Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: How Christianity Has Advanced Freedom and Equality for All Americans

Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land demonstrates that Christianity is responsible for advancing liberty and equality for all Americans.

Scholars and popular authors regularly claim that Christianity, at least orthodox Christianity, has fostered oppression and intolerance. A common narrative is that liberty and equality have been advanced primarily when America’s leaders embrace progressive manifestations of religion or reject faith altogether.

Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land demonstrates that Christianity is responsible for advancing liberty and equality for all citizens. Throughout American history, Christians have been motivated by their faith to create fair and just institutions, fight for political freedom, oppose slavery, and secure religious liberty for all.

The New York Times’s 1619 Project is only a recent and prominent manifestation of the tendency of journalists, academics, and popular writers to portray American Christianity as a force of oppression and intolerance. Without shying away from the ways in which the Christian faith has been used to defend and even encourage harmful practices, Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land shows that it has far more often been a force for good.

From the American Puritans—who created some of the most republican and free institutions the world had ever seen—to America’s founders’ opposition to slavery, to contemporary Christian legal advocacy groups that fight to protect religious liberty for everyone, this volume offers an important corrective to those who would downplay the role Christianity has played in advancing liberty and equality for all citizens.

“The United States is famous for its separation of church and state, but that has never meant separation of religion and politics. In Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, Mark David Hall shows how Christianity has infused public life since the colonial era in profound and sometimes surprising ways. This book is not a case for ‘Christian Nationalism.’ But it makes a powerful case that America would look different—and worse—without the influence of Christian doctrines, communities, and believers.” —Samuel Goldman, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Executive Director, Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom
George Washington University

“Mark David Hall is one of our most outstanding scholars of early America, whose many distinguished publications have argued persuasively for the crucial importance of Christianity in the flourishing of America’s experiment in ordered liberty. In Proclaim Liberty Throughout All The Land, he has placed at the disposal of readers the essential elements in the case he has made for Christianity’s beneficial and indispensable influence. Never has a resource been more needed than this one is today.” —Wilfred M. McClay, Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization, and Professor of History, Hillsdale College

“The United States of America is a unique creation of freedom in the history of the world. That freedom is owed to its Judeo-Christian roots and philosophy. Mark David Hall has done an enormous service: Be the great scholar he is in answering the attacks on this great country’s true foundation of freedom—faith—but communicate these facts, history, and responses in a way every American can read and understand. This is a great gift to our country, accessible to everyone.” —Kelly Shackelford, Esq., President, CEO, and Chief Counsel, First Liberty Institute

“This timely book is vital and indispensable for dispelling a popular, but disingenuous, narrative: that Christianity impeded equality and freedom in America. In his notably readable and reliable prose, Professor Hall with palpable civility and a rare command of history sets the record straight: Christianity in reality provided the motive, the predicate, and the catalyst for America’s push for freedom and equality, including religious liberty for all in both society and in law.” —Jeffery J. Ventrella, Senior Counsel, SVP Academic Affairs & Training, Alliance Defending Freedom