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Start giftingBenjamin Franklin
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Learn moreBenjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intelligence, and luck (what he called "providence"), Franklin became one of Philadelphia's most prominent leaders, a world recognized scientist, and the United States' leading diplomat during the War for Independence.
Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant follows Franklin's remarkable career through the lens of the trends and innovations that the Protestant Reformation started (both directly and indirectly) almost two centuries earlier. His work as a printer, civic reformer, institution builder, scientist, inventor, writer, self-help dispenser, politician, and statesmen was deeply rooted in the culture and outlook that Protestantism nurtured. Through its alternatives to medieval church and society, Protestants built societies and instilled habits of character and mind that allowed figures such as Franklin to build the life that he did. In this biography, D. G. Hart recognizes Franklin as a cultural or non-observant Protestant, someone who thought of himself as a Presbyterian, ordered his life as other Protestants did, sometimes went to worship services, read his Bible, and prayed, but could not go all the way and join a church.
D. G. Hart is Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College. His publications include American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War, Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken, and Calvinism: A History.
David Cochran Heath has worked in radio and theater for thirty-five years. He has voiced characters for computer games and public television, hosted an instructional video series for automotive repair, and was the narrator for a long-running radio program for kids. Additionally, he was the on-camera host for a documentary on the most violent courtroom shootout in US history. David lived in a village in the Philippines for four years as a teenager, and has lived with his wife in Michigan, Washington, and California. He was with Lamb's Players Theatre in Coronado, California, for thirty-one years, working full-time as a senior member of the acting ensemble and serving as the company's director of facilities. He left Lamb's Players in 2011 to concentrate on audiobooks, and has been the narrator of over 140 books, including three versions of the Bible as sole reader: ESV, KJV, and NIrV. David gets his love of stories from his father, who was a preacher for twenty-five years, a missionary for another eighteen years, and a lifelong lover of the most important story of all: God's plan of redemption in all sixty-six books of the Bible.