The Christian Roots of American Liberty

Was the American founding an Enlightenment invention or organic development of liberty? Liberal or conservative? Secular or Christian?

American conservatives traditionally answered "both" to these questions. More recently, new movements on the Right-from national conservatives to neo-integralists to post-liberals to Christian nationalists-have challenged this conviction. Some even dismiss the founding as hopelessly secular.

Yet centuries of Christian ideas shaped the American founding, and Pahman and Pinheiro provide the sources to prove it in The Christian Roots of American Liberty. Along with select American writings, readers can examine historic Christian works that birthed the core principles of liberty. This edited collection, marking the United States' 250th anniversary, provides the resources to conserve this timeless foundation.

"God has always preserved freedom, and the power of self-government in man, while at the same time He issued His own exhortations, in order that those who do not obey Him should be righteously judged ... because they have not obeyed Him; and that those who have obeyed and believed on Him should be honoured with immortality." ~ St. Irenaeus of Lyons

"New taxes should not be imposed on subjects without their free consent-not by force, curses, or threats." ~ Juan de Mariana

"Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds-that we cannot be happy without being free-that we cannot be free without being secure in our property-that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away...." ~ John Dickinson