Tag: Thomas Jefferson

What Counts as “Religion”?

John Ehrett — January 3, 2024

What Counts as “Religion”?

The Supreme Court wrestled with defining "religion" long before public displays of Satanism started.

Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founding Fathers

Miles Smith — May 5, 2023

Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founding Fathers

Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson all gravely doubted the future of the nation they created.

Was America Ever Christian? A Reply to Desiring God

Miles Smith — January 10, 2023

Was America Ever Christian? A Reply to Desiring God

Was the early American republic really marked by deism, the Enlightenment, and secularity?

Free Church in a Free State: Philip Schaff on Disestablishment

Miles Smith — February 3, 2022

Free Church in a Free State: Philip Schaff on Disestablishment

In his 1888 Church and State in the United States Philip Schaff argued that what made Christianity in the American republic unique was that it was a “FREE CHURCH IN…

American Disestablishment: The Conclusion

Miles Smith — April 21, 2020

American Disestablishment: The Conclusion

While the Commonwealth was not the cartoonish inquisition its detractors make it out to be, the Cromwellian regime by no means approached what eventually became the understanding of toleration in the American republic.

The Promise and Peril of Disestablishment: Baptist and Reformed Political Theology in the New Republic

Miles Smith — March 27, 2020

The Promise and Peril of Disestablishment: Baptist and Reformed Political Theology in the New Republic

What were the differences between over church and state betwen Baptists and the Reformed in the early US republic?