In this episode recorded before a live audience at the Church of Christ in Falls Church, Virginia, The Christian Chronicle's Erik Tryggestad interviews C.W. Goodyear, author of President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier(Simon & Schuster).

Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, served in office for only 200 days before he died from an assassin's bullet (he was only the second U.S. president to be a victim of assassination).

Before becoming president, Garfield gained notoriety as the youngest brigadier general in the Union army during U.S. Civil War and the youngest member of the U.S. Congress.

More important to The Christian Chronicle's audience, however, is Garfield's parallel career as a preacher in Stone-Campbell Movement congregations (known interchangeably as Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ in the 19th century).

As Goodyear points out in the interview, there are politicians who claim membership in certain churches just to burnish their public image. Garfield, however, was not one of them. He was a devoted Christian and member of his local congregation wherever his career took him.

And, when he sinned, he repented and made things right (as you will hear).

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