Dr. Nathan T. Morton

Most Americans know the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison because they belong to the familiar cast of characters we associate with the birth of our great nation. But stories like those of James Leland and John Gano remind us that the story of American liberty was not written by statesmen alone. It was also shaped by pastors, churches, dissenters, and ordinary believers who understood that political freedom would remain incomplete if the...

Benjamin Franklin was a printer, inventor, statesman, wit, and philosopher. ("Early to bed, early to rise ...") Franklin admired morality, providence, and public virtue, but he was not a professing Christian. George Whitefield, who started the Methodist movement, was the thundering evangelist of the Great Awakening. He preached Christ to massive crowds, called sinners to repentance, and helped awaken religious concern throughout the colonies. Whitefield knew Benjamin Franklin and prayed for...

James Madison is often called the Father of the Constitution. He helped shape the structure of the new American government and later introduced the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. John Leland was a Baptist preacher, evangelist, and passionate defender of religious liberty. He believed that no government had the right to command the conscience, compel religious belief, or force one man to pay for the religion of another. For Leland, religious liberty was not merely a political...