According to John Eidsmoe, the U S Constitution was heavily influenced by Christianity. That is the thesis of his book Christianity and the Constitution. Published in 1987 by Baker House, the book is 415 pages in length.
The book leads off with a survey of various philosophical schools popular in the 18th Century, not least of which was Calvinism. John Eidsmoe states that a majority of Americans were Calvinist, but fails to demonstrate its influence on the Founders.
The book deals briefly with “John Locke’s social contract theory,” which is said to be the “secular expression” of the covenant. Mr. Eidsmoe equates the two, a usual tactic of Christian Federalists to explain away the obvious secularism of the U S Constitution.
For example, he glosses over Locke’s humanism with the assertion that he was “a Puritan by background” who “based his political theories on Rutherford’s Lex Rex.” Thus he excuses Locke’s humanism and Latitudinarianism to arrive at an very tenuous … Read the rest