Kevin R. C. Gutzman

Did America Have a Christian Founding?

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Since Justice Hugo Black’s 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 myth—and shows us how his conclusions are applicable today.”