Did the American founding represent a break from Christian and classical civilization? If so, does this mean America is ineradicably modern and secular? Or, as Russell Kirk argued, is the miracle of Philadelphia the result of an inheritance from Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London?

With Kirk, Kody Cooper and Justin Dyer argue in their new book, The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics, that the classical inheritance and the Christian inheritance are joined in the American constitutional system.