A conscientious historian responds to the question "Was America founded as a Christian nation?" with a scrupulous presentation of evidence that may surprise people on both sides of this hot topic.
Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America
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With clarity, wisdom and historic precision, John Fea probes the question posed in the title of this book, “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?” It is a complex question, yielding complex responses that are not amenable to a sound-byte culture. Fea has served church and society well with this important, readable book that probes the issue without polemics.
Dennis P. Hollinger, President, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
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Committed evangelicals have had an outsized impact on early American history, earning respect from major historians who do not share their religious views. Nathan O. Hatch won a reputation that led to his selection as president of Wake Forest University. George M. Marsden and Mark A. Noll have both been recruited for professorships at Notre Dame, as has Harry S. Stout at Yale. John Fea is about to join their select company. His first book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home (2008), explored the impact of both evangelicalism and the enlightenment on Philip Fithian in rural New Jersey and during his career as a chaplain in the Continental Army. This latest work addresses a problem that arose during the Revolution and has emerged again today as an urgent issue rooted in a central dilemma: How explicitly Christian can a nation be under a Constitution and a central government designed to uphold religious neutrality? Fea's answers are searching, surprising, and profound.John Murrin, Princeton University; co-author, Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People
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John Fea challenges his readers to think like historians, and presents them with the facts they need to weigh the evidence for themselves. He does an excellent job of both explaining the complexity of the issues and putting them into context. Particularly enlightening are case studies of the religious beliefs and practices of seven founding fathers—three undoubtedly devout and orthodox in their faith, while the other four are questionable in regard to one and/or the other. Fea’s suggestions for further reading will be especially useful for readers who want to delve even deeper into the topic. Those who are ready to move past simplistic answers will be well served by this thought-provoking work.Mary V. Thompson, Research Historian, Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens; author of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington
*********************************************************** This is an important and timely book. Fea avoids the polarizing polemics of contemporary political debate over the religious beliefs of the founders and instead focuses on the revolutionary generation's spirituality and the ways in which Christian faith shaped understanding during that momentous upheaval. A worthwhile read for scholars as well as the general public."
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Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? explores this controversial question with remarkable objectivity and admirable scholarship. This is a book that every intelligent reader should have in his library.
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This is a book for Christians who want a credible account of how religion affected the settlement and founding of the United States. It brings out the indisputable importance of religion without claiming more than sound historical scholarship can support. Its most original feature is the fascinating history of the long campaign to define the United States as a Christian nation.
Richard Bushman, emeritus, Columbia University; author of From Puritan to Yankee and The Refinement of America
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With careful research and judicious scholarship, John Fea has produced a remarkably useful guide for navigating the arguments about America’s “Christian” origins. His reluctance to dictate conclusions is a measure of his evenhandedness.
Randall Balmer, Barnard College; author of God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush
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Writing with a calm, analytical clarity and profound knowledge, John Feamust be widely read if the misinformation surrounding the question of a Christian America is to be challenged.
Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School; author of Resident Aliens and The Peaceable Kingdom
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Very few writers can take a complex subject—200+ years of history with bewildering, bemoaning and belligerent claims by Americans about whether this nation is Christian or not—hold it up for inspection and make its utter complexity clear, but John Fea accomplishes this and more. Informed, judicious, insightful and genuinely delightful.
Scot McKnight, North Park University; author of The Jesus Creed
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This book is required reading for everyone interested in the question of America's Christian origins--especially for those who think they already have the answer. Well-researched and up-to-date, it is full of timely wisdom on a topic far more complicated than many people think. If I could recommend but one source on the Christian America thesis, this would be it.
Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; author of The American Evangelical Story
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This is a timely book that will help make sense of one of the most important divides in American politics. John Fea does more than simply point out the shortcomings of arguments on either side of the debate over Christian America. He offers a clear and balanced reinterpretation of how this debate has shaped American culture and society for more than 200 years.
John Wigger, University of Missouri; author, American Saint and Taking Heaven by Storm
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John Fea has produced a carefully balanced and thought-provoking addition to the long-running debate about the role of religion in America's founding. It's particularly strong in its treatment of the anti-Catholicism of some of the founders.
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John Fea’s learned and accessible study documents the surprisingly diverse views of the Founders on religion and tells the fascinating story of how Americans have remembered them in later generations. This is an invaluable introduction to a subject that many thoughtful readers will want to know more about.
Beth Barton Schweiger, University of Arkansas; co-editor, Religion in the American South
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This is a wonderful book – fascinating, timely, carefully researched, clearly written and deeply helpful. It examines the Christian Nation idea as expressed by the Founders and also as it has shaped the country ever since, and still does. As a scholar, Professor Fea leaves no doubt of his disdain for those who “cherry pick” the historical record to support contemporary arguments. Rather, he presents such a balanced view of the hard facts that neither the Christian Nation advocates nor their critics can feel totally vindicated. Would that those on all sides of this issue could read this book and, as a consequence, accept the nuances and complexities that Fea identifies so well.
Bob Abernethy, executive editor and host of PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly; co-editor of The Life of Meaning
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