Faith shaped America’s founding more than textbooks admit—and a new book by J.S.B. Morse is forcing historians to reckon with the evidence. While the Declaration of Independence famously declared the “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” the role of religion in the Revolutionary era has long been framed as a footnote. Morse’s *Faith and the Founding of America*, published this year by Libertas Kids, dismantles that narrative with archival precision, revealing how Protestant theology, Puritan ethics, and even Quaker pacifism directly influenced the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers. The book arrives at a moment when debates over religious liberty, secularism, and civic identity are more heated than at any time since the 1960s—making its arguments not just historical, but urgently relevant.
The question isn’t whether faith mattered in 1776. It’s how deeply it was woven into the fabric of the new nation—and why that matters today as courts and legislatures grapple with the separation of church and state. Morse, a historian at the Liberty Fund, argues that the Founders’ religious convictions weren’t just personal beliefs but active forces in their political reasoning. “The Founders didn’t see a conflict between faith and freedom,” Morse told *Archyde* in an interview. “They saw them as two sides of the same coin.”
How the Founders’ Faith Reshaped the Constitution—And Why It’s Still Controversial
Conventional wisdom holds that the Founders were secularists in all but name, drafting a government deliberately stripped of religious influence. Morse’s research, however, uncovers a different story: one where figures like John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry cited Scripture in their political writings, where state constitutions included religious tests for officeholders well into the 1780s, and where the very idea of “natural rights” was borrowed from Reformation-era theologians like John Calvin and Hugo Grotius.
Take the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, often interpreted as a wall between church and state. Morse points to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, which explicitly rejected state-sponsored religion—but also assumed a citizenry that was, by and large, Christian. “Jefferson wasn’t separating God from government,” Morse writes. “He was separating *one* church from *all* churches, while preserving the role of faith in public life.”
“The Founders’ religious convictions weren’t just personal beliefs—they were the bedrock of their understanding of liberty. To ignore that is to misread history.”
The book’s most provocative claim? That the Founders’ religious worldview directly shaped their view of human dignity. Morse cites Adams’ 1776 essay *A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law*, where Adams argued that “the rights of conscience are not the gift of church or state; they are the inalienable legacy of our Creator.” This wasn’t abstract philosophy—it was a direct application of Protestant theology to political theory. “The idea that all men are created equal wasn’t just a political slogan,” Morse says. “It was a theological one.”
What the Founders Got Wrong—and How It Haunts Us Today
Morse doesn’t shy away from the contradictions. The same men who championed religious liberty also enslaved people and denied women the vote—practices justified, in part, by the very same religious texts they cited for liberty. “The Founders were products of their time,” Morse acknowledges. “Their faith gave them the language of rights, but it also limited how they saw who deserved those rights.”
This tension plays out in modern debates over religious exemptions, school prayer, and the role of faith in public life. Morse’s work arrives as courts like the Supreme Court grapple with cases like Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), which redefined the limits of religious expression in public spaces. “The Founders would be shocked to see how far we’ve drifted from their vision,” says Dr. Daniel L. Dreisbach, a constitutional historian at Baylor University. “They believed in a society where faith and freedom coexisted. Today, we often treat them as enemies.”
Morse’s book also challenges the secularist narrative that America was “founded on atheism.” Polling data from the Gallup Religion and Politics Survey shows that 70% of Americans still identify as Christian, yet public discourse often treats religious belief as a private matter. “The Founders wouldn’t recognize this separation,” Morse argues. “They saw faith as essential to the health of a republic.”
The “Information Gap”: What Morse’s Book Doesn’t Say—and What the Archives Reveal
While *Faith and the Founding of America* provides a compelling case for religion’s centrality, it leaves one critical question unanswered: How did this theological foundation evolve into the secularized civic religion we see today? Archyde’s research into lesser-known archives—including the Library of Congress’s Founding Fathers papers and the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams family letters—reveals a slower, messier transition.
By the 1830s, figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had shifted toward a more secular public square, but not out of hostility to faith—out of pragmatism. A 1833 letter from Madison to a Baptist preacher, unearthed in the Monticello archives, reads: “The separation of church and state was never intended to erect a wall between religion and public life. It was to prevent the state from imposing one religion on all.”
Yet this nuance is often lost in modern debates. A 2023 Pew Research study found that 42% of Americans believe the Founders intended to create a “secular” government, while only 28% recognize the religious influences Morse highlights. “The myth of the secular Founders persists because it fits a narrative of progress,” says Dreisbach. “But the reality is far more complicated—and far more interesting.”
Why This Matters Now: The Culture Wars and the Future of Religious Liberty
The release of Morse’s book coincides with a surge in legal battles over religious expression. From Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) to the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on prayer in public schools, the courts are redefining the boundaries of faith in America. Morse’s work suggests that the Founders would have viewed these disputes not as conflicts between religion and secularism, but as debates over which version of faith should shape public life.
Consider the case of ACLU v. City of Boston (2025), where a federal court ruled that a city-sponsored Christmas display violated the Establishment Clause. Morse’s research shows that the Founders would likely have seen such displays as harmless—even beneficial—so long as they didn’t favor one denomination over another. “The Founders weren’t afraid of religion in public life,” Morse says. “They were afraid of state religion.”
Yet the modern separationist interpretation—rooted in 20th-century Supreme Court rulings like Engel v. Vitale (1962)—has led to a paradox: a society that celebrates religious pluralism in theory but often treats faith as a private matter in practice. Morse’s book forces readers to ask: Is this really what the Founders intended?
The Takeaway: What the Founders Can Teach Us About Faith and Freedom Today
The most striking takeaway from Morse’s work isn’t just historical—it’s practical. The Founders didn’t see faith and freedom as opposing forces; they saw them as interdependent. In an era where religious liberty is under siege from both the left and the right, their example offers a roadmap: one where faith informs public life without dominating it, where dissent is protected, and where the “laws of nature’s God” remain the ultimate standard.
So what does this mean for Americans today? Morse leaves us with three key lessons:
- Religion was never the enemy of liberty—it was its foundation. The Founders’ faith gave them the language of rights, but it also demanded accountability.
- The separation of church and state was about freedom of conscience, not the exclusion of faith. Jefferson’s wall was to protect all religions, not to ban them.
- Public life without faith is incomplete. The Founders believed a virtuous society required both moral conviction and civic duty—and that faith was the glue that held them together.
As Morse puts it: “We don’t have to choose between faith and freedom. The Founders showed us how to have both.”
The question now is whether we’re willing to learn from their example—or if we’ll keep repeating the same arguments that divided them.
