The Founders, Faith, and the American Nation: An Interview with John Fea

May 18, 2011 by Greg Garrett

Continued from Page 2

John: Most people who read the book expect me to jump headfirst into the political debate. About 90 percent of the interviews I have done have asked me to offer a "yes" or "no" answer to the question in the title of my book. It has alerted me to the fact that our schools have failed to teach good historical thinking.

Historians listen to people in the past. They empathize with them and try to understand them, even if they do not agree. They show intellectual hospitality to people in the past. The people historians encounter may be dead, but they have left us with documents to help us better understand them. I firmly believe that mature historical understanding can be an antidote to the culture wars because it decenters us. It forces us to go beyond our brief life and see ourselves as part of a larger human community created in the image of God. I realize that it is very unnatural to think this way, but I will continue to hold out hope that this kind of thinking about the world has its merits.

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About Greg Garrett

Greg Garrett is (according to BBC Radio) one of America's leading voices on religion and culture. He is the author or co-author of over twenty books of fiction, theology, cultural criticism, and spiritual autobiography. His most recent books are The Prodigal, written with the legendary Brennan Manning, Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination, and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century. A contributor to Patheos since 2010, Greg also writes for the Huffington Post, Salon.com, OnFaith, The Tablet, Reform, and other web and print publications in the US and UK.

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