Stephens: You write about the difference between what the public wants out of the past and how historians actually practice history. One radio host told me point blank that if America was not a Christian nation he could not be a patriot. Since this book came out I have talked to several people-both on the radio and on the lecture circuit-who have a hard time distinguishing their patriotism from their Christian faith. A lot of Christians today have a hard time separating the two. This is more a statement about the influence of Christianity on American culture and less a statement about whether or not the founders believed that they were creating a uniquely Christian nation or whether those who believe today that America is a Christian nation are correct in their assumption.Īnyone familiar with the historiography of American religion knows that American evangelicalism and American nationalism have, in many ways, grown-up together. Though the idea of America as a "Christian nation" has been understood in different ways by different groups, I think one could make a pretty good argument that today's advocates of a "Christian America" have a large chunk of American history on their side. John Fea: As a I argue in the first four chapters of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, the overwhelming majority of Americans have always seen themselves as living in a Christian nation. Why do you think it matters so much, to so many Americans, that the founding fathers and the nation itself was and is Christian? Other westerners, he observes, are not so obsessed with the lives and values of their nations' progenitors. Randall Stephens: Gordon Wood has commented on the strange fascination Americans have with their founders. I recently caught up with Fea and asked him about his book, contemporary discussions on the matter, and his experience lecturing on the topic. His most recent book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Westminister John Knox Press, 2011), uncovers the historical roots of the Christian nation question and offers much-needed, timely insight.
(He writes on that and related matters at his popular, always interesting blog Way of Improvement Leads Home.) Fea is the author of The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and an editor of Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation, with Jay Green and Eric Miller (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). John Fea has been thinking and writing about colonial America and the Revolutionary Era for quite some time. With the 4th of July just around the corner, it's a good time to reflect on how Americans conceive the settlement and founding of their nation.
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