Five Questions on "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?"

A local newspaper, The Carlisle Sentinel, is running a column called “Five Questions” about Was America Founded as a Christian Nation. Here is a taste.

Was America founded as a Christian nation?

That’s the question John Fea, an associate professor of American history and chair of the history department at Messiah College, seeks to explore in his newest book.

“Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?” was published by Westminster/John Knox Press and analyzes the question by looking at the history of the idea of the United States as a Christian nation, studying whether or not the American Revolution was a Christian event and researching the religious beliefs of the founding fathers.
Fea has also written The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America and has co-edited Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation. His next book, “The Power to Transform: A Christian Reflection on the Study of the Past,” will be released in 2012.

Question: Where did you find the inspiration for your most recent book, “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”

Fea: “It was really inspired by my parents and my students. I have been discussing this question with my mother and father (to whom the book is dedicated) for the last several years. My students gave me a lot of insight during a seminar I taught a few years ago on religion and the American founding. They encouraged me to go forward with the book.”

Read the rest here.