John Fea Featured on PBS Regarding America's 250th

Dr. Fea emerges as the voice of reason in this attempt to put into perspective "Christian Nationalism" and America's 250th. 

See here. 

And I've embedded a YouTube clip:

Frazer, Fea and Hall Featured on the Christian Nation Question

Drs. Gregg Frazer, John Fea, and Mark David Hall were recently featured in an AP article that got lots of press. A taste:

“Neither side really wants to hear what I say,” says Frazer, a professor of history and political studies at The Master’s University, a Christian school in Santa Clarita, California.

The founders, Frazer says, did not create a Christian republic. Several key founders either rejected core Christian doctrines or were vague enough to keep historians debating. For Frazer, that often disappoints audiences of his fellow Christians.

[...]

The long-running debate over the founders’ intentions about religion has been turbocharged with the approaching 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Amid the America 250 celebrations, some Christian activists and authors are redoubling claims that the U.S. had a Christian founding.

[...]

Why do the founders’ beliefs and intentions matter?

“Everyone’s looking for what we historians call a usable past,” says John Fea, author of “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”

“We go into the past looking for what we want in order to advance a particular political or cultural agenda,” says Fea, a fellow at the Lumen Center, a Christian research institute and study center in Madison, Wisconsin.

[...]

Historian Mark David Hall argues that Christianity did strongly impact the founding. While core founders did not hold traditional Christian beliefs, he contends many other founders did, and that this shaped their thinking about how to form the new republic.

“There’s plenty of evidence Christianity had an influence,” says Hall, author of “Did America Have a Christian Founding?”

He says founders’ attention to human dignity harmonizes with the Bible’s teaching of humanity created in God’s image. The system of checks and balances — to prevent the concentration of power — reflects teachings about human sin that would have permeated a largely Protestant culture, he says.

[...]

There is no reference to any specific religion in the Constitution beyond the date — “in the year of our Lord” 1787. It forbids religious tests for officeholders. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees religious freedom and forbids “establishment” of a national religion.

[...]

Frazer argues that the Bible is not cited as a source for any governing principles in the documented proceedings of the Constitutional Convention or in the influential Federalist Papers, which advocated for the Constitution. He says the founders drew on influences such as Enlightenment thinking on such concepts as human equality, accountable government and freedom of religion. Early critics of the Constitution faulted it for lacking religious content.

The Declaration of Independence does have religious language, declaring that rights come from the “Creator.” It appeals to “divine Providence” and to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Thomas Jefferson and other founders — adroitly, Frazer says — used terms acceptable to Christians as well as followers of other religious and philosophical movements.

Quotations For The D.O.I.'s 250th: John Adams on the General Principles of Christianity

I'm trying to motivate myself to start posting more here, especially as America approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Here is a quotation that we oft-see cited to prove the Christian Nation hypothesis: It's from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813:

The general principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved [sic] Independence, were…the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were United: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty…Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.

The context of the quotation though, shows that it's a wildly heterodox and quite pluralistic notion. Adams considered himself to be a "Christian" -- a "liberal unitarian Christian." He was militantly anti-Trinitarian and bitterly rejected the doctrine of the Incarnation. So it stands to reason that his understanding of the "general principles of Christianity" might be unconventional. Indeed, when we examine the sects that were united under these principles that's exactly what we see:

Who composed that Army of fine young Fellows that was then before my Eyes? There were among them, Roman Catholicks, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anababtists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants and House Protestants, Deists and Atheists; and “Protestans qui ne croyent rien ["Protestants who believe nothing"].” Very few however of several of these Species. Nevertheless all Educated in the general Principles of Christianity: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty.

Of late I've been reflecting on the just how pluralistic the sectarian nature of religion was during America's founding era and Adams' quotation perfectly illustrates this. There's also the following passage where Adams used various philosophes associated with challenging conventional Christian notions as authoritative support for the quotation:

I could therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present Information, that I believed they would never make Discoveries in contradiction to these general Principles. In favour of these general Principles in Phylosophy, Religion and Government, I could fill Sheets of quotations from Frederick of Prussia, from Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, Reausseau and Voltaire, as well as Neuton and Locke: not to mention thousands of Divines and Philosophers of inferiour Fame.

See also here for a more detailed analysis.