Book excerpt: This is one of eight volumes on the Declaration of Independence. These last four contain only about 25 extended essays each. Rolwing examines nearly all the major writers on our Basic Charter, most of whom repudiate it. He focuses on their manifold criticisms and rejections, reveals their multiple distortions and misunderstandings, rebukes their self-contradictions and inconsistencies, and pities their general theo-phobia. He argues that while America was Founded almost completely by Protestant Christians (the only two deists were not even deists), what was Founded was formally only a philosophical product, not a faith based or Christian one, although the philosophy had been more Catholic than Protestant. Rolwing makes a great deal of American history, law, ethics, politics, philosophy, and theology easily accessible to the average reader. Each 5 minute essay can give you a high for the whole day. Certainly the Declaration is worth many an hour explaining and defending it. Mr. Rolwing seeks to make the problems brought up about the document capable of being understood by both scholar and ordinary citizen.