Faith & Freedom

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"Mr. Hart has written a much-needed corrective to current dogma. He demonstrates that our freedoms, and the morality that sustains them, grew out of religious faith, and makes a strong case for the proposition that democracy without religion is not enough to guarantee liberty. I found Faith and Freedom a powerful and thought-provoking book."

ROBERT H. BORK
John M. Olin Scholar in Legal Studies,
American Enterprise Institute
 

"Ben Hart has written a rich book, systematically argued in a way that is sustained to the final page. Faith and Freedom makes an irrefutable case that the American political order cannot be explained apart from our original religious commitment as a people."

M.E. BRADFORD
Professor of American Studies, University of Dallas
Author, A Better Guide Than Reason and A Worthy Company
 

"Religious freedom is, in largest part, a religious achievement. Mr. Hart underscores that truth with lively narrative and forceful argument. In recent decades many Americans have been miseducated to believe that religious freedom, and most other freedoms, were historically secured against the forces of religion. Hart does not merely right the balance, he puts things back into their proper order, reminding us that, without ‘unalienable rights’ bestowed prior to the State, all rights are imperiled by the State."

 RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS
Director, The Center on Religion and Society
Author, The Naked Public Square

A NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

I thank Stan Oakes of Christian Leadership Ministries, without whose encouragement and support this book would not have been written; American historians Forrest McDonald and M. E. Bradford, who provided wise counsel; my father Jeffrey Hart, mother-in-law Eloise Canileld, and editors Harry Crocker, Patti Culver, and Rebecca S. Cotton, who all meticulously combed the manuscript; Pamela Hallett, who managed the project, and Judy Chalmers and Donna Metcalf, who assisted with many of the details of production; my colleagues Ed Feulner, Phil Truluck, and Burt Pines of The Heritage Foundation, whose efforts have done so much to bring back freedom as an intellectually and morally defensible principle; and, most of all, my beloved wife Betsy, whose boundless enthusiasm for this project spurred me to begin writing every morning at 6 a.m. until the book was finished.

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