How Bibliocentric was Early America?

Earlier this month, Mark Noll provided perhaps the most provocative argument of the 3rd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture when he claimed that the America of 1740-1820 was a "creation of the Bible," bolstered by the Protestant non-establishment. He went further, arguing that public use of scripture is always political in the United States. When pressed to elucidate further, most notably by John Corrigan's question of how Noll's understanding of the period in question differed from previous arguments made by Jon Butler, Noll stood his ground (Charlie McCrary penned a fantastic summation of the conference on the Junto; for a tweet by tweet timeline, see this Storify). 

Often, early America - and especially the Revolution - is considered part of a larger narrative of the "progress" of Enlightenment thinking; this can help explain most of the reactions to Noll's statements in Indianapolis. How, then, can we measure the Bibliocentric nature of early America? Over at the Religion and American Culture blog, Christopher Jones helps provide an answer with his review of James Byrd's Sacred Scripture, Sacred War (Oxford 2013): 

Byrd’s book, subtitled “The Bible and the American Revolution,” analyzes the context and content of “over 17,000 biblical citations in over 500 sources” in an attempt to understand what role the Bible played in motivating colonists to war and inspiring soldiers to fight. In a biblically literate society like British North America, orthodox Christians and avowed skeptics alike cited scripture in promoting and defending the Revolution. 

While I have my own reservations regarding the degree to which early America proved Bibliocentric - what was the receptivity of sermons? was this a specific social phenomenon, or did it span across the social spectrum? - the claims by both Noll and Byrd are compelling. If nothing else, they have provided fresh talking points in our consideration of religion in revolutionary and early republican America.