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. The question of the religious

convictions and the theological ideas of America's founding generation continue to reverberate in very

contemporary controversy.

And no one's better able to help us to interpret that controversy than my guest today, Professor

Greg Fraser, who is a professor of history at the Masters

College in California. Professor Fraser holds a PhD degree from Claremont Graduate University.

Professor Fraser, welcome to Thinking in Public.

Thank you, glad to Thinking in Public.

Thank you.

Your new book entitled The Religious Beliefs of America's Founders, Reason Revelation and Revolution,

published by the University of Kansas Press, seems to be a particularly well timed book given so many

the controversies that have emerged in evangelical circles even in just the last

several weeks but a project like this goes way back in terms of your planning and interest.

How did you come to write this book?

Well, I've been interested in the subject of the religious police to the founders for

over 30 years.

And as I actually explain in the preface to the book some 35 years ago I was

sitting in an audience listening to Peter Marshall and David Manuel talk about the light and the glory and try and make a case for the United States being established as a Christian nation and as a historian I just didn't think it sounded right. I thought there were significant problems and that

launched me into 30 years really of studying this. And then when it came time to do a

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