The Bible and America ’ s Founding
By Dr . Bryan Smith
Modern historians discount the role of religion in the events of the past . Because of their secular bias , they prefer to focus on things like trade imbalances , poverty , and technological innovations . These are the things that motivate people to make history , not belief in God and the Bible .
But not every historian is secular . Daniel Dreisbach is a credentialed historian who has spent his life researching America ’ s founding and the role of religion in that founding . Dreisbach has written a book that you should consider purchasing : Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers . 1 His thesis is that the Bible greatly influenced the Founding Fathers ’ political views and their vision for the republic they sought to establish . 2
FAMILIARITY WITH THE BIBLE
Dreisbach begins by emphasizing that the Founders lived in a world very different from our own . In America in the 1700s , the Bible was a key text used to educate the young . Throughout the colonies , ministers ( and their sermons ) were held in high esteem , and the Bible was the one book that just about every literate person owned and knew well . In fact , in some colonies , it was illegal not to own a Bible . 3
Along this line , Dreisbach includes an anecdote from the correspondence of Benjamin Franklin . The year was 1781 , and Franklin was a minister to France . The Reverend Samuel Cooper had sent him a sermon he had preached the previous October . Franklin wrote back to say that he wanted to print the sermon for a European audience . But , Franklin explained , he would need to make some adjustments : “ It was not necessary in New England where everybody reads the Bible and is acquainted with Scripture Phrases , that you should note the Texts from which you took them ; but I have observed in England as well as in France , that Verses and Expressions taken from the sacred Writings , and not known to be such , appear very strange and awkward to some Readers ; and I shall therefore in my Edition take the Liberty of marking the quoted Texts in the Margin .” 4
Dreisbach observes that this same ignorance is common among modern historians . And since the Founders often cited the Bible as Cooper did ( without quotation marks ), modern scholars underestimate the role of the Bible in America ’ s founding because they fail to recognize the biblical language the Founders employed . 5
THE FOUNDERS ’ VIEW OF THE GOOD LIFE
America ’ s Founders were attempting to establish a just society . Essential to this endeavor was a vision of what the good life would look like . For many of them , that view was derived largely from the Bible , particularly from Micah 4:4 : “ They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree , and none shall make them afraid .”
The Founders saw in this statement the kind of society they hoped to establish . It would have a government strong enough to protect personal property rights . But the govern-
24 THE RENEWANATION REVIEW