Fellow-Countrymen . . . With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. – Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March, 4, 1865).
On Sunday, November 30, John Fea (Chair, Dept of History, Messiah College) presented on . . .
- Abraham Lincoln’s use of the Sermon on the Mount in his Second Inaugural Address (March, 4, 1865).
- his engaging (and provocatively titled/covered) book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011). Teaser quotes:
- “First, the past can inspire us. Second, the familiarity of the past helps us to see our common humanity with others who have lived before us. Third, the past gives us a better understanding of our civic identity.”
- “One of my goals in writing Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? is to get Christians to see the danger of cherry-picking from the past as a means of promoting a political or cultural agenda in the present.”
- “The past is the past—a record of events that occurred in bygone eras. But history is a discipline—the art of reconstructing the past.”
- “The writings of these constitutional skeptics present an interesting dilemma for those today who want to argue that the Constitution was a Christian document. In the eighteenth century it was those who opposed the Constitution who made the strongest arguments in favor of the United States being a Christian nation.”
- “When ministers, politicians, and writers during these years described the United States as a “Christian nation,†they were usually referring to the beliefs and character of the majority of its citizens.”
- “If there was one universal idea that all the founders believed about the relationship between religion and the new nation, it was that religion was necessary in order to sustain an ordered and virtuous republic.” — For more teasers visit Most Highlighted Passages in the Kindle Edition of “Was American Founded as a Christian Nation?” (5/24/2013).
[Read more…] about ESN Local: Malice Toward None; Charity for All
