The impossible republic

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 30th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: America 250.

Eric Metaxas is author of seven New York Times bestsellers. They include large-scale biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, and William Wilberforce. His latest book, Revolution: the Birth of the Greatest Nation in the World, tells the story of America's founding on its 250th anniversary.

He spoke recently with WORLD’s Lindsay Mast, and here is that conversation.

MAST: You call this a definitive work, yet there are historians who've been working in this space—the American space—longer than you have. 

What makes your book definitive?

METAXAS: Yeah. Well, what makes it definitive is that I read those scholarly works. But what's interesting to me, I mean, my goal was never to say anything new. I just thought we need a popular retelling of the amazing, inspiring, stunning story of the birth of America. I mean, it's just one of the greatest stories in the history of the world, no exaggeration. 

And in the course of doing the research for book, I was myself astonished. I said, This is an amazing story. It's almost an unbelievable tale that 250 years ago, a group of people dared to think that we could create a nation where we govern ourselves, where we don't have a king. 

The wildness of that idea needs to be understood. 

The the way this country came into being 250 years ago is a miracle in the history of the world. God is at the center of it, and everyone involved at the time knew that God was at the center of it, and I think secular historians don't understand that, so they kind of avoid it. Some of them are hostile to it, so they try to write around it. That's inaccurate, and we need to correct that. 

Not—I didn't write my book to correct anything, I just want to tell the story straight. And when you tell the story straight, it is absolutely, you know, it is astonishing. So I am thrilled that I got it done and that it's out. 

MAST: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about some of those choices. You've said this book could easily have been twelve hundred pages. Since you serve a predominantly Christian audience, how how did you work through, how did you negotiate who you're writing for with what needs to be included to give an accurate account?

METAXAS: Well, I never really write for Christians. I assume that my fellow believers are gonna be the main people who read the book, but I just said, I just want to write the truth. So I'm writing just a history book on a popular level that anybody who's a reader can read it. You don't have to be an historian, a history buff, an academic. This is just the story for everybody, and I put in everything that I think needs to be put in. 

There's way more that I could have put in and wished I had the time and the scope. But to me, just putting in the most important thing, the things that we sort of all need to know.

MAST: I will say, it's very readable. I got to the end of each chapter and wanted to go on to the next one. 

I'm curious about your thought process and how you presented the differing theologies because you have the individual leaders, you have the revolutionary era population at large. How did you approach presenting both of those things?

METAXAS: Well, again, this is not a book about faith. It's not a book about the Christian roots of America, it's just the story of the revolution. 

But when you tell the story of the revolution, you can't get away from the faith because it was central everywhere you look. I mean it's it's unavoidable. But even those the least religious, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, for example, even they got the narrative that what we're trying to do here is we're trying to go back to Sinai. We're gonna look directly to God, we're gonna have no earthly king. 

That, Americans need to know that, you know, and so I don't get into the theology deeply, but it's everywhere you look. The fact that they were doing something explicitly Christian, explicitly biblical, becomes unavoidable.

MAST: You've said that writing this book has given you hope for the future of the country. I find that fascinating and want to know why.

METAXAS: Well, I think when you look back, when you see who we are, it is inescapably inspiring because you realize this is a beautiful story and we're part of the story. We're meant to be part of the story. We need to know what is our DNA, what is our genetic code? 

I just have a sense that this is that kind of a moment in America where we're rediscovering this. We've strayed in many ways and we're coming back. 

And looking at how God's hand was on the Revolution, which seems inescapable, that's the wild part. You realize God is involved, He does care about freedom in the world. He does care about America being a shining city on a hill so that others around the world would look at it and say, How do they do that? How do they have they're not perfect, but they have freedom and self-government. How do they do that? 

And at the heart of it is the Christian faith.

MAST: Eric Metaxas' latest book, Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the World tells the story of America's founding, fittingly enough, on its 250th anniversary.

Eric, thanks so much.

METAXAS: Thank you.

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