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15 results

  • Introduction: Christianity and American Law

  • Edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach, American University, Washington DC, Mark David Hall
  • Book:
    Great Christian Jurists in American History
    Published online:
    24 June 2019
    Print publication:
    04 July 2019, pp 1-15

  • Summary

    Since the first settlements in British North America, Christianity and the Bible have had a significant influence on American jurisprudence. This reflects Christianity’s expansive influence on Western legal traditions in general and the English common law in particular. Christianity’s influence on American law was most pronounced in the colonial era, especially in New England’s Puritan commonwealths. Early colonial laws drew extensively from biblical sources, especially Mosaic law as interpreted within the colonists’ theological traditions. Christianity also contributed to an evolving constitutional tradition in the colonies and, later, the newly independent states, culminating in the U.S. Constitution framed in 1787. This is evident in broad principles, such as the separation of powers needed to check the abuse of government powers vested in fallen human actors, as well as in specific provisions such as the Article III, § 3 requirement that convictions for treason be supported by “the testimony of two witnesses” and the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy. Although Christianity remained a dominant cultural force well into the nineteenth century and beyond, church-state separationists, secularists, and rationalists increasingly challenged its influence on law. This is seen, for example, in bitter political and legal controversies involving the Sunday mails, blasphemy laws, and the Bible’s invocation as authority in judicial proceedings. These disputes signaled Christianity’s declining influence in an increasingly secular age.

Great Christian Jurists in American History
  • Edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall
  • Published online:
    24 June 2019
    Print publication:
    04 July 2019
  • From the early days of European settlement in North America, Christianity has had a profound impact on American law and culture. This volume profiles nineteen of America's most influential Christian jurists from the early colonial era to the present day. Anyone interested in American legal history and jurisprudence, the role Christianity has played throughout the nation's history, and the relationship between faith and law will enjoy this worthy and unique study. The jurists covered in this collection were pious men and women, but that does not mean they agreed on how faith should inform law. From Roger Williams and John Cotton to Antonin Scalia and Mary Ann Glendon, America's great Christian jurists have brought their faith to bear on the practice of law in different ways and to different effects.

  • The Bible in the Political Rhetoric of the American Founding

  • Daniel L. Dreisbach
  • Journal:
    Politics and Religion / Volume 4 / Issue 3 / December 2011
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 September 2011, pp. 401-427

  • The American founders frequently alluded to and quoted from the Bible in their political rhetoric. This fact alone reveals little about how and for what purposes the founding generation used the Bible and, more important, how the Bible influenced the political thought of the founding era. Drawing on some of the most familiar political rhetoric of the founding era, this article examines the founders' diverse uses of the Bible in political discourse, ranging from the strictly literary and cultural to the theological, from the stylistic to the substantive. Recognition of these distinct uses is important insofar as it is misleading to read spiritual meaning into purely political or rhetorical uses of the Bible or vice versa.