Dr. John Fea is a professor of American History and Assistant Chair of the History, Politics, and International Relations department at Messiah University. The following are his responses to a set of interview questions put together by the history department work studies.
Interview Question: What courses are you teaching this semester?
Dr. Fea: United States History to 1865 (HIST 141), Colonial America (HIST 341), and Introduction to History (HIST 201).
Q: In your work as a historian, what is one of the most interesting subjects that you have researched?
A: That’s a tough one. I spent a lot of time during my career studying the religious beliefs of the founding fathers and the role religion played in American Revolution. But right now I am doing a podcast on evangelicals and politics in the early 21st century and loving it!
Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your work as a professor and as a historian?
A: I do a lot of public lecturing at other colleges and universities, churches, and historical societies. When the pandemic hit, all of that disappeared. On the other hand, the solitude of the pandemic has enabled more productivity in terms of writing.
Q: What is something you have learned from history that is applicable in other areas of your life?
A:I’ve been thinking a lot about the virtue of prudence lately. There is a strong temptation, one in which I often fall into as a blogger, to react immediately to changes taking place in the world. But as a historian I have come to learn that we often need chronological detachment to fully make sense of a particular event or moment. This should humble us and lead us to approach our advocacy and activism with a certain degree of caution because, to quote 1 Corinthians 13, we “see through a glass darkly.”
We would like to thank Dr. Fea for his thoughtful and interesting responses!
History on the Bridge 