The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 144–73.
Dreisbach, Daniel L. 2017. Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. New York: Oxford University Press.
The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Middle Tennessee State University. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia.
Gamble, Richard M. 2019. A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Griffith, Sidney H. 2013. The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hall, Mark David. 2013. Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hall, Mark David. 2019. Did America Have a Christian Founding? Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.
Hanson, Paul D. 2010. Political Engagement as a Political Mandate. Cambridge, UK: James Clarke.
Timeline
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| ca. 405 | St. Jerome publishes a complete translation of the Bible into Latin. His version will be a primary means to accessing the Bible for individuals unfamiliar with Hebrew and Greek for the next thousand years. |
| 1378 | John Wycliffe publishes De veritate Sacrae Scripturae (On the Truth of Sacred Scripture). |
| 1388 | Followers of John Wycliffe publish the first complete English edition of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate. |
| 1453 | Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press. The first book that he prints, in Latin, is the Bible. The fall of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) sends scholars of Greek westward. |
| 1492 | Christopher Columbus, who was seeking to get to China by sailing west from Europe, leads the first of four voyages to America. Spain expels all Jews. |
| 1517 | Martin Luther nails theses on a church door and initiates the Protestant Reformation. |
| 1522 | Martin Luther publishes the first New Testament in German. |
| 1525 | William Tyndale publishes an English New Testament based on Erasmus’s Greek. |
| 1534 | King Henry VIII of England breaks with the Catholic Church and creates the Church of England. |
| 1535 | Miles Coverdale, a student of Tyndale, produces an English Bible. |
| 1540 | First authorized English version of the Bible (variously known as the Great Bible, the Cromwell Bible, or the Cranmer Bible) is published based largely on an earlier translation by William Tyndale. |
| 1560 | Exiles from England in Switzerland publish the Geneva Bible in English. It is the first English Bible with verse numbers. |
| 1603 | British settlers land in Jamestown, Virginia. |
| 1604 | The Hampton Court Conference decides to translate the Bible into English. 1609–1610 The Rheims-Douai Bible becomes the first Roman Catholic Bible published in English. |
| 1611 | The King James Version of the Bible is published in England. It is compiled by forty-seven scholars and polished by Miles Smith, widely known for his knowledge of ancient languages. |
| 1618 | Beginning of the Thirty Years’ War pitting Protestants against Catholics in Europe. |
| 1620 | Pilgrims land in North America seeking freedom to practice their religion and enter into the Mayflower Compact. Viewing themselves as the New Israel, they often look upon Native Americans as Canaanites whom they have the right to destroy. |
| xxxiv1630 | John Winthrop composes his “Model of Christian Charity.” |
| 1635 | Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
| 1637 | Puritans burn about five hundred Native Americans to death at Mystic, Connecticut, justifying their actions on the basis of the Old Testament. |
| 1639 | Settlers in Connecticut compose the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. |
| 1640 | Publication of The Bay Psalm Book. |
| 1644 | Roger Williams publishes a pamphlet advocating religious liberty against John Cotton. |
| 1647 | Massachusetts adopts the Old Deluder Satan Law requiring that towns of fifty or more households establish schools to teach reading and writing. |
| 1663 | John Eliot publishes the first Bible in America, a translation into Wopanaak for local Native Americans, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 1678 | First publication of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. |
| 1683 | Algernon Sidney is executed for conspiring against King Charles II. |
| 1688 | The “Glorious Revolution” replaces a Catholic king with a Protestant one. |
| 1739 | Revivalist George Whitefield comes to America and launches the First Great Awakening that continues into the next decade. |
| 1743 | Christopher Sauer publishes the first German Bible (Luther’s translation) in America. |
| 1754 | Beginning of the French and Indian War. |
| 1763 | The end of the French and Indian War ends up with the French transfer of Canada to Great Britain. |
| 1765 | The British Parliament imposes the stamp tax on its North American colonies. |
| 1768 | Boston, Braintree, Charleston, and Lexington, Massachusetts, all declare a day of fasting and prayer to protest the coming of British troops. |
| 1770 | British fire on Americans in the so-called Boston Massacre. |
| 1774 | Rev. Jacob Duché reads a biblical passage and delivers a prayer before the First Continental Congress. Virginia declares June 1 as a day of fasting and prayer. |
| 1775 | Patrick Henry gives his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech at St. Johns Church in Richmond, Virginia. Fighting breaks out at Lexington and Concord between American and British troops. The Continental Congress declares July 20 as a day of humiliation and prayer. On July 29, the Continental Congress creates the American chaplaincy. |
| 1776 |
Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, in which he argues from Scripture that God opposed monarchy.
Lutheran pastor Peter Muhlenberg |