In Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, Daniel Dreisbach argues that the Bible made a substantial contribution to the political discourse of the American Founding and that close attention to how Americans understood and used the Bible in the American Revolution sheds important light on the political culture of the Revolution and on the institutions that resulted from it (7, 231). Dreisbach critiques modern scholarship on the American Revolution for overlooking the significant role the Bible played — it was the most-quoted single source in political debates — and he insists the Revolution was not a secular event. He steers clear of the other extreme as well, avoiding sacralizing political events. Still, he makes a convincing case that biblical themes should be added to other political ideals such as republicanism or liberalism that scholars have found in the American Revolution. Dreisbach aims to present an interdisciplinary account of his topic, one which takes in historical research, textual analysis, biblical scholarship, and political theory (16). Through an extensive reading of published political sources from the period, coupled with a wide-ranging appreciation of secondary literature, he advances an effective case.

The book divides into two sections. The first presents an overview for how the Bible functioned in revolutionary culture and how it was particularly used by leading “founding fathers.” Dreisbach sketches how the Bible deeply shaped colonial life, and he emphasizes the Protestant nature of the public culture, with that Protestantism uniquely formed by the King James Version of the Bible. The linguistic style of the King James Version shaped language, encouraged education and literacy, and established legal expectations. With an impact so broad, it is no wonder that it shaped revolutionary politics. Looking at founding leaders, Dreisbach reveals how biblical content shaped them, even those who were not pious or even orthodox believers. Many founders had a deep knowledge of the Bible: they read it (often in the original Hebrew and Greek), studied it, translated it, and wrote commentaries on it. They helped import Bibles, print Bibles domestically, and found Bible Societies to distribute them.

Next, Dreisbach provides an extremely helpful typology for describing how the Bible was used in political discourse. In their rhetoric, revolutionaries could deploy the Bible to (1) enrich a common language; (2) enhance the power of their rhetoric; (3) identify normative and ethical standards for public life; (4) reflect on the role of Providence; and (5) gain insights into the character and designs of God. In this section, Dreisbach also powerfully illustrates how George Washington and Patrick Henry could use many biblical phrases for great rhetorical effect (73–81).

In the second half of the book, Dreisbach moves to analyzing specific passages that played prominent roles in the period, including Proverbs 14:34, Proverbs 23:2, Micah 4:4, and Micah 6:8. These richly analytical chapters are interspersed with interludes of moments in the revolutionary era that also speak to the cultural place of the Bible, whether the prayer that opened the First Continental Congress, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress trying to design a Great Seal featuring Moses leading the Exodus, the biblical element of the Liberty Bell, or Benjamin Franklin's call for prayer at the Constitutional Convention.

The second section contains two very important contributions to understanding religion in the American Revolution. The first is Dreisbach's discussion of Protestant Resistance Theory. The colonists confronted Loyalist attention to passages such as Romans 13 that seemed to suggest an “unlimited submission” to kingly authority. Patriots could not ignore this biblical injunction, and Dreisbach gives the best, clearest answer to date about how they answered it. He does this through explaining with great lucidity the tradition of Protestant Resistance Theory that developed after the Reformation and justified resistance to tyranny (and which may have been adapted subsequently by John Locke). Understanding this political tradition explains how patriots could claim allegiance to the Bible while overthrowing George III's rule in America. The second is Dreisbach's discussion of the ideal of liberty in the Revolution, in which he goes farther than J.C.D. Clark's classic study The Language of Liberty. Part of this explanation grows out of Dreisbach's account of how American clergy preached on passages such as Galatians 5:1, which speaks about spiritual liberty. Dreisbach documents how many of these preachers acknowledged they were applying a spiritual concept to a political movement, but they offered justifications for how this rhetorical move was appropriate. They were not blindly misusing Scripture. Another part of this explanation is Dreisbach's reconstruction of the robust nature of the liberty the founding generation was seeking. This liberty was beautifully captured in Washington's desire to “sit under his own vine and fig tree,” which encapsulated outward peace, inward contentment, and religious liberty shared equally (218–225). Further, this liberty was “ordered, community-deferring, and consistent with ‘universal moral standards mediated by divine revelation’” (203), a sharp contrast to contemporary notions of autonomous, individualized liberty.

Dreisbach's book joins two other recent works that take on related topics. Mark Noll's In the Beginning Was the Word chronicles public uses of the Bible from earliest colonial days until the American Revolution, so the Revolution itself receives only a few chapters. In those chapters, Noll examines the contest over Scriptural interpretation that occurred in the Revolution. James Byrd's Sacred Scripture, Sacred War primarily highlights Scriptural passages that helped to justify the fight for American independence. Significantly, the passages Byrd highlights are different than the ones Dreisbach uses. Although all three books are valuable, Dreisbach's brings unique insights through his qualitative approach that seeks to understand cultural norms through the period's deployment of Scripture. In a near-encyclopedic manner, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers provides a very helpful overview that will equip all readers seeking to understand the important intersection of politics and religion in the American Revolution.