41. Season III, Episode III: Church & State
A full episode transcript is available here.
Today, we are covering two topics almost guaranteed to make that Thanksgiving dinner more awkward than it already was: religion and politics, or more specifically for this episode: Church and State.
If we're going to talk about a bully pulpit, then we've got to talk about the pulpit part of this equation. But we're also going there because the question of the relationship between church and state is as old as the country.
Thus, we begin this episode by examining George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s major speeches, public proclamations, and even reading some of the president's mail. From these founding presidents, we get a strong sense of where this church and state conversation started. We then fast forward to the Cold War and the War on Terror, to consider how these conflicts caused Americans to ask familiar questions:
What is the relationship supposed to be between church and state?
What is the difference between religious toleration and religious freedom?
What role, if any, does the president play in shaping these ideas?
We are pleased to welcome Dr. John Fea to discuss the founding era with us. Dr. Fea is professor of American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He's the author or editor of six books, which include Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction, and Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.
To learn about more recent religious history, we turned to Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University and the author of To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations.
Let's dive in.
Guests:
Dr. John Fea is Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah University.
We are pleased to welcome Dr. John Fea, Dr. Fea is professor of American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He's the author or editor of six books, including:
Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018)
The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2011)
The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; paperback edition, 2009)
He's also the executive editor of Current, an online journal of commentary and opinion that provides reflections on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas.
Follow Dr. Fea on Twitter @JohnFea1.
Dr. Lauren Turek is an associate professor of history at Trinity University.
Dr. Lauren Turek is an associate professor of history at Trinity University. A diplomatic historian by training, she has research interests in the history of U.S. foreign relations, religion, and the international human rights movement.
Her first book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations, was published with Cornell University Press in 2020. The book illuminates the complex and significant ways in which religion and religious groups interacted with foreign policy, political culture, and the international human rights regime to shape America’s role in the modern world. It examines the growth and influence of politically-conservative Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s, assessing the effectiveness of their efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes and to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that persecuted Christians and stifled evangelism. It also gauges the effect that evangelical involvement and American policy had on society and politics in Guatemala, South Africa, and the Soviet Union. These cases reveal the extent of Christian influence on American foreign policy, the outcome of these policies on the ground, and the seemingly paradoxical support that evangelicals lent to repressive authoritarian regimes in the name of human rights.
She is currently writing a new monograph about the political, moral, and strategic dynamics of U.S. foreign aid, which will delve into the Congressional debates and alliances that shaped U.S. foreign assistance and engagements abroad during the twentieth century.
Follow Dr. Turek on Twitter @laurenfturek.