true beyond any reasonable doubt, and this book helpfully pulls together some of the evidence and presents it in a very readable manner. At the same time, however, the book doesn't really wrestle with key concepts. What counts as Christianity? What is religion? What is liberty? What is morality? It is one thing to say that the founders were influenced by Christianity. Of course they were. But it is another to ask whether their concepts and actions were consistent with the revelation of Jesus Christ.