Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Revised Edition
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Narrated by:
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Scott R. Pollak
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By:
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John Fea
About this listen
John Fea offers a thoroughly researched, evenhanded 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 listeners see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. This updated edition reports on the many issues that have arisen in recent years concerning religion's place in American society including the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, contraception, and the Affordable Care Act, and state-level restrictions on abortion and demonstrates how they lead us to the question of whether the United States was or is a Christian nation. Fea relates the history of these and other developments, pointing to the underlying questions of national religious identity inherent in each.
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Worshipping the State
- How Liberalism Became Our State Religion
- By: Benjamin Wiker PhD
- Narrated by: Ken Maxon
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Many Christians feel that they are being opposed at every turn by what seems to be a well-orchestrated political and cultural campaign to de-Christianize every aspect of Western culture. They are right, and it goes even further back than the Obama Administration. In Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion, Benjamin Wiker argues that it is liberals who seek to establish an official state religion: one of unbelief.
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An Excellent Excellent book
- By Rara Sh on 01-22-24
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Rebel in the Ranks
- Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World
- By: Brad S. Gregory
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For five centuries, Martin Luther has been lionized as an outspoken and fearless icon of change who ended the Middle Ages and heralded the beginning of the modern world. In Rebel in the Ranks, Brad Gregory, renowned professor of European history at Notre Dame, recasts this long-accepted portrait. Luther did not intend to start a revolution that would divide the Catholic Church and forever change Western civilization. Yet his actions would profoundly shape our world in ways he could never have imagined.
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Something to think about
- By Like Loehe on 09-19-17
By: Brad S. Gregory
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We the Fallen People
- The Founders and the Future of American Democracy
- By: Robert Tracy McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.
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Thoughtful reflection and historical perspective, but ultimately no easy answer
- By Brandon on 03-28-23
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American Gospel
- God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times best-selling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the history of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith, meaning a belief in a higher power, and the sense that we are God's chosen, has always been at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th.
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what you weren't taught in school
- By Stanley on 06-12-06
By: Jon Meacham
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The Old Religion in a New World
- The History of North American Christianity
- By: Mark A. Noll
- Narrated by: Trevor Thompson
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One of our foremost historians of religion here chronicles the arrival of Christianity in the New World, tracing the turning points in the development of the immigrant church that have led to today's distinctly American faith. Taking a unique approach to this fascinating subject, Noll focuses on what was new about organized Christian religion on the American continent by comparison with European Christianity.
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Fascinating!
- By Margaret on 08-24-19
By: Mark A. Noll
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Fundamentalism and American Culture
- 2nd Edition
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
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objectivity
- By Caleb on 07-16-24
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The Irony of Modern Catholic History
- How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform
- By: George Weigel
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout much of the 19th century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago.
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Well written and considered book, bad narrator
- By Brad on 12-13-19
By: George Weigel
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Who Is the King in America?
- And Who Are the Counselors to the King?: An Overview of 6,000 Years of History & Why America Is Unique
- By: William J Federer
- Narrated by: William J. Federer
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the invention of writing around 3,300 BC, the world has mostly been ruled by kings. Though called by different names: Pharaohs, Chieftains, Emperors, Caesars, Sultans, Khans, Maharajas, Monarchs, and Dictators, they act the same. Power, like gravity, concentrates into the hand of one person, who rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. In socialist and communist countries, too, though professing equality, they inevitably end up being ruled by dictators.
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Amazing book! Definitely a must read!
- By Ryan Kester on 08-09-21
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Protestants
- The Faith That Made the Modern World
- By: Alec Ryrie
- Narrated by: Tim Bruce
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In this dazzling global history that charts five centuries of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that Protestants made the modern world. Protestants introduces us to the men and women who defined and redefined this quarrelsome faith. Some turned to their newly accessible bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to support a new understanding of who they were and what they could and should do. Above all, they were willing to fight for their beliefs.
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A secular history protestantism.
- By SakuraHB on 07-19-17
By: Alec Ryrie
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What listeners say about Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Revised Edition
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- SailorMoonFan
- 01-10-23
Excellent
Great overview of our founding fathers and their beliefs. And while staying ambiguous, the author does a great job of presenting that, while there are Christian values intertwined, our nation was not founded as just a Christian nation. It’s supposed to be one of religious freedom of all nations, and that’s how our founding fathers intended it.
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- Adam Shields
- 11-14-21
Historical questions are often complicated
I have listened to John Fea’s podcast for years now. And I have read his book on the issues that lead to Evangelicals voting for Trump. But I have not read Was American Founded as a Christian Nation or his more traditional history books. Part of what moved me to pick this up and read it after having owned the book for a couple of years was a desire to understand the rhetoric that has come to be known as Christian Nationalism. Fea uses the language of Christian Nationalism, although he uses it slightly differently than the sociologists like Perry and Whitehead use it. Fea is using Christian Nationalism as a descriptor of people who sought to make the country into an explicitly Christian nation. These two subtly different meanings are compatible but they reflect the different fields of study. Fea is a historian who is grounding his work on the historical events, people, and writing or speeches, while Whitehead and Perry are working with survey data. Both are trying to get at the mythology (in the sense of origin story) of America. (Although Fea wrote this originally in 2011 and revised the book in 2015, so his use of the language of Christian Nationalism is prior to the Trump-influenced investigation of it.)
John Fea is trying to complicate the historical story and counter all of the different myths of the origin of the US in regard to its relationship to Christianity. He traces the ways that there have been many that have sought to make the US into a Christian nation and how the type of rhetorical Christian Nationalism that we see today is very old. He also traces the ways that there has never been a solely Christian Nationalistic movement. The founders were not all pietistic Christians seeking after God, nor were they all Deists that tried to remove a more fundamentalist Christianity from the public role.
Was Ameria Founded as A Christian Nation plays several important roles for me. First, it grounds our current movement historically. Christian Nationalism is not a new concept, either in its modern idea (the Religious Right was also very explicitly grounded in a type of Christian Nationalism) or historically. Many politicians throughout US history have pointed to concepts of the US being a specially chosen nation or different from all other countries in God’s plan. In addition, the concept of Christian Nationalism as a type of exclusionary force is not new. Fea’s Believe Me book talked explicitly about the historical role of anti-immigrant, especially immigrants that were not white protestants, played in not just recent Christian political movements, but also in earlier America First movements.
Willie James Jennings in discussing the theological rise of the concept of race speaks about theoretically, Christians should be inclusive, not exclusive in their orientation toward others. Christians are mostly gentiles that were grafted into the story of Isreal and should ideally, invite others to join them in also being grafted into the story of God’s kingdom on earth. But instead, what has mostly happened is an exclusionary stance, that points to our own high status and views others as less than. Similarly, NT Wright has written well in his biography of Paul about the importance of a radical boundary-crossing as being essential to the rise of the early church.
I think we need much more orientation toward complicated history and less toward meme-friendly simplifications. If we can communicate history in the form of a meme, it is likely inaccurate history. I think this is particularly important for Christian who understand the impact that sin has on both individuals and institutions. Nothing is simply good or bad, even though there are clearly some things that are worse than others. I am not going to try to figure out what good things we may learn from Nazi Germany or chattel slavery. But I do think that part of rebalancing our historical sources means that we need to investigate areas where we have undervalued people and systems and sources so that we can have a more healthy understanding of the ways that our history continues to impact our present.
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- William
- 01-31-22
Factual and fair
A well-researched and balanced report that treats religion and America with respect. Terrific insight into the question.
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- Mark Carlson
- 07-27-24
good review of primary sources
liked the " complicated" answer to the question. the narration was good. Trump is not Christian.
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