Episode description

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. To learn about more recent religious history, we turned to Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University.