Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction by John Fea. Reviewd by Robert Schaffer.

Abstract

There is no shortage of books on the religious views of the Founders and on whether the United States began as "a Christian nation." John Fea, a historian at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, weighs in on such topics alongside important recent studies by David Holmes, Mark Noll, James Hutson, Thomas Kidd, and Jon Meacham, among others. While their books differ in emphasis, Fea joins these other scholars in debunking the efforts of influential evangelical Christian authors to portray the Founders as orthodox Christians who set up a new nation privileging Christian denominations and ideals. At the same time, Fea shows how religion did figure into the founding and subsequent development of our nation.