What do you think?
Rate this book
America's Godly Heritage
America's Godly Heritage clearly sets forth the beliefs of many famous Founding Fathers concerning the proper role of Christian principles in education, government, and the public affairs of the nation. The beliefs of Founders such as Patrick Henry, John Quincy Adams, John Jay, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Mason, and many others are clearly presented. America's Godly Heritage also provides excerpts from court cases showing that for 160 years under the Constitution, Christian principles were officially and legally inseparable from American public life. The DVD by the same title graphically displays statistics showing what has happened to America since the courts have begun rejecting the Founders' beliefs. This book is an excellent primer for those who want to know more about what was intended for America by the Founders and what can be done to return America to its original guiding philosophy. It's ideal to share with home gatherings, church groups, and Sunday school classes, or to use as a history supplement for children or schools.
64 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1993
53 people are currently reading
208 people want to read
About the author
David Barton
306 books271 followersDavid Barton is the Founder and President of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that presents America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.
WallBuilders is a name taken from the Old Testament writings of Nehemiah, who led a grassroots movement to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and restore its strength and honor. In the same way, WallBuilders seeks to energize the grassroots today to become involved in strengthening their communities, states, and nation.
David is the author of numerous best-selling books, with the subjects being drawn largely from his massive library of tens of thousands of original writings from the Founding Era. He also addresses well over 400 groups each year.
His exhaustive research has rendered him an expert in historical and constitutional issues and he serves as a consultant to state and federal legislators, has participated in several cases at the Supreme Court, was involved in the development of the History/Social Studies standards for states such as Texas and California, and has helped produce history textbooks now used in schools across the nation.
WallBuilders is a name taken from the Old Testament writings of Nehemiah, who led a grassroots movement to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and restore its strength and honor. In the same way, WallBuilders seeks to energize the grassroots today to become involved in strengthening their communities, states, and nation.
David is the author of numerous best-selling books, with the subjects being drawn largely from his massive library of tens of thousands of original writings from the Founding Era. He also addresses well over 400 groups each year.
His exhaustive research has rendered him an expert in historical and constitutional issues and he serves as a consultant to state and federal legislators, has participated in several cases at the Supreme Court, was involved in the development of the History/Social Studies standards for states such as Texas and California, and has helped produce history textbooks now used in schools across the nation.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 11, 2017
Brief and compact, yet highly informative and relevant. I appreciated the volume of primary sources he included.
June 7, 2023
My review’s practically a recitation of this highly informative book. And there’s a reason for that.
Modern Americans have NO IDEA about our history.
Oh, sure, we’ve been “taught” in school about how evil the Founders were (well, of course, they were, weren’t they? They were white!), and we’ve been told by bureaucrats, judges, politicians, journalists, and who knows WHO all else that this ISN’T a Christian nation.
But we’ve been lied to.
As Founding Father John Adams said, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were…the general principles of Christianity” (17).
But it wasn’t just John Adams’ sentiment. “[A]bundant documentary evidence proves that the general principles of Christianity were indeed firmly embraced by the vast majority of our Founding Fathers, and that those principles formed the foundation of American government” (17). Even America’s first schoolbook, “The New England Primer,” was riddled with Bible verses and questions on the Ten Commandments. It’s the book that many of the Founders were reared on, and they reprinted it to make it available for the upcoming generation. Each letter of the alphabet was the beginning of a Bible verse, and “Which is the fifth commandment?...What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?” and dozens of other Bible-related questions were asked (19).
John Quincy Adams (“an eyewitness and participant in the birth of America”) delivered a speech on the sixty-first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in which he said that “the Founders had taken the principles that came into the world through the birth of Christ and used those principles to birth a nation, thus joining together Christian principles and civil government in an ‘indissoluble’ bond” (20). Not only was our nation founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs, but even our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, “believe[ed] that Christian principles should be included in civil arenas” and professed that: “[God] has given to [Americans] the CHOICE [emphasis mine] of their rulers; and it is the DUTY—as well as the privilege and interest—of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers” (21, emphasis added). Wow. So not only was this country founded on Christ, but, according to the chief justice, we’re supposed to be electing Christians to maintain her. Interesting. Because there are plenty of people who think that, if you’re a Christian, you have NO RIGHT to run for or hold office.
Our first president, George Washington, even said that “religion and morality [were] the two most important elements of the American political system” and “warned that anyone who attempted to separate those two elements from the political realm could not be considered an American patriot,” and he wasn’t alone because “numerous other Founding Fathers” expressed the same sentiment (22).
Other nations have had governments rise and fall multiple times since our birth, but America’s Constitutional republic [Reviewer’s digression: PLEASE note that phrase and remember it anytime someone says this is a democracy—we do NOT have a DEMOCRACY; we have a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC! There is a difference, and it DOES matter! The Founders understood that and purposely opted NOT to have a democracy] has survived “under the same governing document” for over two hundred years (22). Yet all those other nations had access to the same documents our Founders had, “yet our Founding Fathers evidently selected ideas that the other nations chose not to apply” (22-23). The Founders cited works by political philosopher Charles Montesquieu, legal scholar William Blackstone, and political philosopher and theologian John Locke. But the one Work cited most was the Bible, “with 34 percent of the quotes coming from the Scriptures” (23). And the percentage is higher because those three scholars’ works were highly influenced by the Bible. (In fact, because the primary source for Blackstone was the Bible, when Charles Finney began studying his work, he was exposed to so much of the Bible that “he became a Christian” (24).)
Did you know that Isaiah 33:22 “sets forth three distinct branches of government” [and in case you don’t know, those three branches are: executive (president or, as in the verse, “king”), legislative (Congress or “lawgiver”), and judicial (the courts or “judge”)], that Jeremiah 17:9 gives the foundation “for the separation of powers,” (24) and that the “basis of tax exemptions for churches (exemptions originated by the Founding Fathers) can be found in Ezra 7:24” (25)?
“The Biblical underpinnings of America were so obvious to previous generations that in 1892, even the U.S. Supreme Court had no difficulty in rendering a unanimous decision declaring: ‘[N]o purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people….[T]his is a Christian nation’ ” (25).
Other U.S. Supreme Courts also came to the same conclusion when various cases came before them. In 1844, a Philadelphia school was trying to ban Christian ministers from campus (which was seen as an attempt to ban the Bible from students), but the court rendered a unanimous decision that “this government-run school should teach Christianity and the Bible, the source of ‘the purest principles of morality’ ” (26). Even the New York Supreme Court, in 1811, had its own similar ruling. The case involved a man who was handing out “a writing full of vulgar, malicious, and gratuitous profanity attacking God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible,” who received punishment from a lower court and appealed to the state supreme court, but that court upheld his conviction, saying: “ ‘[W]hatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government’ ”—translation: “an attack on Christianity was an attack on the foundation of the country and its government—and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed” (27).
So what happened? How in the world did we go from such adherence to our Christian roots to where we are now in doing all we can to get away from and deny them? The answer’s simple, and I’m sure you’ve ALL heard of it:
“Separation between church and state.”
But do you know the REAL story behind the infamous (and ill-fated) phrase? Doubtful because it has been taught and reported for so long as being part of our First Amendment. But it’s not. In fact, the phrase appears NOWHERE in any of our governmental founding documents. Its genesis comes from a letter written by then-President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802.
First, a primer. The First Amendment has two parts. The first says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and the second says, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The ninety Founders who framed the First Amendment made it clear that the amendment’s “purpose was to limit the federal government in two specific areas” (28). Remember that America was once under British rule, and that monarchical government “could decree an official denomination to which all citizens must belong and then punish those who refused” (28). But the Establishment Clause (the first part) was the Founders’ way of keeping that from happening here—“the federal government was prohibited from establishing a national DENOMINATION, whether Catholic, Anglican, or any other” (28, emphasis mine). The Free Exercise Clause (the second part) “barred the federal government from interfering with or limiting the people’s religious expressions….[it] required the federal government to PROTECT (rather than suppress, as it currently does) public religious expressions” (28, emphasis mine). “Significantly, both religion clauses of the First Amendment were to limit the federal government, NOT the people—that is, first, the GOVERNEMNT could not establish any national religious conformity, and second, the GOVERNMENT could not stop public religious expressions but must protect them” (28).
Thirteen years after the First Amendment was written, that aforementioned phrase was put into being. But not for the reasons now given. Thomas Jefferson was “a firm friend of religious liberty” (29). But the Baptist group wrote to him concerned that the government might, at some time, “restrict their public religious expressions” (29), and Jefferson “assured them that their free exercise of religion was indeed an inalienable (29) right and would NOT be meddled with by the government because there was a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ that would prevent the government from interfering with or hindering religious activities” (30). And “[f]or a century-and-a-half after [his] letter, there was no misunderstanding of the First Amendment or the meaning of [his] phrase” (30). In 1853, a group petitioned Congress to separate Christian principles from government, “desir[ing] a so-called ‘separation of church and state’ ” with the government no longer “protecting religious expression” but removing them (30). But, upon examining the case, Congress “emphatically rejected it, declaring (30)…that the First Amendment (and consequently its so-called ‘separation of church and state’) had never been intended to secularize the public square but just the opposite,” and, two years later, another “Congress reiterated: ‘[T]he great, vital, and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ ” (31). And then in 1878, the Supreme Court jumped on the bandwagon by “refus[ing] to separate Christian principles from the public arena….Significantly, the Supreme Court responded not by merely citing Jefferson’s metaphor (which is all that most courts today do) but rather by reprinting a lengthy segment from his letter to prove that ‘separation of church and state’ was to preserve rather than remove Christian values and practices in public society’ ” (31).
Fast-forward to 1947. In “Everson v. Board of Education,” the Court merely cited Jefferson’s infamous phrase instead of his entire letter and “its clear context”—“ ‘The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach’ ” (31).
And thus began our slippery slope to the abysmal state we’re in today, both governmentally and societally. From 1947’s “mandate to exclude” public religious expressions from the public square, we got 1962’s Supreme Court ruling “order[ing] the separation of religious principles from education, ruling that thenceforward it would be un[-C]onstitutional for a student even VOLUNTARILY to pray at school” (32). In 1962, we also saw definitions of “church” change. “For the previous two centuries, the word ‘church’ in the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ had been defined to mean a federally-established national DENOMINATION [emphasis mine] such as was represented by the Baptists, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc., but in 1962 the Court determined that ‘church’ would now mean a religious ACTIVITY instead of a religious INSTITUTION” (33).
Moving right along. Before 1963, Bible reading was allowed in public schools, but the 1963 Supreme Court banned it. In 1965, court permitted silent prayer, but the1985 Supreme Court said that even silent prayers were un-Constitutional! In 1980, “allowing students even voluntarily to see a passive copy of the Ten Commandments at school was un[-C]onstitutional….Yet generations of American leaders and legal authorities prior to that ruling had consistently and frequently affirmed that the Ten Commandments were the basis of civilized behavior in society and a foundation of our legal code. As John Adams asserted: ‘If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free’ ” (36).
And the effects of that 1962 case were felt within our society almost immediately. Firstly, a study showed that 97 percent of the nation at the time believed in God, but, for the three percent who didn’t, the majority was forced to bend to the will of the minority—something else that, until this time, was unprecedented. And, of course, that forced bending was to the detriment of four categories: kids, families, schools, and nation. (You see, there was a prayer kids said in class, which a later court said was basically a generic prayer, petitioning “blessings upon us [students], our parents [families], our teachers [schools], and our country [nation]” (37).) “Washington forewarned that excluding religious principles from education and students would result in a loss of morality; statistics affirm the accuracy of his warning” (40). For instance (and by categories): (1) In 1962-63, birth rates for junior-high girls ages 10-14 soared nearly 460 percent!; (2) The divorce rate also “suddenly skyrocketed” (40), single-parent families almost tripled, and singles living together “soared by over 1,000 percent” (41); (3) Among other things, the SAT scores “plummeted” (42); (4) As for our nation: “Just from a common-sense perspective, logic suggests that adopting a policy prohibiting individuals from seeing the Ten Commandments—things like ‘don’t steal’ and ‘don’t [murder]’—would adversely affect behavior” (42), and “violent crime soared over 470 percent” (48).
I could go on, but I won’t. This book (unlike my review!) is short but, as the saying goes, sweet. And there are copious footnotes so that you can verify what’s written and do your own research. We need to educate ourselves about our country’s history because things have gotten so completely out of hand and become absolutely what the Founders DIDN’T want. If we have any hope of saving this country, of making her a better place, we first have to learn the truth of her beginnings. So please get your hands on a copy of this book and read it with an open mind. Use the footnotes to ferret out anything that you just have a hard time wrapping your head around. Don’t take your teachers’ or journalists’ or politicians’ words for it about what the Founders believed or how this country was set up. Do your own research, and come to your own conclusions. I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
Grade: A+
(By the way, I originally began reading this book on May 31, 2021, but life got in the way, and I just didn't have the attention span or time to devote to more than the day's reading that I gave it. So, instead of removing it from my feed, I just left it, knowing I'd return later. And I did. I finished it on Sept. 17, 2021, after about a week's worth of reading before going to bed. So, no, it didn't take me four months to get through 52 pages!)
Modern Americans have NO IDEA about our history.
Oh, sure, we’ve been “taught” in school about how evil the Founders were (well, of course, they were, weren’t they? They were white!), and we’ve been told by bureaucrats, judges, politicians, journalists, and who knows WHO all else that this ISN’T a Christian nation.
But we’ve been lied to.
As Founding Father John Adams said, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were…the general principles of Christianity” (17).
But it wasn’t just John Adams’ sentiment. “[A]bundant documentary evidence proves that the general principles of Christianity were indeed firmly embraced by the vast majority of our Founding Fathers, and that those principles formed the foundation of American government” (17). Even America’s first schoolbook, “The New England Primer,” was riddled with Bible verses and questions on the Ten Commandments. It’s the book that many of the Founders were reared on, and they reprinted it to make it available for the upcoming generation. Each letter of the alphabet was the beginning of a Bible verse, and “Which is the fifth commandment?...What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?” and dozens of other Bible-related questions were asked (19).
John Quincy Adams (“an eyewitness and participant in the birth of America”) delivered a speech on the sixty-first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in which he said that “the Founders had taken the principles that came into the world through the birth of Christ and used those principles to birth a nation, thus joining together Christian principles and civil government in an ‘indissoluble’ bond” (20). Not only was our nation founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs, but even our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, “believe[ed] that Christian principles should be included in civil arenas” and professed that: “[God] has given to [Americans] the CHOICE [emphasis mine] of their rulers; and it is the DUTY—as well as the privilege and interest—of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers” (21, emphasis added). Wow. So not only was this country founded on Christ, but, according to the chief justice, we’re supposed to be electing Christians to maintain her. Interesting. Because there are plenty of people who think that, if you’re a Christian, you have NO RIGHT to run for or hold office.
Our first president, George Washington, even said that “religion and morality [were] the two most important elements of the American political system” and “warned that anyone who attempted to separate those two elements from the political realm could not be considered an American patriot,” and he wasn’t alone because “numerous other Founding Fathers” expressed the same sentiment (22).
Other nations have had governments rise and fall multiple times since our birth, but America’s Constitutional republic [Reviewer’s digression: PLEASE note that phrase and remember it anytime someone says this is a democracy—we do NOT have a DEMOCRACY; we have a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC! There is a difference, and it DOES matter! The Founders understood that and purposely opted NOT to have a democracy] has survived “under the same governing document” for over two hundred years (22). Yet all those other nations had access to the same documents our Founders had, “yet our Founding Fathers evidently selected ideas that the other nations chose not to apply” (22-23). The Founders cited works by political philosopher Charles Montesquieu, legal scholar William Blackstone, and political philosopher and theologian John Locke. But the one Work cited most was the Bible, “with 34 percent of the quotes coming from the Scriptures” (23). And the percentage is higher because those three scholars’ works were highly influenced by the Bible. (In fact, because the primary source for Blackstone was the Bible, when Charles Finney began studying his work, he was exposed to so much of the Bible that “he became a Christian” (24).)
Did you know that Isaiah 33:22 “sets forth three distinct branches of government” [and in case you don’t know, those three branches are: executive (president or, as in the verse, “king”), legislative (Congress or “lawgiver”), and judicial (the courts or “judge”)], that Jeremiah 17:9 gives the foundation “for the separation of powers,” (24) and that the “basis of tax exemptions for churches (exemptions originated by the Founding Fathers) can be found in Ezra 7:24” (25)?
“The Biblical underpinnings of America were so obvious to previous generations that in 1892, even the U.S. Supreme Court had no difficulty in rendering a unanimous decision declaring: ‘[N]o purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people….[T]his is a Christian nation’ ” (25).
Other U.S. Supreme Courts also came to the same conclusion when various cases came before them. In 1844, a Philadelphia school was trying to ban Christian ministers from campus (which was seen as an attempt to ban the Bible from students), but the court rendered a unanimous decision that “this government-run school should teach Christianity and the Bible, the source of ‘the purest principles of morality’ ” (26). Even the New York Supreme Court, in 1811, had its own similar ruling. The case involved a man who was handing out “a writing full of vulgar, malicious, and gratuitous profanity attacking God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible,” who received punishment from a lower court and appealed to the state supreme court, but that court upheld his conviction, saying: “ ‘[W]hatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government’ ”—translation: “an attack on Christianity was an attack on the foundation of the country and its government—and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed” (27).
So what happened? How in the world did we go from such adherence to our Christian roots to where we are now in doing all we can to get away from and deny them? The answer’s simple, and I’m sure you’ve ALL heard of it:
“Separation between church and state.”
But do you know the REAL story behind the infamous (and ill-fated) phrase? Doubtful because it has been taught and reported for so long as being part of our First Amendment. But it’s not. In fact, the phrase appears NOWHERE in any of our governmental founding documents. Its genesis comes from a letter written by then-President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802.
First, a primer. The First Amendment has two parts. The first says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and the second says, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The ninety Founders who framed the First Amendment made it clear that the amendment’s “purpose was to limit the federal government in two specific areas” (28). Remember that America was once under British rule, and that monarchical government “could decree an official denomination to which all citizens must belong and then punish those who refused” (28). But the Establishment Clause (the first part) was the Founders’ way of keeping that from happening here—“the federal government was prohibited from establishing a national DENOMINATION, whether Catholic, Anglican, or any other” (28, emphasis mine). The Free Exercise Clause (the second part) “barred the federal government from interfering with or limiting the people’s religious expressions….[it] required the federal government to PROTECT (rather than suppress, as it currently does) public religious expressions” (28, emphasis mine). “Significantly, both religion clauses of the First Amendment were to limit the federal government, NOT the people—that is, first, the GOVERNEMNT could not establish any national religious conformity, and second, the GOVERNMENT could not stop public religious expressions but must protect them” (28).
Thirteen years after the First Amendment was written, that aforementioned phrase was put into being. But not for the reasons now given. Thomas Jefferson was “a firm friend of religious liberty” (29). But the Baptist group wrote to him concerned that the government might, at some time, “restrict their public religious expressions” (29), and Jefferson “assured them that their free exercise of religion was indeed an inalienable (29) right and would NOT be meddled with by the government because there was a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ that would prevent the government from interfering with or hindering religious activities” (30). And “[f]or a century-and-a-half after [his] letter, there was no misunderstanding of the First Amendment or the meaning of [his] phrase” (30). In 1853, a group petitioned Congress to separate Christian principles from government, “desir[ing] a so-called ‘separation of church and state’ ” with the government no longer “protecting religious expression” but removing them (30). But, upon examining the case, Congress “emphatically rejected it, declaring (30)…that the First Amendment (and consequently its so-called ‘separation of church and state’) had never been intended to secularize the public square but just the opposite,” and, two years later, another “Congress reiterated: ‘[T]he great, vital, and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ ” (31). And then in 1878, the Supreme Court jumped on the bandwagon by “refus[ing] to separate Christian principles from the public arena….Significantly, the Supreme Court responded not by merely citing Jefferson’s metaphor (which is all that most courts today do) but rather by reprinting a lengthy segment from his letter to prove that ‘separation of church and state’ was to preserve rather than remove Christian values and practices in public society’ ” (31).
Fast-forward to 1947. In “Everson v. Board of Education,” the Court merely cited Jefferson’s infamous phrase instead of his entire letter and “its clear context”—“ ‘The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach’ ” (31).
And thus began our slippery slope to the abysmal state we’re in today, both governmentally and societally. From 1947’s “mandate to exclude” public religious expressions from the public square, we got 1962’s Supreme Court ruling “order[ing] the separation of religious principles from education, ruling that thenceforward it would be un[-C]onstitutional for a student even VOLUNTARILY to pray at school” (32). In 1962, we also saw definitions of “church” change. “For the previous two centuries, the word ‘church’ in the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ had been defined to mean a federally-established national DENOMINATION [emphasis mine] such as was represented by the Baptists, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc., but in 1962 the Court determined that ‘church’ would now mean a religious ACTIVITY instead of a religious INSTITUTION” (33).
Moving right along. Before 1963, Bible reading was allowed in public schools, but the 1963 Supreme Court banned it. In 1965, court permitted silent prayer, but the1985 Supreme Court said that even silent prayers were un-Constitutional! In 1980, “allowing students even voluntarily to see a passive copy of the Ten Commandments at school was un[-C]onstitutional….Yet generations of American leaders and legal authorities prior to that ruling had consistently and frequently affirmed that the Ten Commandments were the basis of civilized behavior in society and a foundation of our legal code. As John Adams asserted: ‘If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free’ ” (36).
And the effects of that 1962 case were felt within our society almost immediately. Firstly, a study showed that 97 percent of the nation at the time believed in God, but, for the three percent who didn’t, the majority was forced to bend to the will of the minority—something else that, until this time, was unprecedented. And, of course, that forced bending was to the detriment of four categories: kids, families, schools, and nation. (You see, there was a prayer kids said in class, which a later court said was basically a generic prayer, petitioning “blessings upon us [students], our parents [families], our teachers [schools], and our country [nation]” (37).) “Washington forewarned that excluding religious principles from education and students would result in a loss of morality; statistics affirm the accuracy of his warning” (40). For instance (and by categories): (1) In 1962-63, birth rates for junior-high girls ages 10-14 soared nearly 460 percent!; (2) The divorce rate also “suddenly skyrocketed” (40), single-parent families almost tripled, and singles living together “soared by over 1,000 percent” (41); (3) Among other things, the SAT scores “plummeted” (42); (4) As for our nation: “Just from a common-sense perspective, logic suggests that adopting a policy prohibiting individuals from seeing the Ten Commandments—things like ‘don’t steal’ and ‘don’t [murder]’—would adversely affect behavior” (42), and “violent crime soared over 470 percent” (48).
I could go on, but I won’t. This book (unlike my review!) is short but, as the saying goes, sweet. And there are copious footnotes so that you can verify what’s written and do your own research. We need to educate ourselves about our country’s history because things have gotten so completely out of hand and become absolutely what the Founders DIDN’T want. If we have any hope of saving this country, of making her a better place, we first have to learn the truth of her beginnings. So please get your hands on a copy of this book and read it with an open mind. Use the footnotes to ferret out anything that you just have a hard time wrapping your head around. Don’t take your teachers’ or journalists’ or politicians’ words for it about what the Founders believed or how this country was set up. Do your own research, and come to your own conclusions. I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
Grade: A+
(By the way, I originally began reading this book on May 31, 2021, but life got in the way, and I just didn't have the attention span or time to devote to more than the day's reading that I gave it. So, instead of removing it from my feed, I just left it, knowing I'd return later. And I did. I finished it on Sept. 17, 2021, after about a week's worth of reading before going to bed. So, no, it didn't take me four months to get through 52 pages!)
May 31, 2024
Great read! Learned a lot about the true purpose of what many of the Founders believed and how The First Amendment has been twisted to serve a purpose by judges that were appointed not elected. Clearly it has changed the course of our country and the consequences are being felt today in 2024.
September 24, 2021
This is such a terrific book that explains how the United States of America was founded by Godly men who believed in Biblical principles. These men were enlightened based on their understanding of the Word and what they saw in England to create a country that was different from others and has lasted with one Constitution for hundreds of years. The establishment based on freedom and the Bill of Rights is so important! I wish that this book would be read by all high school students since the moral founding of our country isn't taught in public schools any longer.
January 29, 2024
A BRIEF ARGUMENT FOR AMERICA’S ‘GODLY HERITAGE’
[NOTE: this review pertains to the 62-page booklet.]
Author David Barton begins this 1993 booklet with the statement, “Does America have a Godly heritage? It definitely does, and abundant proof of this fact is available in tens of thousands of historic documents.” (Pg. 3)
He notes, "few today know that of the fifty-six Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence… over half had received degrees from schools that today would be considered seminaries or Bible schools. In fact, it was signers of the Declaration of Independence who started the Sunday School movement as well as several Bible societies and missionary societies.” (Pg. 9)
He observes that accounts of “God’s direct intervention in the life of [George Washington] appeared in American history textbooks for nearly a century and a half… but is … virtually unknown today. In fact, we are regularly told just the opposite—that America had no Godly heritage and that our Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostics, and deists who formed a completely secular government. However... Founding Father John Adams proves otherwise. Adams forcefully declared: ‘The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were … the general principles of Christianity.’ Founding Fathers such as John Adams emphatically refute the claims of today’s secularists and revisionists.” (Pg. 17)
He asserts, “today’s ivory tower elites assert … that the Founders did not want an indissoluble bond but rather that they wanted a so-called ‘separation’ in order to keep Biblical principles out of civil government. Fortunately, however, the Founding Fathers’ own records document their steadfast conviction that Christian principles were to be preserved in the civil arena.” (Pg. 20-21)
He contends, “the Constitution reflects many Biblical principles. For example, Isaiah 33:22 sets forth three distinct branches of government; the logic for the separation of powers was based on teachings derived from Jeremiah 17:9; the basis of tax exemptions for churches … can be found in Ezra 7:24; and there are many other examples of American government applying Biblical patterns and precedents.” (Pg. 24-25)
He notes, “the federal government was prohibited from establishing a national denomination, whether Catholic, Anglican, or any other… Secondly, the First Amendment barred the federal government from interfering with or limiting the people’s public religious expression… Significantly, both religion clauses of the First Amendment were to limit the federal government, NOT the people---that is, first, the GOVERNMENT could not establish any national religious conformity, and second, the GOVERNMENT could not stop religious expressions but must protect them… not only does the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ not appear in any part of that Amendment but significantly… not one Framer ever mentioned that phrase throughout any of the official discussions on the First Amendment… Significantly, the phrase appeared in a private letter penned by Thomas Jefferson some thirteen years AFTER the First Amendment was written.” (Pg. 28)
He continues, “Jefferson … wrote the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802… [He] assured them that their free exercise of religion was indeed an inalienable right and would NOT be meddled with by the government because there is a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ that would prevent the government from interfering with or hindering religious activities. Jefferson… fully understood that the First Amendment was to protect rather than prevent public religious expressions and that this is what ‘separation of church and state’ secured.” (Pg. 29-30) He adds, “contemporary courts… now repeat the separation phrase more often than they do the Constitution itself… The courts have now elevated a single phrase from a private letter… above the actual language of the First Amendment itself.” (Pg. 30)
He recounts, “in 1962, the Supreme Court … implemented the agenda of public secularism when… ruling that … it would be unconstitutional for a student even VOLUNTARILY to pray at school…. Following that initial decision, the courts steadily expanded outward their hostility toward voluntary student prayer… The landmark 1962 case not only reversed the Constitution’s protection for religious expressions by misrepresenting the separation phrase but it also redefined the meaning of the word ‘church’ within the misused metaphor… in 1962 the Court determined that ‘church’ would now mean a religious ACTIVITY instead of a religious INSTITUTION. As a result, the First Amendment … now meant that the federal government must not ALLOW a public religious activity… and since that time, every possible genre of traditional public religious expression has been forbidden under the new doctrine. However, the 1962 case was notable not only for its redefinition of the First Amendment but also for its lack of precedent.” (Pg. 32-33)
He goes on, “The ban on Bible reading was an even more radical reversal than the removal of voluntary prayer… Amazingly, the Court was no longer concerned merely about law and the Constitution … but it had now appointed itself as the national child psychologist… Significantly, the decision to remove the Bible from schools, just like the decision to ban voluntary prayer, was a reversal of all previous practice and rulings by the Court on that issue. The 1963 Court was simply … in essence saying, ‘The majority of … the Court simply don’t want the Bible in schools any more!’” (Pg. 34-35)
He asserts, “the modern reality is that there IS going to be SOMEONE’s religion in the schools and the government… when the Court decided to reject the long-standing meaning of the First Amendment, it also decided to reject the long-standing meaning of ‘religion’… it also wrote its own new definition for ‘religion’ whereby whatever a person believed so strongly that it affected the way he behaved was considered his religion. As a result, many beliefs, creeds and philosophies that completely denied the existence of ANY Supreme Being suddenly became religious…courts now hold that atheism is a religion… Similarly, courts and government officials have also ruled that satanic and Wiccan groups are religious… The courts also consider Secular Humanism to be a religion, equivalent under the law to Christianity… Scientology… is now an official religion.” (Pg. 47-48)
He concludes, “there will NEVER be a time when SOMEONE’S ‘religious’ beliefs will not be part of public policy. Consequently, the proper question is … rather WHOSE religious beliefs will be part of that policy… In short, ‘separation of church and state’ as it exists today is not a teaching of the Founding Fathers or even a historical teaching; however, it IS the war-cry of the modern secularists and anti-Biblicists. Regrettably, we have ceded much ground in recent years as we have lost our understanding of our own history. We DO have a Godly heritage in America, but we’ve been robbed… by the secularists and … an all-too-willing group of public officials and judges who also work to establish secularism across the nation… we as voters have become negligent and by our complacency and lack of investigation into the beliefs of candidates have allowed into public office too many who hold the opposite view.” (Pg. 51)
This book is a useful statement of Barton’s views.
[NOTE: this review pertains to the 62-page booklet.]
Author David Barton begins this 1993 booklet with the statement, “Does America have a Godly heritage? It definitely does, and abundant proof of this fact is available in tens of thousands of historic documents.” (Pg. 3)
He notes, "few today know that of the fifty-six Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence… over half had received degrees from schools that today would be considered seminaries or Bible schools. In fact, it was signers of the Declaration of Independence who started the Sunday School movement as well as several Bible societies and missionary societies.” (Pg. 9)
He observes that accounts of “God’s direct intervention in the life of [George Washington] appeared in American history textbooks for nearly a century and a half… but is … virtually unknown today. In fact, we are regularly told just the opposite—that America had no Godly heritage and that our Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostics, and deists who formed a completely secular government. However... Founding Father John Adams proves otherwise. Adams forcefully declared: ‘The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were … the general principles of Christianity.’ Founding Fathers such as John Adams emphatically refute the claims of today’s secularists and revisionists.” (Pg. 17)
He asserts, “today’s ivory tower elites assert … that the Founders did not want an indissoluble bond but rather that they wanted a so-called ‘separation’ in order to keep Biblical principles out of civil government. Fortunately, however, the Founding Fathers’ own records document their steadfast conviction that Christian principles were to be preserved in the civil arena.” (Pg. 20-21)
He contends, “the Constitution reflects many Biblical principles. For example, Isaiah 33:22 sets forth three distinct branches of government; the logic for the separation of powers was based on teachings derived from Jeremiah 17:9; the basis of tax exemptions for churches … can be found in Ezra 7:24; and there are many other examples of American government applying Biblical patterns and precedents.” (Pg. 24-25)
He notes, “the federal government was prohibited from establishing a national denomination, whether Catholic, Anglican, or any other… Secondly, the First Amendment barred the federal government from interfering with or limiting the people’s public religious expression… Significantly, both religion clauses of the First Amendment were to limit the federal government, NOT the people---that is, first, the GOVERNMENT could not establish any national religious conformity, and second, the GOVERNMENT could not stop religious expressions but must protect them… not only does the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ not appear in any part of that Amendment but significantly… not one Framer ever mentioned that phrase throughout any of the official discussions on the First Amendment… Significantly, the phrase appeared in a private letter penned by Thomas Jefferson some thirteen years AFTER the First Amendment was written.” (Pg. 28)
He continues, “Jefferson … wrote the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802… [He] assured them that their free exercise of religion was indeed an inalienable right and would NOT be meddled with by the government because there is a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ that would prevent the government from interfering with or hindering religious activities. Jefferson… fully understood that the First Amendment was to protect rather than prevent public religious expressions and that this is what ‘separation of church and state’ secured.” (Pg. 29-30) He adds, “contemporary courts… now repeat the separation phrase more often than they do the Constitution itself… The courts have now elevated a single phrase from a private letter… above the actual language of the First Amendment itself.” (Pg. 30)
He recounts, “in 1962, the Supreme Court … implemented the agenda of public secularism when… ruling that … it would be unconstitutional for a student even VOLUNTARILY to pray at school…. Following that initial decision, the courts steadily expanded outward their hostility toward voluntary student prayer… The landmark 1962 case not only reversed the Constitution’s protection for religious expressions by misrepresenting the separation phrase but it also redefined the meaning of the word ‘church’ within the misused metaphor… in 1962 the Court determined that ‘church’ would now mean a religious ACTIVITY instead of a religious INSTITUTION. As a result, the First Amendment … now meant that the federal government must not ALLOW a public religious activity… and since that time, every possible genre of traditional public religious expression has been forbidden under the new doctrine. However, the 1962 case was notable not only for its redefinition of the First Amendment but also for its lack of precedent.” (Pg. 32-33)
He goes on, “The ban on Bible reading was an even more radical reversal than the removal of voluntary prayer… Amazingly, the Court was no longer concerned merely about law and the Constitution … but it had now appointed itself as the national child psychologist… Significantly, the decision to remove the Bible from schools, just like the decision to ban voluntary prayer, was a reversal of all previous practice and rulings by the Court on that issue. The 1963 Court was simply … in essence saying, ‘The majority of … the Court simply don’t want the Bible in schools any more!’” (Pg. 34-35)
He asserts, “the modern reality is that there IS going to be SOMEONE’s religion in the schools and the government… when the Court decided to reject the long-standing meaning of the First Amendment, it also decided to reject the long-standing meaning of ‘religion’… it also wrote its own new definition for ‘religion’ whereby whatever a person believed so strongly that it affected the way he behaved was considered his religion. As a result, many beliefs, creeds and philosophies that completely denied the existence of ANY Supreme Being suddenly became religious…courts now hold that atheism is a religion… Similarly, courts and government officials have also ruled that satanic and Wiccan groups are religious… The courts also consider Secular Humanism to be a religion, equivalent under the law to Christianity… Scientology… is now an official religion.” (Pg. 47-48)
He concludes, “there will NEVER be a time when SOMEONE’S ‘religious’ beliefs will not be part of public policy. Consequently, the proper question is … rather WHOSE religious beliefs will be part of that policy… In short, ‘separation of church and state’ as it exists today is not a teaching of the Founding Fathers or even a historical teaching; however, it IS the war-cry of the modern secularists and anti-Biblicists. Regrettably, we have ceded much ground in recent years as we have lost our understanding of our own history. We DO have a Godly heritage in America, but we’ve been robbed… by the secularists and … an all-too-willing group of public officials and judges who also work to establish secularism across the nation… we as voters have become negligent and by our complacency and lack of investigation into the beliefs of candidates have allowed into public office too many who hold the opposite view.” (Pg. 51)
This book is a useful statement of Barton’s views.
January 17, 2026
Fantastic review of God’s providence throughout our founding.
As we celebrate America’s 250th year, we should not/cannot forget His role in the establishment of our American Great Experiment.
By NOT remembering His providence and by NOT RE-educating Americans in this is like Israel’s OT forgetfulness of His Covenant to them.
Our Founding Fathers, as revealed to us in the Federalist Papers, reveals the depth of their recognition and honoring of His providence. We The People should NEVER FORGET His providential cornerstone in America’s founding. To do otherwise is at our peril, just like the OT Jews.
I pray We The People have learned our history well. 🙏🙌
As we celebrate America’s 250th year, we should not/cannot forget His role in the establishment of our American Great Experiment.
By NOT remembering His providence and by NOT RE-educating Americans in this is like Israel’s OT forgetfulness of His Covenant to them.
Our Founding Fathers, as revealed to us in the Federalist Papers, reveals the depth of their recognition and honoring of His providence. We The People should NEVER FORGET His providential cornerstone in America’s founding. To do otherwise is at our peril, just like the OT Jews.
I pray We The People have learned our history well. 🙏🙌
July 11, 2025
I have not only read the book more than once, I find myself coming back to it as I have been sharing the information with my friends and their children. The book is full of information that comes from reliable and documented resources. It describes in detail the first years of our country, led by men of faith in the Bible and Jesus, men who attended church weekly and read their Bibles. A thrilling example is how the first Continental Congress of 1774 was opened with prayer by the minister of Christ Church in Philadelphia, a church that was regularly attended by several of the founding fathers. A letter by John Adams to his wife Abilgail records that the opening prayer was, as one attendee put it, "a prayer worth riding one hundred miles to hear." This was followed by a study of 4 chapters of the bible. Just reading about the events of 1774-1776 in Philadelphia make me want to pack my bags and go see for myself the cherished buildings and monuments that are there.
February 4, 2020
Every Christian should read
This book is an excellent primer for all Christians and citizens! If our country is to continue, we must return to our founding principles (which are indeed Christian doctrines)!
This book is an excellent primer for all Christians and citizens! If our country is to continue, we must return to our founding principles (which are indeed Christian doctrines)!
April 8, 2025
Should be required reading
This is a most excellent teaching on our true history. One that certain people in power have tried to suppress. Get a copy for yourself , Get a copy for your kids, get a copy for your grandkids.
This is a most excellent teaching on our true history. One that certain people in power have tried to suppress. Get a copy for yourself , Get a copy for your kids, get a copy for your grandkids.
January 3, 2019
Short but impactful history.
June 8, 2024
This is a short book that is very informational. Everyone should read this and be aware of what has become of “America’s Godly Heritage.”
May 9, 2010
Quick read. A great look at how this country is indeed founded on Judeo-Christian principles and how our Founders were deeply religious. Barton also explains how secularism has crept into our society. He illustrates an interesting (and scary) parallel of how once the Bible was taken out of the public form, immorality and crime skyrocketed. "Separation of Church and State" is a phrase not even included in our founding documents yet has been so perverted to fit the needs of a progressive agenda.
Read
October 20, 2010Also a movie, currently available as streaming on Netflix. Amazing!, has to be watched more than once just to soak it all in. (The first time watching is spent mostly getting over the shock of what you haven't heard) I would love to read the book since I would learn it better.
I could continue by composing patriotic comments now, but maybe my time would be better spent reading the Bible. :)
I could continue by composing patriotic comments now, but maybe my time would be better spent reading the Bible. :)
October 11, 2008
GARBAGE...unless you are a hard-core believer in the movement of the religious right. Don't get me wrong, I believe that Christian ideas were used to establish America. I just don't buy the supercharged crap that is in books like this.
September 30, 2012
This was a great introduction to the study of America's Godly heritage. However, I would have liked it to have more depth. The endnotes can be used for a more in-depth study, which is nice.
November 26, 2016
Great book! Factual! Historical. Grim. Sad. Frightening! Barton tells it the way it is in America concerning the attacks on religious Liberty. It's time America! Time to get involved and take back the Constitution!
August 9, 2009
08-02-2009: Before the elections, I was in San Diego visiting The Rock Church. They had literature for sale and I grabbed this book. Looks and sounds very poignant and interesting.
July 19, 2012
Excellent reminder of where we came from. I'll have to give this book to some friends and family members.
September 29, 2015
A little outdated with some statistics but good historical info. Great homeschooling supplement.
April 18, 2024
Lots of good, solid information in this. It's an easy read.
It's only 52 pages long (not including the citations), I would like it to be longer.
It's only 52 pages long (not including the citations), I would like it to be longer.
January 31, 2020
It was a good summary of American History.
April 2, 2017
Highly recommend
Important book to read. I've discovered new insights into our founding fathers by reading this book. Thank you Mr. Barton!
Important book to read. I've discovered new insights into our founding fathers by reading this book. Thank you Mr. Barton!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews