This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Robert Tracy McKinsey is professor and chair of the Department of History at Wheaton College,

where he teaches courses in U.S. history, the Civil War, and Historiography.

Before coming to Wheaton in 2010, McKinsey served for 22 years on the faculty at the University of Washington, where he received the

University's Distinguished Teaching Award, was a member of the University of

Washington Teaching Academy and held the Donald A Logan chair of American

history. He received the PhD degree from Vanderbilt University and is the author of several award-winning

books in addition to numerous reviews and articles.

After publishing monographs with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press,

his most recent work is The First Thanksgiving.

What The Real Story tells us about Loving God and Learning from History, published by

InterVarsity Press.

Dr. McKinsey, welcome to thinking in public.

It's my pleasure to be apart, Dr. Mueller.

Well, I'm really glad to be having this conversation with you.

First of all, because I think the book is worthy

of conversation but also because it gives us an opportunity for a rather wide-ranging

conversation on how Christians should understand history as a matter of fact I want to

commend your book the The First Thanksgiving, because of its

subject matter in terms of the First Thanksgiving, and a very interesting conversation to be

...