Jerome Mahaffey, associate professor of communication studies, was a guest on the Glenn Beck show, “Founders’ Friday.” The show will be on FOX News at 5 p.m. EST on Friday, May 14. The show will also air at 2 a.m. EST on Saturday, May 15.

Mahaffey was a guest on the series to discuss the founding fathers of the American Revolution. This episode was a conversation on George Whitefield, an influential minister in America from 1740 to 1770 – a time when there was no “separation” of church and state, Mahaffey said.

Whitefield was a forgotten founder, without whom there would have been no American Independence in 1776, Mahaffey added.

Thomas Kidd, a professor of history at Baylor University and an expert in colonial American religion, was also a guest on the show.

“The experience was very enlightening and will give me great stories to tell my students,” Mahaffey said. “I was impressed with Beck’s willingness to cut out points that Dr. Kidd and I said were not well supported by historical evidence.”

Mahaffey conducted 15 years of research on Whitefield and compiled the information into a book, Preaching Politics: The Religious Rhetoric of George Whitefield and the Founding of a New Nation, released in October 2007.

As a graduate student working on his thesis at Arizona State University, Mahaffey became captivated by argumentation. A history class lesson on Whitefield led him to study Whitefield’s success as an orator and his influence on the Great Awakening.