When a "Christian America" Meant Something Else

March 23, 2011 by John Fea

Continued from Page 1

In the end, the speakers at the Evangelical Alliance believed that their task, to use the words of Nelson, was to "educate the State in Christian ethics of government," whether the issue was labor-capital relations, the preservation of the Sabbath, or temperance. "The questions of legislation and civil administration," Nelson argued, "can never be rightly settled in communities which are not pervaded by spiritual, Christian influences . . . the State must have the Christian temper, tone, spirit, or it can never give its people a truly Christian regulation."

Nelson and all of his fellow evangelicals meeting during the fall of 1873 were, in a manner both similar and significantly different from evangelicals today, arguing for nothing less than a "Christian America."

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About John Fea

John Fea chairs the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, PA, and is the author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011). He blogs daily at philipvickersfithian.com.

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