The Bible has often been described as the book that built America. As President Franklin Roosevelt affirmed:

We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a Nation without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. ¹

Significantly, it was many of America’s Founding Fathers who worked actively to spread the Bible and its influence across America.

For example, Benjamin Rush (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) in 1809 helped establish the first Bible Society in America. ² By 1816, 121 more Bible societies had been started across the nation, many of them with the help of key Founding Fathers. 3(Information relating to early Bible societies is available in the commentary for Psalm 119 in The Founders Bible.)

This was particularly true with the American Bible Society – the first national Bible society in America. WallBuilders vast collection of original documents includes the original constitution of the Society as well as the first Bible printed by them. The list of the first officers of the Society is a who’s who of American political leaders at the time, and included signers of the U. S. Constitution, revolutionary generals, U. S. Supreme Court Justices, U. S. Attorney General, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, state governors, and others. ⁴

For more information on the American Bible Society see David Barton’s short video about this remarkable organization.

Endnotes

¹ Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Statement on the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Printing of the English Bible,” The American Presidency Project, October 6, 1935.
² The First Report of the Bible Society Established at Philadelphia; Read Before the Society at Their Annual Meeting, May 1, 1809 (Philadelphia: Fry and Kammerer, 1809), 2.
³ The Eighth Report of the Bible Society of Philadelphia; Read Before the Society, May 1, 1816 (Philadelphia: Will Fry, 1816), pp. 44-52.
⁴ Constitution of the American Bible Society, Formed by a Convention of Delegates Held in the City of New-York, May, 1816 (New York: G. F. Hopkins, 1816), 7.