“All sober enquirers after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.” – John Adams, Thoughts on Government (1776)

Was the liberalism that informed America’s founding rationalistic, individualistic, and godless? Many intellectuals and commentators have so contended—usually those on the political left, who tend to view those features as desirable. But in recent years, the American founding has also come under criticism from thinkers on the political right. They make the same accusations, differing from their left-wing counterparts in decrying these alleged traits of American liberalism. Prominent examples include Yoram Hazony, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Vermeule, who offer variations on the argument that today’s antisocial and atheistic pathologies are the necessary consequences of American liberalism.

Dylan Pahman and John Pinheiro strongly disagree, and in their new edited volume, The Christian Roots of American Liberty, they marshal strong primary source evidence. The editors acknowledge America’s liberalism but demonstrate that it was “grounded in English common law, natural law, and Christian history and theology.” The American experiment, they maintain, is an outgrowth of these traditions, not a repudiation of them.

By “liberalism,” the editors mean the collection of beliefs and institutions “grounded in a conception of human persons as by nature free, equal, and rational, and thus, that justice in human government requires the consent of the governed and religious toleration.” Its American variant includes a theologically informed “skepticism towards unchecked political power.” Without Christianity, American liberalism is unthinkable.

...read more at lawliberty.org