The First 250 Years
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the American Experiment began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Unlike any nation before it, America would be built on a unique set of ideas. Many at the time doubted whether the experiment would actually work. But it did — and the United States flourished to become the most influential society in the West.
What were those ideas that made America prosper, and where did they come from? Was America’s founding Christian or more the product of the Enlightenment? The answer helps us understand not only our past but also our future as we look ahead to the next 250 years.
A Profound Influence
The role of Christianity in America’s founding is debated. Two common answers are put forth. The first is that the Founders were all secular men guided by Enlightenment philosophy, not Christian faith. The second is that the Founders were devout, orthodox Christians who drew inspiration from the Bible regarding every political question.
Historian Mark David Hall argues that neither extreme is historically accurate. The more defensible claim is that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Hall contends that the Founders were influenced by Christian ideas, even though some were not orthodox believers. Only a handful of the Founders were deists or held beliefs close to that view. At the time of America’s founding, the Christian worldview permeated culture and discourse. In a study of over 15,000 pamphlets, articles, and books on political subjects in the late eighteenth century, Donald S. Lutz found that the Bible was referenced more often than all the Enlightenment authors combined.
“It is important to note that nominal Christians might be influenced by Christian ideas, just as it is possible for an orthodox Christian to be influenced by non-Christian ideas,” Hall writes. “I believe that an excellent case can be made that Christianity had a profound influence on the Founders.”
The Great Awakening
Among the earliest English settlers in the American colonies, the Puritans believed they were “a city upon a hill” (a reference to Matthew 5:14). “Puritans separated church and state, but they clearly thought the two institutions should work in tandem to support, protect, and promote true Christianity,” Hall writes.
Nine of the thirteen colonies had established churches, and all required officeholders to be Christians. “If one is to understand the story of the United States of America, it is important to have a proper appreciation for its Christian colonial roots,” Hall writes. “By almost any measure, colonists of European descent who settled in the New World were serious Christians whose constitutions, laws, and practices reflected the influence of Christianity.”
In “The Great Awakening and the American Revolution,” Glenn Sunshine highlights how ideas birthed out of the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s helped create the conditions that made the American Revolution possible. First, the Awakening challenged authority structures in both church and state. Sunshine writes:
If a regenerate layman was superior to an unregenerate bishop, then the ecclesiastical hierarchy was no guarantee of spiritual legitimacy. The same thinking applied to the state. A king who was unregenerate and ruled unjustly was no better than a beggar and no more legitimate than an illegitimate bishop.
These teachings on spiritual equality spilled over into ideals about social and political equality. As individuals were empowered to challenge elites, historical deference to the king eroded. Within the colonies, this led to the thinking that a republic was superior to a monarchy.
Itinerant preachers, such as George Whitefield, drew huge crowds during the Awakening from across denominations and throughout the colonies. Sunshine notes how this created interconnected networks and a shared sense of purpose among evangelical Protestants. This gave rise to an emerging American identity distinct from that of England.
The Awakening also reinforced the belief that God was active in history. “It is no accident that Revolutionary leaders framed the struggle against Britain as more than just political. For them, it was a moral crusade to preserve virtue, liberty, and divine favor,” Sunshine writes. “Without the cultural foundations laid by the Great Awakening, the Revolution would likely have lacked moral justification and broad popular support.”
One Nation Under God
The Declaration of Independence contains four references to God. God is lawmaker (“the laws of nature and of nature’s God”), founder (humans are “endowed by their Creator”), judge (“the Supreme Judge of the world”), and executive (the “Divine Providence”). Cultural commentator John Stonestreet writes, “The implication is clear. If the powers of government are aligned with God’s will, the people are safe.”
The concept of limited government, an idea promoted by Enlightenment thinker John Locke, was rooted in Augustine’s doctrine of original sin and the belief that no individual or group could be trusted with absolute power. This view of human nature was instrumental in the Founders creating three branches of government with enumerated powers.
Among the Founders, there was major agreement that religious liberty should be protected, civic authorities could promote Christianity, and that religion belongs in the public square. “There was virtually no support for contemporary visions of a separation of church and state that would have political leaders avoid religious language and require public spaces to be stripped of religious symbols,” Hall writes.
After the House approved the final draft of the Bill of Rights, George Washington made his 1789 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, which is worth noting:
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor…I do recommend…the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our national government a blessing to all the People….
When the Founders established the American republic, they believed it required virtuous citizens to function and that faith was indispensable in supplying that virtue. They believed human beings were sinful and that God ordained moral standards that inform legislation. Significant concepts such as liberty were informed by the Bible. And the Founders believed that humans were created in God’s image, meaning they had inherent dignity, were capable of reason, and should be free.
For generations, Christian faith played an important role in the lives of Americans. However, the rise of secularism in American society eroded the very ideas upon which the Founders built the nation. And, in the process, the American Church declined.
The Rise of Secularism & the Decline of the Mainline
On the surface, the American Church in the mid-20th century appeared to be strong. In 1952, 75 percent of Americans said religion was “very important” in their lives. By 1957, over 80 percent said religion “can answer today’s problems.” Church affiliation went from 55 percent to 69 percent through the 1950s. By the end of the decade, nearly half of all Americans attended church regularly, the highest percentage in the nation’s history.
Yet this period of flourishing would not last. Secularization had been occurring in Western societies for centuries, but gained momentum in the United States after World War II and in the 1960s. Instead of defending Orthodox Christianity as an alternative to secularism, mainline Protestant churches—Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, American Baptist, and the United Church of Christ denominations—adopted the secular mindset.
The two main features of secularism, the privatization of religion and radical individualism, caused American society to fracture. “The polarization in our society has become severe, and the disagreements are about the most basic ideas of what human nature is and what human flourishing looks like,” writes pastor and theologian Tim Keller in The Decline and Renewal of the American Church.
There is no longer any common set of ‘American values’ or a unifying ‘American story.’ And the decline of mainline Protestantism, once the unofficial but real religion of America, was both a cause of and a result of this breakdown in American society.
Tim Keller
The secular vision of a society united by the belief that the human condition and morality could be explained through reason and science alone has failed. American society has never been more divided and fragmented than it is today because everyone determines their own individual meaning and moral values.
America has become secular, and so have the mainline denominations. If those churches can’t lead the way in renewing the American Church, what about the conservative side of Protestantism—Evangelicalism?
The Decline of Evangelicalism
According to the General Social Survey, in the early 1970s, only 17 percent of the population was evangelical. However, Evangelicalism became the largest single religious tradition in 1990, accounting for 29.9 percent of the population. However, since 2007, Evangelicalism has been declining, with 22 percent of the population identifying themselves as evangelical.
Along with the decline of liberal and conservative Protestant churches, the number of “Nones”—American adults who have “no religious preference”—is trending upward. In 1972, only 5 percent of Americans reported no religion, but by 2018, that number had increased to 24 percent, according to the General Social Survey.
“The United States is slowly running out of traditionally-minded Americans to convert, and conservative Protestants on the whole are unwilling or unable to reach the highly secular and culturally different,” writes Keller. “Virtually all Christian strategies for evangelism and church growth are geared to people with traditional ‘background beliefs.’ But such people are fewer and older, and conservative Protestantism, in general, does not know how to evangelize and win secular people.”
Hope for the Future
What is the way forward for the American Church in the next 250 years? Are there any reasons to hope? America has experienced a number of revivals in its short history, including the First and Second Great Awakenings, the Layman’s Prayer Revival of 1857, and the Jesus Movement of the late ‘60s and 70s. When those revivals came, the Holy Spirit was the ultimate cause. However, there were—and still are—means by which the Spirit works to bring revival.
First, there is the recovery of the true gospel. Second, revival is always preceded by a time of extraordinary prayer. Finally, there is repentance. “Real revivals are not triumphalistic but exercises in spiritual humility, in repentance to God and to one another,” Keller writes. While we cannot manufacture revival, we know that when all three of these elements are present, people experience more of God’s presence and relationships are changed—with God, with fellow believers, and with whole communities.
If revival is coming to America, it will come the same way it has always come—not through human methods, but through God’s methods. It will come from churches that stand firm in the truth of God’s Word and refuse to be assimilated by secular culture. Finally, revival will come from a united Church that has embraced its missionary calling to a post-Christian culture.
What does it look like to be the Church in a post-Christian culture? That question is the focus of a companion piece, The Next 250 Years.
Bibliography
Hall, Mark David. “Did America Have a Christian Founding?” Heritage Foundation, June 7, 2011. https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/did-america-have-christian-founding.
Keller, Timothy. The Decline and Renewal of the American Church. New York: Gospel in Life, 2022. https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/decline-and-renewal-of-the-american-church-extended/.
Stonestreet, John. “A Nation Under God.” Breakpoint, March 18, 2026. https://breakpoint.org/a-nation-under-god/.
Sunshine, Glenn. “The Great Awakening and the American Revolution.” Breakpoint, February 13, 2026. https://breakpoint.org/the-great-awakening-and-the-american-revolution/.
