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left_flag Thursday, November 24
Thursday, November 24, 2016
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Happy Thanksgiving from Kerby and all of us at Point of View.

Today on Point of View, in the first hour an evangelical historian teaches us how to think critically about the heroes of our past. Robert Tracy McKenzie, Professor of History at Wheaton College tells us about his book, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History.

John Fea, Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania is our second hour guest. Kerby will talk with John about his book, Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past.

Kerby Anderson
Kerby Anderson
Host, Point of View Radio Talk Show
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Kerby Anderson is host of Point of View Radio Talk Show and also serves as the President of Probe Ministries. He holds masters degrees from Yale University (science) and Georgetown University (government). He also serves as a visiting professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and has spoken on dozens of university campuses including University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University, Princeton University, Johns HopkinsRead More

Guests
Robert_Mckenzie
Robert Tracy McKenzie
Professor of History - Wheaton College
Tracy McKenzie joined the History Department in the fall of 2010 after twenty-two years on the faculty of the University of Washington, where he held the Donald W. Logan Endowed Chair in American History. For most of his professional career, his research has focused on the effects of the American Civil War on the economy and society of the Upper South. His first book, One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), investigated the economic effects of war and emancipation on the southern countryside, and received best-book awards from the Agricultural History Society and the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch. His next monograph was Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Recipient of the annual Fletcher Pratt Literary Award for best non-fiction work on the Civil War, Lincolnites and Rebels explored the civil war within the Civil War by tracing the experience of a single community split asunder by the sectional crisis.

More recently, Professor McKenzie has turned his attention to the ways in which American evangelicals have remembered their national heritage; toward that end, he has recently written a book on memory of the “First Thanksgiving.” The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us about Loving God and Learning from History was published in October, 2013 by Intervarsity Press.
The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History
The Pilgrims' celebration of the first Thanksgiving is a keystone of America's national and spiritual identity. But is what we've been taught about them or their harvest feast what actually happened? And if not, what difference does it make? Through the captivating story of the birth of this quintessentially American holiday, veteran historian Tracy McKenzie helps us to better understand the tale of America's origins―and for Christians, to grasp the significance of this story and those like it. McKenzie avoids both idolizing and demonizing the Pilgrims, and calls us to love and learn from our flawed yet fascinating forebears. The First Thanksgiving is narrative history at its best, and promises to be an indispensable guide to the interplay of historical thinking and Christian reflection on the meaning of the past for the present.
John Fea
John Fea
Professor - Messiah College
John Fea (Ph.D, Stony Brook University, 1999) is Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania

His first book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), was chosen as the Book of the Year by the New Jersey Academic Alliance and an Honor Book by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. His recent book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011) was one of three finalists for the George Washington Book Prize, one of the largest literary prizes in the United States. John is also co-editor (with Jay Green and Eric Miller) of Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation. (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), a finalist for the Lilly Fellows Program in Arts and Humanities Book Award. His book Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past was published in 2013 with Baker Academic. John's book The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society will appear in May 2016 with Oxford University. This book will be followed by a narrative history of the American Revolution in New Jersey that will be published by Rutgers University Press.
Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past
Shows why Christians should study history, how faith impacts our understanding of the past, and how studying the past can transform our lives.
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