This book has been out for several years but isn’t nearly as appreciated as it deserves to be. Novak, a Catholic theologian, paints a balanced and moving portrait of the faith and ideas that animated the founding of the nation. It is a picture that is increasingly being spray painted over by the secular propagandists of our day.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal’s David Gelernter said this about On Two Wings:

Michael Novak describes the nation’s birth as it happened, not the way our aggressively secular society likes to remember it. Two wings lofted the American eagle into flight, writes Novak: Enlightenment philosophy and the nation’s compact with “the God of the Jews,” meaning “the God of Israel championed by the nation’s first Protestants.” Novak marshals impressive evidence, including the remarkable scene in September 1774 when a clergyman read Psalm 35 to the Continental Congress. John Adams described the scene to his wife: “It was enough to melt a heart of stone. I saw tears gush into the eyes of the old, grave, pacific Quakers. . . . I must beg you to read that Psalm.” Novak’s account may be ignored but will never be contravened. His book may change forever your ideas about America’s founding.