The Great Deletion: Christianity Vanishes From American History

What would happen if future generations were taught about America's flaws, its conflicts, its divisions, and its failures--but never about the faith that inspired many of its greatest achievements?

According to a new study, that may already be happening.

A report from Brave Books titled The America 250 Faith Gap examined more than 300 books recommended on 25 reading lists assembled by children's publishers, libraries, educational organizations, and literacy groups ahead of America's upcoming 250th anniversary celebration. What researchers discovered was not merely a lack of religious books. They found something far more significant: Christianity's role in the American story had virtually disappeared.

Among the hundreds of recommended titles, not a single book directly addressed Christianity's influence on America's founding. There were no books focused on religious liberty, the faith lives of the Founding Fathers, the Great Awakenings, or the role churches played in shaping the nation's development.

That omission is striking considering the First Amendment begins with protections for religious freedom and the free exercise of religion.

The study also found no books highlighting the black church's role in American history, despite its enormous influence on both abolition and the Civil Rights Movement. Likewise absent were discussions of how Christian convictions shaped many of the nation's earliest institutions.

Meanwhile, the lists prominently featured books centered on race, gender identity, transgender activism, the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and progressive reinterpretations of American history such as the controversial 1619 Project. Books like Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped for Kids and Nikole Hannah-Jones' Born on the Water were common recommendations.

According to Brave Books, the most common themes across the reading lists were the American Revolution, minority perspectives, black history, civil rights, and women's history. Books focused on American symbols, civics, the Founders, and the nation's religious heritage represented only a small fraction of the recommendations.

The concern raised by the study is not that every history book should be explicitly Christian. Rather, it is whether students can receive an accurate understanding of America's history while ignoring one of the most influential forces that shaped it.

After all, Christianity was not a minor footnote in the American experiment.

Many of the original colonial charters referenced God directly. The First Great Awakening swept through the colonies decades before the Revolutionary War, helping unite diverse populations around shared moral principles and ideas about liberty, personal responsibility, and human equality before God. Historians have long recognized that the revival movements of the eighteenth century helped create a cultural foundation that made independence possible.

America's oldest universities likewise bear witness to this heritage. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and many others were founded primarily to train ministers and promote Christian learning. While those institutions have changed dramatically over the centuries, their origins are undeniable.

Even the Declaration of Independence appeals repeatedly to divine authority, grounding human rights in a Creator rather than in government. The famous phrase that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" reflects a worldview deeply influenced by biblical principles.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who is also a Brave Books author, warned that removing these elements from history leaves students with a distorted understanding of the nation they inherit.

"The Declaration of Independence says our rights come from our Creator," Carson noted. "Benjamin Franklin called the Constitutional Convention to prayer before they produced a document that has stood for 250 years. George Washington survived battle after battle in ways that defied all human explanation. These men knew where their strength came from."

Carson argued that faith was not merely a private matter for many of America's founders but a foundational influence on how they viewed government, liberty, and human nature.

"A generation that does not know where their freedoms come from will not know why those freedoms are worth fighting for," Carson said. "Ronald Reagan said freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. He was not exaggerating."

Trent Talbot, founder and chief executive of Brave Books, reached a similar conclusion.

"When reading lists for America's 250th anniversary don't include a single book acknowledging Christianity's role, that's not an oversight," Talbot said. "That's a choice."

Can America truly understand itself while ignoring the faith that shaped so much of its history?

A balanced education should acknowledge both America's triumphs and its failures. It should examine slavery, civil rights struggles, and the nation's imperfections. But it should also honestly recognize the role Christianity played in inspiring abolitionists, motivating reformers, shaping the Founders, and establishing the principles of liberty that Americans continue to cherish today.

If future generations are taught about America's mistakes but never about the faith convictions that helped build its institutions, defend its freedoms, and inspire its greatest reforms, they will inherit an incomplete version of history.

And a nation that forgets where its freedoms came from may eventually forget why those freedoms are worth preserving at all.