No book was more accessible or familiar to the American Founders than the Bible, and no book was more frequently alluded to or quoted from in the political discourse of the age. Shedding new light on some of the most familiar rhetoric of the founding era, Daniel Dreisbach analyzes the Founders' diverse uses of scripture, ranging from the literary to the theological. He shows that they looked to the Bible for insights on human nature, civic virtue, political authority, and the rights and duties of citizens, as well as for political and legal models to emulate. Ignoring the Bible's influence on the Founders, Dreisbach warns, produces a distorted image of the American political experiment and of the concept of self-government on which America is built.

Daniel L. Dreisbach is a professor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on the intersection of religion, politics, and law in the American Founding and is the author of Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York University Press, 2002), and coeditor of The Sacred Rights of Conscience (Liberty Fund, 2009) and The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).