Author: Kerry Walters
Kerry Walters, William Bittinger Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Deists, a 2011 Choice Outstanding Book, a critical edition of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (Broadview, 2011), and Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2010).
The Myth of America’s Christian Heritage
Once they begin to circulate, falsehoods—like counterfeit currency—are surprisingly tenacious. It doesn’t matter that there’s no backing for them. The only thing that counts is that people believe they have backing. Then, like bad coins, they turn up again and again. One counterfeit idea that circulates with frustrating stubbornness is the claim that America was …