The Faiths of Our Founders
- play show:
Date: 1 July 2010
Reclaiming the Founding Fathers
Somewhere around the 1980s, Americans started to imagine the Founding Fathers as older, wiser versions of themselves. For some conservatives, the founders became good church-goers, intent on creating a Christian nation. And for some liberals, they became secular deists, with little need for God or organized religion. Historian Frank Lambert says the truth is more complicated, and that we’ve conflated the “planters”— the Puritans and other groups who colonized America—with the “founders”—those key men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and created the Constitution.
Frank Lambert, author of The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America
World Religions 101: Christianity
Begins at 22 min 30 sec
You might think you already know what Stephen Prothero is going to say in the fourth part of our series on the world's major religions. But if you think you know the most popular religion in the United States, think again. It's always changing, expressed in a "dizzying diversity" of interpretations and practices.
Stephen Prothero, religion blogger for CNN and author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter
You Hate Small Talk? So Do I: Ministering to Introverts in the Church
Begins at 38 min 46 sec
There is a certain restless energy that defines many Evangelical church services. There’s the pastor with the big personality. The sharing of personal stories. Singing, dancing, clapping...hugging. All this activity can leave introspective worshippers feeling drained, ignored, and worst of all, less faithful. Adam McHugh, a proud introvert and ordained Presbyterian minister, is trying to change that.
Adam McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture
