Hey, everybody. What is up? Welcome back to Cooper stuff. We have a pretty cool episode today doing

something a little different because I read a book that I absolutely loved. It was given to me by

our friend Jeff Myers from Summit Ministries who's a friend of the show. Of course, we've had Jeff

on and he said, dude, we didn't say dude. That's what I said. He said, man, you got to check this

book out. And I really loved it. And so I have the author on his name is Mark David Hall, not to

be confused with Mark Hall, the singer for casting crowns. But anyway, hey, Mark, thank you for coming

to the show. Tell us who you are and tell us what you do. Well, thank you so much for having me,

John. It's my pleasure. So I'm a professor. I've been at George Fox University for years. I'm

actually shifting over to Regent University to teach in their new PhD program in political science.

And I've done a bunch of academic stuff. I've probably written a dozen or edited dozen academic

books. Over the last five years, I felt called to write for the general reading public. And so I

wrote a book that came out in 2019 did America have a Christian founding. And this book proclaim

Liberty throughout all the land is somewhat of a sequel to that. And basically, the thesis is that

in spite of arguments that you see all the time, most notably maybe in the 1619 project,

arguments at Christianity has been a repressive force throughout American history. My argument that

is in general on balance, it's been a force for progress for advancing liberty and equality for

all Americans. All right, I didn't know about your 2019 book. Tell us what the name of that one is

one more time. Sure. So it's called did America have a Christian founding? And I answer that

question with the resounding yes. And the argument is that America's founders, they almost all identified

as Christians and about 98% Protestant, maybe 2% Roman Catholic. But more importantly, they were

profoundly influenced by Christian ideas or by political ideas developed within the Christian

tradition of political reflection. And so I think this is historically absolutely the case.

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