As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the public political theology of the founding faces fundamental ideological challenges. Progressive politics is marked by a pre-Christian paganism that sees divinity as imanent in the world while conservative politics is increasingly influenced by resurgent forms of Christian, and particularly Catholic, integralism, which seeks to reintegrate elements of spiritual and temporal authority that were separated in the modern era. We consider what relevance the classical Christian natural-law tradition has as we consider the legacy of the American founding today.

The Bible is one of the most cited and reworked texts in Borges’s output. The chapter analyses the context in which Borges did his reading of the Bible and its resulting implications. His approach to the Bible was in opposition to that of Catholic integralism: a conception of Catholicism characterized by intransigence and intolerance, which held sway in Argentina in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Borges attributed importance to the Scriptures and defined hiimself as an interested yet sceptical individual. He made almost exclusive use of the Protestant Bible, his personal favourite being the King James Bible, published in 1611. In his later years, Borges declared his preference for Reformed Christianity, and he cited his paternal grandmother. Fanny Haslam, as an example of Protestant bibliocentrism.