released 7/5/2024
In a conversation from 2012, historian John Fea discusses the idea of America as a Christian nation. He traces the idea’s acceptance in most of the past four centuries through America’s founding, manifest destiny, the Civil War, nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal Protestantism, the civil rights movement, fundamentalism, and the Religious Right. His 2011 book Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction deals with the complicated historical puzzle this question addresses. Many Christians make a constant reference to the need to “reclaim our Judeo-Christian heritage.” The idea has always been pervasive and influential, though what is meant by the term in the particulars has changed over time depending on which groups were using the rhetoric. Each side of the Civil War, for example, invoked God and the Christian nature of the nation to buttress their arguments. America’s founders, whatever else, saw religion in the Greco-Roman tradition: as necessary for the moral and civic formation of citizens. Liberal Protestants in the immense Social Gospel movement saw their politics as establishing the principles of the kingdom of God. Americans throughout history understood their nation as a sacred and providential trust from a God who was working through America for the sake of progress in the world. Host Ken Myers discusses with Fea the implications of what it would mean to be a truly Christian nation, and whether assumptions about our heritage are in line with historical realities. This conversation was originally published on Volume 111 of the Journal.
27 minutes
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