As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, historian Dr. Mark Noll — one of the leading scholars of American Christianity — joins NAE President Walter Kim to examine the religious roots of early America. Their conversation explores a story marked by profound conviction and courage, and by contradiction.

The pilgrims and Puritans brought a deep​ desire to honor God, build community and seek liberty. These values shaped our nation’s moral foundation, and they still matter today. Dr. Mark Noll and Walter Kim move beyond simplistic narratives about early America to uncover a richer and more honest account of faith’s influence on American life. 

In this conversation, they discuss:  

  • What first drew Dr. Noll to the study of American religious history; 
  • Biblical examples that model the importance of telling complex, faithful stories;
  • The connection between the pilgrims, the Puritans, the founding fathers and early understandings of religious liberty; and
  • What lessons from America’s founding era can help guide the Church today. 

This conversation invites believers to engage America’s past with honesty, humility and hope. 

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Resources

*Photo courtesy of The New York Public Library: “John Nixon reading the Declaration of Independence to the people in front of the State House immediately after its passage.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 

Today’s Conversation is brought to you by NAE Chaplaincy.

 

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Walter: The experience of faith and the application of faith in that particular moment that was deeply informed from Scripture but humbly applied, I mean, that's an extraordinary lesson for us today. Sometimes when we think about faith in that moment, we can understand the religious liberties aspect of it, we can understand the biblical debates that were going back and forth as to whether or not to revolt.

When we think about the heritage, however, not just a faith in that moment that led to that moment, but the faith that arises and persists to our moment. As the colonies moved toward independence, what were some of the Christian ideas that influenced and continues to influence political thought in the shaping of our national life?

Mark: I do think that the theme of liberty does become important. It's not fully developed in the 1770s. The colonists want liberty from Britain. There's a number of people — Isaac Backhus, the leader of the Baptist in New England, is a really good example. He's for the war. He thinks there's justification for revolt, but he's worried because Massachusetts still is taxing non-congregationalist for the congregational churches. And Isaac Backus travels to Philadelphia and talks to John Adams and Samuel Adams and says, “Well, yes, you people are probably doing the right thing to break away from Britain because they are taxing you without representation. But how about the Baptists in Massachusetts who are having to pay for congregational churches? And if they don't, their cattle is taken away.” Sometimes their land is taken away.

So you had an underscoring, a reinforcing of the ideal of freedom, but applied to people that it wasn't being applied to. And we have, I think, some wonderful examples in the African American community, the Native community. [For example:] Phillis Wheatley, the renowned Black poet; Lemuel Haynes, a young man in the 1770s who fought in the Revolutionary armies, a Black man who would become eventually the first African American ordained to serve as a minister in a white church in, I think it was Vermont. He penned a short essay right around 1776.

Again, with the same thing that Backhus had said. Freedom, yes. Parliament's making these mistakes. Justifications for liberty. But liberty for who? Just the white people in America? Why not also liberty for those who have been enslaved? And ... you have to again get to the complexity. When, in the course of the revolution, there began to be people who said, if you want to have integrity and work for liberty, you have to work for liberty for all people, including the African slaves.

As soon as that happened, there was a pushback in believing people who found in the Scriptures scriptural justification for slavery. So we have to just keep that in mind. But there were a number of the students of the revivalist Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins of Rhode Island, Jacob Green of New Jersey, who in the course of the revolution made these arguments about freedom not restricted to the people in charge, but freedom for everyone.

So there is actually a burst in the 1770s, 1780s, 1790s of Christian abolitionism that joins together the kind of libertarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence and Christian teaching about the dignity of all people under God. Now, it declines over time until we get to the 1830s and then the real conflict that leads to the Civil War. But there are many instances where the political push, freedom from the oppression of Britain, is put to use by Christian people, and a few who are marginally Christian, who put to use by Christian people, said, “Well, yes, freedom, wonderful thing. What does the Scripture say about freedom? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

My hero of this period is a Quaker who spoke out, [Anthony Benezet], against warfare, but also against enslavement and used the same kind of biblical arguments to make that case in the broader public sphere. So again, if you want to say one thing about this revolutionary era, you're going to get it wrong.

Mark Noll

Mark Noll is a historian, author and scholar whose work has profoundly shaped the study of American Christianity and evangelical thought. Widely regarded as one of the leading interpreters of the history of religion in the United States, Noll’s scholarship explores the intersection of faith, culture, politics and intellectual life. In 2005, Noll was named by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Noll has served on the faculty of Wheaton College and later as the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of several books, including “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” “America’s God” and “In the Beginning Was the Word.” Noll holds a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and a doctorate from Vanderbilt University.

Walter Kim

Walter Kim became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals in January 2020. He previously served as a pastor at Boston’s historic Park Street Church and at churches in Vancouver, Canada and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He preaches, writes and engages in collaborative leadership to connect the Bible to the intellectual and cultural issues of the day. He regularly teaches in conferences and classrooms; addresses faith concerns with elected officials and public institutions; and provides theological and cultural commentary to leading news outlets. He serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief and consults with a wide range of organizations. Kim received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, his M.Div. from Regent College in Vancouver, and his B.A. from Northwestern University.