Excerpt

In an article published in May 2011 in Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Catholic Church, Flavio Felice, director of the Centro Tocqueville-Acton, called American constitutionalism the “child of Christianity.” This is a widely held theory,¹ but so contrary to known historical facts that Farrell Till had no hesitation in denouncing it as a myth.²

To start with, we should remember that “the Puritans have been hymned as the pioneers of religious liberty, though nothing was ever farther from their designs; they have been hailed as the forerunners of democracy, though if they were, it was quite beside their intention;…