Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction [Paperback]

John Fea (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 23, 2011

Fea offers an even-handed primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title's question from a historical perspective, helping readers see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. Readers on both sides of the issues will appreciate that this book occupies a middle ground, noting the good points and the less-nuanced arguments of both sides and leading us always back to the primary sources that our shared American history comprises.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Should be the last word for all who would claim America as a Christian nation. . . . Deserves to be widely read." Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, coauthor of Resident Aliens (with Will Willimon) and The Peaceable Kingdom.

"A remarkably useful guide for navigating the arguments about America's 'Christian' origins." Randall Balmer, Barnard College, author of God in the White House.

"Should be the last word for all who would claim America as a Christian nation. . . . Deserves to be widely read." Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, coauthor of Resident Aliens (with Will Willimon) and The Peaceable Kingdom

"This is a timely book that will help make sense of one of the most important divides in American politics. John Fea 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 of American Saint and Taking Heaven by Storm





"Fea challenges his readers to think like historians, and presents them with the facts they need to weigh the evidence for themselves. Those who are ready to move past simplistic answers will be well served by this thought-provoking work." Mary V. Thompson, author of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington

"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." Ira Stoll, author of Samuel Adams: A Life



"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." Thomas Fleming, author of The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers



"This is a book for Christians who want a credible account of how religion affected the settlement and founding of the United States." Richard Bushman, Emeritus, Columbia University, author of From Puritan to Yankee and The Refinement of America



"Informed, judicious, insightful, and genuinely delightful." Scot McKnight, North Park University; author of The Jesus Creed



"Well-researched and up-to-date, [this book] 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

About the Author

John Fea is Associate Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press (February 23, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0664235042
• ISBN-13: 978-0664235048
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.8 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #153,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Fea (Ph.D SUNY-Stony Brook) chairs the history department at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. His writing on early American history has appeared in a variety of scholarly and popular venues. He is the author of *The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America* (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), *Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation* (Notre Dame University Press, 2010); and *Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction* (Westminster/John Knox Press, Feb. 2011). He is currently working on a book about a revolutionary-era "tea party" in the town of Greenwich, New Jersey and a book about Presbyterians in the American Revolution. He blogs daily at www.philipvickersfithian.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 67 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Yes, No, and Both. September 8, 2011

By George P. Wood VINE™ VOICE

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Few questions in American politics generate as much controversy as the relationship between church and state. On one side are Christian nationalists who contend that the nation was founded on religious principles. On the other side are secularists who argue it was founded on Enlightenment principles. The controversy between them is evident, most obviously, in the seemingly endless First Amendment cases brought before our nation's courts to determine whether that amendment's "establishment" and/or "free exercise" clauses have been violated. But behind the evident legal controversy lies the latent historical controversy, in which the same contending parties dispute the facts and significance of the Founding Era.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? by John Fea is an excellent introduction to that question and should be read by both Christian nationalists and secularists alike, for it corrects the historical errors both sides commit and draws a balanced portrait of the role religion did (and did not) play in the American Founding.

In the Introduction to the book, Fea--an evangelical historian at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania--explains why the question the title of his book asks is so controversial, namely, because both sides to the controversy are seeking a "usable past" to buttress their side in contemporary political debates. Historians, he goes on to argue, should avoid such present-mindedness and seek to understand the past on its own, often complex terms.

Fea then unfolds his argument in three parts. Part One examines the history of the idea of Christian nationalism from the ratification of the Constitution (1789) to the present day. Chapter 1 examines the dominance of evangelical Christianity in America from 1789 to the end of the Civil War.... Chapter 2 surveys the different concepts of Christian nationalism at play in post-bellum society until the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925). Chapter 3 continues the story until 1980, focusing especially on how Christian nationalism affected mainline Protestantism, American Catholicism, Cold War religious unity, the Civil Rights Movement, and the emerging Religious Right. Chapter 4 looks closely at that last group, noting the resurgence of conservative, evangelical Christian nationalism since 1980.

Part Two answers a question: "Was the American Revolution a Christian event?" Chapter 5 shows that both Virginia and Massachusetts colonies were explicitly, legally, and institutionally Christian communities with established churches, but that the nature of their establishments varied widely and their actual practice often fell well short of Christian ethical norms (as, for example, the practice of African slavery and ill treatment of the aboriginal populations). Chapter 6 argues that the intellectual underpinnings of and justifications for the American Revolution were based more on secular Enlightenment ideas than biblical principles. Chapter 7 extends this argument by showing how pro-revolution clergy often read those Enlightenment ideas into their preaching of the Bible, rather than deriving their preachments from biblical principles. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 examine the form of religion that influenced the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution, respectively, and note the controversies over religious freedom that gripped the colonies during these years. The God of the Declaration ("nature's God") is ambivalent, capable of being recognized by both Christians and Enlightenment deists alike. (For an excellent study of the common theological ground between "evangelicals" and "deists" during the Founding, see God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas S. Kidd.) The Articles of Confederation left the establishment or disestablishment of religion in state hands, with Massachusetts retaining its established Congregationalism (until 1833) and Virginia disestablishing its Anglicanism through the yeoman efforts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, against the contrary efforts of Christian nationalists such as Patrick Henry. Regarding the Constitution, Fea notes the irony that leading Christian nationalists--such as Patrick Henry, again--were anti-Federalists in the ratification debates precisely because the Constitution did not acknowledge the nation's Christian heritage. And he concludes by discussing what Jefferson's "wall of separation" did and did not mean at the time.

Part Three investigates the religious beliefs of George Washington (Chapter 11), John Adams (Chapter 12), Thomas Jefferson (Chapter 13), Benjamin Franklin (Chapter 14), and John Witherspoon, John Jay, and Samuel Adams (Chapter 15). Of these, only the last three can be considered "orthodox" in Christian doctrine and practice. Fea describes Washington as a latitudinarian Anglican more interested in religion's social utility than in Christian doctrine or practice. Adams is a "devout Unitarian," Jefferson a "follower of Jesus" who separated the supernatural husk from the moral kernel of Jesus' life and teaching, and Franklin as an "ambitious moralist." They disagreed on doctrine but agreed on one thing: "religion was necessary in order to sustain and ordered and virtuous republic" (a point which Kidd also argues in God of Liberty).

I highly recommend Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? to all readers, but especially to those interested in the debates surrounding the role of religion in our nation's history and the contentious issues of church-state separation. It is clearly organized, well-written, thorough in its research, and judicious in its conclusions. It will--or should!--complexify the simplistic historical interpretations of both Christian nationalists and their secularist opponents. Such complexification will, I hope, tamp down the fires of contention and lead to greater cooperation as both religious and secular Americans see their stake in our collaborative national experiment. Read more ›

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Past is Not Simpler Than the Present July 20, 2011

By wvano

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Since 1776, Americans have tended to sanctify the generation of the Revolution and deify the Founding Fathers, turning men of complex and sometimes conflicted consciences into plaster-of-paris saints, often painted in the theological and political colors of their beholders.

In Was America Founded as Christian Nation?, John Fea does not deny the considerable virtues and talents of those who founded our country, but he does expose their complexities. He largely succeeds in this task by describing the nontheological factors that led to independence, tracing the historical trajectory of American Christian nationalism, and providing brief religious biographies of Washington, Adams, Franklin, and others.

In a way, Fea does not answer the titular question. Demographically, the United States was undoubtedly a Christian nation at its birth, as it is today, but the relationship between the government and the pluralistic faiths of its citizens is not a simple one. The United States arose at a unique time in the history of modern liberalism, during a window of political common sense when even skeptical progressives like Jefferson staunchly believed in natural law, a doctrine affirmed by divine revelation. The result was a nation with a constitution that both expected its citizens to act in good conscience and that protected their supposed and real errors of conscience in matters of religion from state retribution.

In a contemporary political climate in which partisans on all sides sometimes invoke the authority of the Founders with confident oversimplication, this book may humble our rhetoric.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book on a thorny topic. May 5, 2011

By Bruce Bradshaw

Format:Paperback

This book is the best book that I have read on this topic. I would like to identify a few salient points, but almost every page contains some significant insight. The writing is excellent; the research is thorough; the analysis is keen, and the conclusions are informative and instructive. This book provides a vital service to our churches, if not our nation, by identifying and clarifying the issues that are central to determining whether or not the U.S. is, or ever was, a Christian nation.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Evangelicals should read this instead of the Christian nationalists February 6, 2012

By Warren Throckmorton

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This is a fine book which provides a historically accurate rendering of the nation's founding and does so with civil reflection on the errors of Christian nationalists (e.g., David Barton).

Fea, an evangelical historian, takes his vocation seriously without regard for what he calls a "usable past." He notes that many writers on the right and left seek support for present day ideologies in history. Rather, Fea points us to a better way -- see the Founders accurately, as real men who were flawed while they were brilliant.

I highly recommend this book for all audiences. The book can be appreciated by all audiences, historians and laymen alike. I recommend it for upper level high school students as well.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves a Close Reading July 15, 2011

By JSB

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This is a welcome book from a seasoned historian who handles this question with real finesse and nuance. Fea explores the topic in all its historical complexity, resisting easy answers and generalizations, which is why it is crucial to give the book a close reading. If one takes the time to truly examine Fea's treatment of the early American context, the founders, the role of religion in the 19th century, as well as the nature of ongoing debates about this question, it is clear that he is anything but bias. In fact, the book will likely problematize the issue for those on both sides of the fence. I have assigned this book for my college students and it sparked some great discussions in my American history class.