The Bible Cause

Founded in 1816 with the goal of distributing copies of the Bible throughout the world, the American Bible Society (ABS) is a seminal institution for American Christians. Endorsed in its time by Francis Scott Key, John Jay, Theodore Roosevelt, Billy Graham, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D.Eisenhower, today the ABS is a ministry based in Philadelphia with a $300 million endowment and a mission to engage 100 million Americans with the Bible by 2025. In The Bible Cause, the first complete history of the ABS in nearly thirty years, noted American historian John Fea demonstrates how thehistory of the ABS has intersected at nearly every point with the history of the United States. For the last two hundred years, the ABS has steadily increased its influence both at home and abroad, working with all Christian denominations in the US and internationally and aligning itself whenever possible with the gatekeepers of American religious culture. Over the years ABS Bibles could befound in hotel rooms, bookstores, and airports; on steamboats, college and university campuses; the Internet; and even behind the Iron Curtain. Its agents, Bibles in hand, could be found on the front lines of every American military conflict from the Mexican-American War to the war in Iraq. Howeverand wherever the United States developed, the ABS was there. Throughout the last two centuries ABS has never wavered in its mission to place the Bible in the hands of as many people as possible, and its commitment to be the guardian of a Christian civilization has been proven many times over.