Obama at the 2011 National Prayer Breakfast - Creative Commons (Charles McCain) He has failed in his promise to reduce abortions in the United States and, as a result, protect the weakest and most vulnerable of the “least of these.” His plan to tax the richest members of society is driven by populist rhetoric, but it lacks a prophetic edge informed by the radical implications of Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels. He missed a wonderful opportunity to explain his health care proposal-disparaged by the GOP as “Obamacare”-as a direct extension of his Christian convictions to care for the poor and the needy. His handling of the recent contraception issue was a disaster. Unfortunately, for all of his religious rhetoric, Obama the president has failed to articulate the faith-based political vision he promised us that night in the tiny village of Grantham, Pennsylvania. Nearly four years later, John confessed himself somewhat disappointed in Pres. Quick background: in addition to his own fine blog (which you’ll find listed on my home page alongside other news feeds), John has a weekly column with the religion blog Patheos in his most recent column, he made the case that Barack Obama “may be the most explicitly Christian president in American history.” This was prompted in part by the recent National Prayer Breakfast, where the president spoke once again on the meaning of his Christian conversion and faith, but John also recalled then-Senator Obama’s visit to Messiah in April 2008, when he talked about the implication of his faith for the policies he would pursue. A few demanded that the administration at the college where I teach fire me immediately. Several expressed wishes that I be cast into perdition. I have been compared to Hitler, Louis Farrakhan, and Woodrow Wilson (yes, you read that last one correctly). In the last 24 hours I have been called a lot of names.

So it was upsetting to read his post this morning, entitled “ The Culture Wars Are Real,” which reported: In a culture that is increasingly fragmented, uncivil, and frankly ugly, John somehow manages to state his mind, challenging preconceptions and falsehood in light of his knowledge of religion and American history (see especially his widely-admired book, Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?, just named a finalist for the prestigious George Washington Book Prize), while simultaneously building bridges and restoring some degree of civility to our discourse. So I admire John Fea, chair of the History Department at Messiah College (one of Bethel’s sister institutions in a couple of evangelical college consortiums), for bringing his expertise and perspective as a historian to contemporary conversations about politics. I don’t normally write a lot about politics here, and even when I do it’s likely to be satirical or commemorative in tone.

Why Study History? by John Fea