Mark David Hall on Christian America

I am having a hard time embedding the video, but you can watch it here.

Hall knows his stuff.  He presents two predominant views about Christian America.  The first view is that the founders created a nation rooted in secularism.  He cites Frank Lambert, Richard Hughes, Brooke Allen, Edwin Gaustad, Steven Waldman, etc… 

The other view is promoted by non-academic trained historians (he cites Amos, Marshall, Manuel, Eidsmore, etc…) who try to assemble quotes from the founders to prove the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

What I really like about Hall, and it is something I do extensively in the first chapter of my book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, is that he “interrogates” the meaning of what we mean when we say America was a Christian nation.  He proposes different ways of defining the founding of America as well. 

In the end, Hall is interested in the way Christianity has informed the ideas behind the Revolution. 

I will let you watch the rest.

RECOMMENDED READING

Anyone who wants to believe that Independence Day is a Christian holiday should read Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” David Barton speaks at First Baptist-Dallas. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Practice virtue. Get vaccinated On Doug Mastriano’s 2001 paper “The Civilian Putsch of 2018”