Author: Frazer, Gregg
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Rick Shrader‘s Review:
Gregg Frazer (Church History professor at Master’s College) represents those who believe that very few of the founders were truly born again believers. In fact, most founders were “theistic rationalists” who (in a brilliant way) put together a unique nation that works well for true believers. We should not, however, think that the documents are based on specifically Christian doctrines. Religious people are moral people. Frazer is not necessarily criticizing the Constitution or America’s founding documents. In fact, he has stated that George Washington is his favorite founder though he doesn’t believe Washington was a born again man. He explains this in discussing Thomas Jefferson, “It was meaningless when someone such as Jefferson described his religion as rational Christianity because his description was based on his own personal definition of Christianity, which did not comport with the way every major church defined it. Those theistic rationalists who claimed to be Christians—and not all of them did—appropriated the word Christianity and attached it to a belief system that they constructed and found more to their liking than authentic Christianity” (p. 13). Of Washington he writes, “Because of the central and symbolic role he played in the Revolution, in the framing of the Constitution, and as the first president and ‘father of his country,’ it is vital to the Christian America cause to identify Washington as a Christian. One prominent adherent of that group told me, ‘If George Washington was not a Christian, then I’m not a Christian!’ Well, George Washington was not a Christian but a theistic rationalist” (p. 197). Frazer also writes, “For the theistic rationalists, however, what was truly vital was not the flourishing of religious truth but the flourishing of morality and society. Since they held to no particular creed but rather to ‘essentials’ to which ‘all good men’ could agree, they had a profound indifference toward specific sects and doctrines” (p. 220).
I have also listened to a number of Gregg Frazer’s podcasts and interviews. He is not at all anti-America or anti-founders. He believes that America was founded on principles that greatly benefit Christians and, in fact, is the greatest country human beings ever founded. But he doesn’t think that it is necessary to believe that good men, even great men, were necessarily born again. This book is heavily documented with public and personal writings from these men, writings which show a denial of central biblical truths, even relating to personal salvation.