Dr. Thomas Kidd, professor at Midwestern Seminary and author of biographies on Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, and George Whitefield, has spent his career at the intersection of American history and Christian faith. He is one of the most careful historians working on the founding era today, and when he says the debate over whether America was founded as a Christian nation has enough to offend both sides, he means it — and he can explain exactly why.

The founders, the First Amendment, and the tens of millions of churchgoers nobody is counting: Dr. Kidd unpacks why the separation of church and state was actually championed most fiercely by evangelical Baptists who were being persecuted by state churches, why Jefferson hosted church services in government buildings while also being the architect of religious liberty, and why Christianity thrives more when the government stays out of it. He also drops a finding from upcoming research that could reframe the entire conversation about American religious decline — congregational surveys are undercounting the total number of churches in America by at least 25%, and the tens of millions of people showing up every Sunday who never get counted are roughly equivalent in size to the entire group of Americans who claim no religion at all.

Highlights

• Why the founding has enough historical evidence to offend both the Christian nation crowd and the strict secularists
• How Baptist Christians were among the loudest voices for church-state separation because state religion meant persecution
• Why Jefferson hosted church services in government buildings while also being the great architect of religious liberty
• What the founders actually believed about Christianity's role — strong cultural influence, but no official legal role
• How the Great Awakening of the 1740s shaped Patrick Henry's speaking style and the entire patriot movement
• Why Rosa Parks was chosen specifically because she was a dignified, churchgoing Christian woman — and why that matters
• The upcoming research showing American churches are undercounted by at least 25% and what that means for the nones narrative
• Why religiously practicing people consistently outperform non-practicing people on every measure of human flourishing globally

Resources / Links / CTA

 

• 📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ThomasSKidd
• 📖 Book: American History Volume Two
• 📖 Upcoming Book: The Death of Religion? co-authored with Byron Johnson
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