Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/author-meacham-writes-about-faith-and-government Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Author Jon Meacham discusses his book "American Gospel" and the role of religion in American government from the founding fathers to today. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JEFFREY BROWN: George Washington actually did worship here at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia. For the first president of the United States, as for the other founding fathers, the role of religion in public political life was a key and often contentious issue.Just as it as has remained ever since, down to our debates over the teaching of evolution; prayer in school; marriage, the beginning and the end of life; not to mention issues of war and peace for another president named George.GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States: Freedom is the almighty God's gift to every person, every man and women who lives in this world. JEFFREY BROWN: A new book, "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation," explores this embattled history. Its author, Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek magazine, follows the path from the compromises and decisions made more than 200 years ago to the divide between the Christian right and liberal secularism today.He joined us recently for a conversation at Christ Church.Your chapter on the Continental Congress, 1774, begins, "Their first fight was over faith." JON MEACHAM, Author: Right. JEFFREY BROWN: The founding fathers were, in fact, a diverse lot when it came to their religious views, right? JON MEACHAM: They were. They were Quakers; they were puritans; they are Episcopalians; they were Deists; they were agnostics. In Tom Paine's case, he was a Deist who was later seen as an atheist.These were men who had very diverse views, even within the traditions that they might represent, they might come out of. And I think one of the most important thing about them is they saw in their diversity that there was strength there, that there was something in the fact that so many of them thought in many different ways about God, and destiny, and man, and the rights of man, that ultimately, in that diversity, would come a kind of strength that was not part of the old world, was not part of the world that they were leaving, and they wanted to be part of the world that they were beginning over again.