Frequently Asked Questions about Answers Magazine’s Coverage of America’s Christian Heritage

1. Why did Answers magazine carry an article on Christianity’s role in the founding of the US government?

The main focus of the magazine is not politics or changing the culture, but equipping the church to spread the gospel more effectively.

By countering common misconceptions about Christianity’s role in the founding of the US government, our hope was to encourage readers to remember that the church’s focus has always been the same: to see ourselves as foreigners in a strange land whose main God-given goal is to evangelize the lost and make disciples, rather than to “restore” a government or culture to past Christian roots. The focus of the article was not the role of Christians in politics, per se, which Tony Perkins ably covered in “Is Voting Enough?”

The article’s introduction carefully defined its narrow focus on the beliefs and goals of the key founders of the US constitutional government system: “It is easy for evangelical Christians to . . . distort how we view the religious beliefs of the nation’s founders and their intent in framing the Constitution. Some of the founding fathers were Christians—certainly many more than were deists—but that does not mean that the key founders who wielded the most influence were orthodox Christians. Nor does it mean that the framers of the Constitution intended to create a Christian nation.”

2. Why did Answers magazine present only one person’s historical perspective on the founding of the United States?

Answers magazine strives to provide readers with sound perspectives from godly experts who follow the very highest standards of careful research in their respective disciplines.

Like scholars in other disciplines, historians reconstruct history from limited and conflicting sources. They cannot read people’s minds, and they must not accept any primary or secondary sources at face value. Instead, they must carefully test the authenticity of each document and the larger context of every word that is written.

Dr. Gregg Frazer has researched this topic for 30 years, and he is probably the most qualified historian to speak on this narrow topic. No PhD historian—Christian or secular—has questioned the accuracy of his book’s claims.

Yet his arguments in The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders do not stand merely on his reputation but on the integrity of the claims themselves. They are based on the best principles of the historical method, carefully researched and documented. Like any good historian, the author is open to any counter evidence, and he would be open to evidence that contradicts the thesis of his book, although none has come to light since its release in 2012.

Since Answers is a layman’s magazine and not a technical journal, we do not typically provide detailed footnotes in print. For people doing scholarly research, we encourage them to read scholarly journals and books, such as Dr. Frazer’s own book on the topic, which is loaded with documentation. Footnotes are not what give an article credibility, but the accuracy of the statements themselves. To date, as far as we can ascertain, all of Dr. Frazer’s claims are accurate. The magazine runs its key articles by content experts to make sure the author did not overlook anything. For this article, the reviewer was a PhD historian with a specialty in US history, and he concluded, “The main point and the substance of the article are historically accurate.”

3. Why didn’t Answers magazine include more about Christianity’s positive influence on the colonies and the nation?

In no way did the article misrepresent the character of the founders or the important role that Christianity has played in the history of the United States. To avoid any confusion, the article repeatedly explained that it had a very narrow focus.

First, the article explained that it was examining the key founders behind the US Constitution, not the founders of the colonies—most of them over 100 years earlier.

Second, the article explained that it was discussing the narrow question of whether the US was a “Christian nation” in the sense that the US Constitution was supposedly intended to establish a nation that overtly promoted Christianity. The phrase “Christian nation” can also have a sociological sense, not just a political sense. When pollsters ask citizens what religion they belong to, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise, the majority of people living in the United States would say Christian. So in that sense the United States is a Christian nation, but the article was not examining that aspect of the country. Nor was it examining just how influential Christian beliefs have been in the life of the nation. The article was explicitly about the personal beliefs and political aims of the founders who signed the US Constitution.

Third, the article included a sidebar called “How Was the United States a Christian Nation?” This made clear the distinction between the article’s focus on politics, and the other senses in which the United States could be described as a Christian nation, and how we have lost many of the great blessings of our Christian heritage.

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