FAITH OF THE FOUNDERS: Political Figures Most Often Cited Christian Sources
(THREE-MINUTE READ) — Political thinkers among the Founders were prolific in their writing, producing 916 books, monographs, pamphlets and newspaper articles between 1760 and 1805, the period of their greatest impact,.
That is according to Dr. Archie P. Jones, author of “The Influence of Historic Christianity on Early America,” who did an analysis of the sources used by those authors in an effort to determine what were the main factors influencing their recommendations.
It is crucial to keep in mind that these writings were not sermons, they were rather thoughtful expressions of how these individuals understood that political fundamentals as limited government, individual liberty and the covenantal — that is, constitutional — basis of representative government were not merely consistent with Christianity but a product of it.
In other words, these men were not proselytizing, they were doing political analysis, pursuing and developing the logical and structural implications of the faith professed by the vast majority of Americans for their emerging political order.
And what did Jones find?
“By far the most frequently cited source was the Bible at 34 percent. ‘Enlightenment’ (i.e. 18th century) thinkers were cited as authoritative 22 percent of the time, but most of these were conservative, often Christian, legal and political thinkers, not Deists or philosophers. English Whig thinkers were cited 18 percent of the time. The Common Law, a basically Christian body of English law, was cited 11 percent of the time.
“Of the individual thinkers cited, Baron Charles Montesquieu, the French Roman Catholic political philosopher who praised English political institutions for their design to protect liberty, was cited the most often at 8.3 percent.
“Sir William Blackstone, the conservative Anglican legal scholar, was the second most cited (7.9 percent), and John Locke, the Arminian Christian political philosopher, was the next most cited (2.9 percent).”
I can attest to the rigor and depth of Jones’ scholarship, as I spent three great years at the University of Dallas (UD) in the Willmoore Kendall Program of Literature and Philosophy in which Archie P. Jones and I were pursuing doctoral studies.
The UD, of course, is a traditional Catholic school and Archie and I were the lone Protestants in the graduate program, so we naturally gravitated to one another. A former Marine who was strong as a bull, Archie was an ever-smiling, gentle man of deep, deep faith.
Eventually I left UD for the nation’s capital, while Archie went on to complete his dissertation, be awarded his PhD and pursue a successful, though unfortunately unheralded, career in teaching, researching and writing, especially about America.
He went on to his heavenly reward in May 2024 at the age of 81 years old. He knew America and loved it deeply.