Rule of Law as the Foundation for a Flourishing Society
Dr. Jeffery Ventrella
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the White House is releasing a series of short educational videos entitled The Story of America, highlighting key ideas and moments from the nation’s founding. One installment in the series focuses on the founders’ understanding of religious liberty and features Dr. Mark David Hall, a professor in the Robertson School of Government at Regent University and a presidential appointee to one of the Religious Liberty Commission’s advisory boards.
In the video (included below), Hall revisits a long-running debate about the religious character of the founding era. While modern narratives often portray the founders primarily as Enlightenment deists who sought to remove religion from public life, Hall argues that the historical record tells a more complicated story. The founders rejected religious coercion, but they also recognized the public importance of religious belief and built a constitutional order that robustly protects the free exercise of religion. I spoke with Dr. Hall about the background of the video, the historical debates it engages, and why the founders’ understanding of religious liberty still matters today.
“I received a call from a White House staffer asking if I would be interested in shooting a video and serving on a commission advisory board,” he told me. “The purpose of the Religious Liberty Commission is to propose ways to better protect religious liberty in America,” Hall said. “The video series itself is intended to educate Americans and celebrate the nation responsibly as we approach America’s 250th anniversary.”
One of the central arguments in Hall’s video challenges the familiar narrative in modern discussions of the founding era that America’s founders were primarily Enlightenment deists who wanted religion excluded from public life. Hall believes that explanation often reflects ideological commitments more than historical evidence.
“Many of the nonsensical works on this topic are written by activists dedicated to the separation of church and state,” he said when asked what drives that interpretation.
The video also explores how religious ideas influenced the founders’ understanding of politics and government.
In particular, Hall highlights the founders’ belief in the moral limitations of human nature. Rather than assuming political leaders would act virtuously, the Constitution’s system of checks and balances reflects a more cautious view. The founders’ view of human nature drew in part from the biblical teaching that human beings are both dignified and fallen, a tension that helps explain why the Constitution divides power among different branches of government.
That skepticism about human perfectibility, Hall noted, stands in contrast to certain strands of political thought throughout history.
“It’s not just modern political theory,” he said. “All utopian thinkers tend to have an optimistic view of human nature. You can see that in figures like Plato, Rousseau, and Marx.”
By contrast, the founders’ more restrained understanding of human nature encouraged institutional safeguards designed to limit the concentration of power.
The founders rejected religious coercion, but they also recognized the public importance of religious belief and built a constitutional order that robustly protects the free exercise of religion.
Hall also points to the influence of the biblical doctrine that human beings are created in the image of God, the Imago Dei. According to Hall, this belief informed early American legal developments related to slavery.
“It led to federal laws limiting the expansion of slavery and state laws banning it or putting it on the road to extinction,” he said.
While the founding generation left the problem of slavery unresolved, Hall argues that the moral reasoning embedded in the nation’s founding principles contributed to the arguments later used by abolitionists.
One of the most important distinctions Hall draws in the video involves the difference between “toleration” and genuine religious liberty.
In many European contexts, toleration meant that governments allowed certain religious minorities to exist but retained the authority to withdraw those permissions. The American founders, Hall argues, moved beyond that framework.
“It is imperative to recognize that all citizens—whatever their race, gender, or religion—have the right to the free exercise of religion,” he said.
For the founders, religious liberty was not a privilege granted by government, but a natural right that governments were obligated to protect.
Hall closes the video by reflecting on George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. In that letter, Washington famously wrote that the United States would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
For Hall, that principle remains highly relevant today.
“About 20 percent of Americans think Muslims in America should not be able to build mosques on the same terms that Christians can build churches,” he said. “Those individuals simply don’t understand the founders’ commitment to protecting religious liberty for all Americans.”
The founders’ vision of religious liberty, Hall argues, was never intended to protect only the majority faith.
For the founders, religious liberty was not a privilege granted by government, but a natural right that governments were obligated to protect.
As the nation prepares to commemorate its 250th birthday in 2026, Hall believes the responsibility to protect religious liberty continues to fall on each generation of Americans. For Christians in particular, he encourages active engagement.
“Christians should advocate, pray, and support organizations that defend religious liberty,” he said, pointing to legal groups including the First Liberty Institute.
The founders described “freedom of conscience” as a fundamental right rooted in human dignity and the relationship between individuals and their Creator. Preserving that freedom remains one of the central commitments of the American constitutional tradition and a responsibility that Christians today are called to steward wisely.
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