#183 Interview with Matthew J. Tuininga

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matthew J. Tuininga is Professor of Christian Ethics and the History of Christianity at Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan. He is author or editor of several books, including most recently The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People, which has been an important source for this podcast’s series on King Philip’s War.

This episode is useful context not only for our series on King Philip’s War, which is still very much in progress, but also many of the other stories we’ve told about early New England. We talk about the intersection of religion and war in 17th century Massachusetts, the sheer difficulty of colonialism, the evolution of Puritan evangelism in the decades between the landing of Mayflower and King Philip’s War, the slow development of racialist thinking, the rise of racial hostility against Indians first among the settlers on the frontier to the distress of the Puritan elites in Boston, the influence, or not, of the younger generation of settlers and Indians on the coming of the war, whether Uncas of the Mohegans was a great and shrewed leader or merely treacherous, whether King Philip’s War was inevitable, the “war guilt,” or not, of Samuel Mosely and Edward Hutchinson, the wisdom of John Winthrop, Jr., whether King Philip’s War was “worth it” from the perspective of the settlers, the influence of the fog of war on Puritan decisions, KPW as counterinsurgency, historical myths of recent vintage that inflate Christian Indian deaths, the validity of Native American oral tradition as an historical source, and the importance of narrative history in getting people excited about history.

X: @TheHistoryOfTh2

Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 183.
0:11.4	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording my end of this on April 28, 24, in Austin, Texas.
0:20.3	For those few of you who are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning with that intentional presentism.
0:32.7	As given away in the title, this episode is an interview.
0:37.0	Our guest today is Professor Matthew J. Tuninga,
0:41.3	whose name I have been sadly if slightly butchering in the last few episodes. Matt comes to us
0:47.7	from a secure, undisclosed location in the vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Matt began teaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in
0:57.9	2016. He previously taught at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, and at Swanee, University of the
1:06.1	South in Swanee, Tennessee, where, it should be said, the eponymous great-grandfather of the pod
1:13.8	taught more than a century ago. Anyway, Matt's research focuses on religion, society, and politics,
1:21.9	and American history. He is currently writing a book on North Carolina and Virginia Presbyterians during the Civil War era.
1:29.7	His books include The Wars of the Lord, the Puritan Conquest of America's First People,
1:36.2	published by Oxford University Press in January, and the main focus of this episode,
1:42.5	and Calvin's political theology and the public engagement of the church,
1:46.7	Christ's Two Kingdoms, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. He is also the editor of
1:54.4	on charity and justice, a volume of Abraham Coyper's collected works in public theology, published by Lexham Press in 2022,
2:04.2	and the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters on Christianity and Slavery and Reformed Political Thought.
2:12.5	Our conversation ranged widely over the intersection of New England, Puritan theology, and society, with particular
2:19.5	attention to the run-up and conduct of King Phillips War. I highly recommend the Wars of the Lord,
2:26.2	which is not only a very straightforward account of King Philip's War, but really the entire
2:31.4	period in New England from 1620 until 1678 or so, the end of that war.
2:38.1	If you buy it, as always consider doing so through the link and the show notes so I can brag about the books I've moved.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jack Henneman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jack Henneman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.