Was America Really Founded on Christian Faith? Zach Mettler on America 250

Before the fireworks and the barbecue, Brian From sits down with Zach Mettler of Focus on the Family's Daily Citizen to dig into one of the most contested questions in American history: what role did faith actually play in the founding of this nation? Zach makes the case that you simply cannot understand the founding without understanding Christianity's essential role — tracing it back not to 1776 but to 1607, when the English settlers at Cape Henry knelt in the sand, prayed, and planted a cross before establishing Jamestown. The Bible was the single most cited source among the founding fathers according to a landmark 20th century study, and the Declaration of Independence references God five times — making it as much a theological document as a political one. Zach also engages honestly with the complications: founding fathers on a spectrum from orthodox Christians like John Jay to heterodox figures like Jefferson, the irreconcilable tension of declaring all men equal while holding slaves, and what we do with that legacy. He closes with what Os Guinness calls the civilizational choice before America right now: recommit to its founding principles, find something else to root itself in, or decline. Find Focus on the Family's documentary Faith in America on YouTube or at thedailycitizen.org.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.