You Can’t Restore The Constitution Without Its Biblical Roots

Admiring the Founders while avoiding their foundation is the contradiction shaping civic life today. We dig into why love for the Constitution can’t survive if we detach it from the biblical ideas that informed it—human nature’s limits, God-given rights, fixed moral law, and the necessity of separation of powers. Drawing on documented citation studies and the voices of early American clergy, we connect how sermons seeded the language of liberty and why the founders carried Scripture from pulpits into policy.

We take you inside modern standards debates where references to the Bible’s influence are often removed not for lack of evidence but for lack of familiarity, then slipped back into “church history” rather than civic history. That box-checking mindset forgets that faith shaped education, economics, and the law. We also talk about the slow, generational work of reform: updating textbooks now may not bear full fruit until students become teachers. Patience isn’t passivity; it is a strategy for durable change, supported by reading primary sources and leveraging films that spark curiosity about Washington, Franklin, and the Great Awakening.

When a listener asks how to hold wrongdoers accountable amid endless committees and delays, we make the case for swift, fair justice. Deterrence collapses when consequences arrive years late. We outline how citizen skepticism, evidence-based debate, and equal enforcement can rebuild trust. The through-line is simple: keep the roots with the results. If America wants the longevity of its Constitution, it must remember the convictions that made that endurance possible.

If this conversation sharpened your thinking, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves history, and leave a review telling us where you see the biggest gap between our civic heritage and our current habits.

Transcript

Framing Faith And Founders

SPEAKER_03 0:07

Welcome to the intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builder Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. It's Thursday. We love Thursdays. That's our Foundations of Freedom program each week. And you get to ask the questions, so send those into radio at wallbuilders.com, radio at wallbuilders.com. And I get the first question instead of the audience, guys. The question is Are Americans schizophrenic when it comes to history? Tim, Babylon B says so, huh?

Favoring Founders While Dodging Faith

Pastors, Bible, And Intellectual Sources

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Well, actually, it's not the B, because if it was the B saying so, it might be funny. Uh, however, uh that I I saw an article, uh, not the B, that had come out, and it it reminded me of something you had said, talking with some teachers, some of the stuff you've been doing, um, working with the State Board of Education to help remind people of some of America's history and some of those details. And you had mentioned that there are more teachers now that seemed favorable to founding father documents, but not toward anything religious, not God or the Bible. And that's actually what this not the B article was that there's a new survey out that shows people have a favorable view of the founding fathers or more willingness, trending, like let's relearn those documents, let's quote the founding fathers, favorable view of the founding fathers, but not necessarily of the God that gave us our rights. And so it was an interesting contradiction that we are now seeing a shift in culture where there are more people that want to celebrate the founding fathers, and yet they're rejecting the premise that the founding fathers built the nation on. And I thought this is something we really ought to spend a little time talking about to make sure that for anybody that is listening to any of the wall builder's programs, this should be one of the most clearly understood ideas. The founding fathers, we we've talked about it many times. The number one thing quoted by the founding fathers, the number one source inspiring and influencing the founding fathers was the Bible. This has been historically documented. There's a book called The Origins of American Constitutionalism. The greatest influence, the greatest most quoted source in their writings was the Bible. Now, I actually would put a caveat because if we said the greatest influence on them being the Bible, I think that's true. But then there's other professors, other historians from a previous era, and I'm saying this with a caveat because I'm not just quoting a professor as if that's the credibility, but no, Alice Baldwin, who did the New England clergy and the American Revolution, when she wrote her book back in 1928, she identified that it was the clergy who were some of the leading voices in the political movement of the era, and how actually pastors had been teaching from their pulpits all of the ideas that end up in the declaration. They had preached all those prior to 1763. She said there's not a right in the declaration that had not been preached by the clergy prior to 1763. And so if you talk about the most influential voice in the founding era, that's likely the pastors. The most influential source is the Bible. And so the idea that we are respecting and venerating the founding fathers again and not understanding the founding that the foundation that made the founding fathers, that's where, Rick, to your point, that's where we're getting schizophrenic. And we can't separate the two thoughts. What the founding fathers built, they built on a foundation of faith more than anything else. That's where their ideas came from. And so we can't say let's go back to the founding fathers, but not to faith. That's a contradiction. Ultimately, when people are saying restore the founding documents, but not faith. The founding documents were built on a foundation of faith, and you can't restore them if you don't have a faith foundation.

Rewriting Standards And Teacher Pushback

SPEAKER_00 3:50

You know, Tim, what you're talking about, I I've just seen illustrated vividly in the last 24 hours or so, uh, working with a lot of teachers and working with teachers to get the new standards written in Texas, new history standards, etc. And what happens is Texas is a state that does this every 10, 14, 16 years. Other states do it 8, 10, 12 years. But you go through and you reevaluate and say, okay, is there new stuff that needs to be done? And by the time you do it every 16 years, you've had another two to three presidents, so you got more history you can add to teach. And as we go through, you you go all the way back to the beginning. So we go to, you know, prehistory times. You talk talk about the archaeology and what anthropologists say, and you know, that's how we're being told that between 20 and 40 percent of Native Americans were enslaved by other Native Americans before Columbus ever got here. How do they know that? Well, they they know that from the marks on the bones and the culture and the fine things they find as they excavate these. These really there was no written history, but it's what they find is they go through and look, for example, uh, they've they've documented high levels of cannibalism because on the human bones there's all sorts of human teeth marks on those bones saying, okay, they had they had high levels of barbarity. So you start with prehistory, but then you get into recorded history, and that's where that it's really pretty factual at that point in time. And so as we go through, there's some things that have not been taught in history in a number of years. Um, the Founding Fathers 20, 30 years ago, were the worst guys in America. Tim, you mentioned the polling that just came out in the last couple days with Not the Bee. Uh it shows that people are having an increasingly favorable view of the Founding Fathers. Man, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, that was not the case at all. And then as you went through all that nonsense with the 1619 project, and they were still throwing early American history under the bus, and now we see a change, which is a terrific change. But what happens is as people change their minds, they don't always know the basis for it. And so as we were going through these these history standards, and we were back in the founding era and talking about the founding fathers and the influences, because now people are respecting the founding fathers and say, you know, they really did a remarkable job. The the longest ongoing constitution in the history of the world they came up with, nobody else has been 250 years under the same piece of paper. Wow, those guys are pretty special. Where'd they get their ideas? And so as you go where they get their ideas, Tim, as you just pointed, uh, you know, you had uh Alice Baldwin who said, well, they got it from the pastors. Well, where did the pastors get it? Well, they got it from the Bible, which is a study that was done by the University of Houston, that the single most cited authoritative source in the founding era was the Bible, hands down, four times more than any individual they cited the Bible. And so what happened is we were working on standards, and in the standards, we we initially proposed the standards, we let the teachers look over it and give feedback and comment back. What is this thing about the Bible and the founding fathers? It's like that is really strange. No, it's not strange. And so mentioned the University of Houston study, the biggest source by far, four times more than anything else in the Bible, and how that three founding fathers point to Jeremiah 17, 9 is the reason they did separation of powers, and that Franklin, when he had the call to convention for the Constitutional Convention to have prayer, 14 sentences he references, 14 Bible verses, known and known. And after having heard all that, they said, nah, I haven't heard that before. Let's take it out of the standards. And even the even though the history is already proven, even though this is documented, even though it's irrefutable, you open the founders' writings, it's there. They hadn't heard it. So I'm not buying it because you've shown history to I that's something I haven't heard, and so I don't I don't believe it. And it struck me then at how, all right, you know, the the issue is not necessarily even that. It's where did where did the teachers get taught that the founding fathers would not have had any religious influence? It only goes back to the schools they attended where they got their teaching degrees. And so it really struck me just in the last couple of days that, you know, we're we're trying here to change history to go back to teaching actual documentable truth, not just the philosophy. And this struck me, you know, if we get these textbooks done in Texas the right way, we're talking another, it's gonna be at least 16 to 18 years before these kids get out of college with this view. Then they're gonna have to go to college and have four years there and come out as a teacher. And so maybe in 22 years we can have teachers coming out with the right view on this stuff. And it really struck me this is how generational things are. I mean, the founding fathers weren't thinking in terms of minutes and and you know, the the kind of small increments of time we have. They were thinking in terms of years and even decades and generations. And so as they would strive for something, they didn't have the impatience that we have because you know we we can get through 15 social media videos in in seven minutes or whatever. And so it just really struck me that this is a kind of an uphill struggle. I think it's a really good deal that people are liking the founding fathers again because that makes it easy to say, hey, read this writing of the founding fathers. And by the way, this is one of the things that's happening in these new history standards. We've got a lot of the founding father writings that they have to read for themselves. And when they do, they're gonna see a lot of verses, but they won't know it's a Bible unless they've been reading the Bible. But nonetheless, it's moving in the right direction, which is really good.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, it creates at least an opportunity to have the good conversation and say, hey, where did this idea come from? And you can point back to the pastors, you can point back to the Bible. So it's a good opportunity where I see the big challenge that it kind of as you're mentioning is some of the resistance to this is coming from Christians who are saying, Oh, let's go back there, but we don't need, you know, we don't we're not trying to have religion and government because they're buying into that that really incorrect faulty notion. Maybe it's a separation of church and state, maybe it's the idea that if we allow Christianity, then we have to allow everything else and everything else is equal, etc. etc. There's a lot of faulty premises that I see. So I it's it's certainly positive that the founding fathers are being revered at a greater level, that people care more, that we're going back. That's really exciting. It just is one of the sad realities that there are Christians that are opposing the idea that we want to help people understand the biblical foundation. And again, maybe you know, there's there's some of the fear tactic that they don't want to be called a Christian nationalist, and whatever that argument might be. And I think there's really good answers for all of the challenges that might present themselves. It is just weird in my mind that some of the opposition is coming from Christians or conservatives when this should be the very thing we are trying to help champion to understand what made our foundation so strong and stable. It was that biblical principle that we built on. And you can't restore what the founding fathers did if you don't have the right foundation. And that right foundation is the Bible and Christianity.

Bible In The Wrong Box

SPEAKER_00 10:58

You know, the other thing that struck me as interesting is in the standards that had been proposed and done, and there's several good academic experts that worked on these things, and then they go to the teachers and the teachers go through them and see what input they have. It was interesting that the first time the teachers were going through this, uh, all the stuff about the Bible and the influence and stuff, they took it all out. But then they came back on the second time and put it back in. But instead of putting it in with the founding fathers, they put it in with churches. And so when we talk about the first Great Awakening, okay, let's talk about the Bible there because that's a revival, that's a church thing. You got pastors doing that. That's where the Bible goes, is with pastors and churches. But that's that's not where it was totally used. I mean, pastors did that, Tim, as you pointed out. I mean, the hearing the pastors' sermons where the founding fathers got a lot, but the founders themselves knew the Bible so well they used it. It was our textbook, it was the New England Primer and other things that we see were built on the Bible. And it was just interesting that they weren't necessarily hostile to the Bible being included in the standards. It's it's just had to go in its right box, and its right box is over in church. It doesn't go over here in education, and it doesn't go over here in politics or military or anything. And that's that's a mentality that we've really got to watch, even in the church, is that you know, the the the Bible is a religious book. No, it's not. It's a guidebook for life. It tells you what you need to know in economics, on social relationships, it tells you all sorts of stuff we've covered before, due process, standards, just so many principles, socialism, um how bad it is, and free market, how good it is. It all comes out of the Bible. So I was it was interesting to see them take the Bible out, but then they put it back in in the little box they thought it should fit in. And that's part of what we're attempting to do is get back to history, which means take it out of the box you've been putting it in since the Supreme Court started ruling this way back in the 60s and get it back into the way it used to be, that it's part of every aspect of life. I think we'll get there. And I think there's really good stuff happening. It was just interesting to kind of see the cultural hurdles that have been erected, even among, if you will, even among conservative or Christians or good teachers or others, there's there's just these mental blocks that have to be overcome, and that's for all of us, too.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Yeah, and it and it creates a an excellent teaching opportunity. Like Tim was saying, the the interest alone in the founders gives us a chance to have the conversation. You remember when uh uh HBO did the John Adams series, and of course it didn't have any of the faith stories or any of the things that that we had hoped would be in there or in any uh you know movie or or series about the founding fathers. But what it did do on the positive side was it created a lot of interest in the founders, and you know, fortunately, a lot of people have found their way to wall builders and they've found their way to you know Bill Federer and other good sources on the founders, and so hopefully this renewed interest, which probably has a lot to do with the 250th and just the more talk about them. Um and and then we've got um, let's see, what is it? What are they calling it? Young Washington or uh something along that you know, Vid Angels got that movie coming out this summer. I saw the trailer, it looks really good. And it's essentially the story, David, that you produced what, 20 years ago, you wrote that book, and then you had Dean Jones do the audio about the Battle of the Monongahela. So it's kind of it's kind of cool to see some of those things that Wall Builders was talking about 20, 25 years ago now finally getting made into good movies and good entertainment that that hopefully will bridge that schizophrenia gap between, oh, I love the Founding Fathers, but I don't want the religious stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Well, and guys, I don't know if y'all have seen uh a preview, there's another one coming out, and I don't I don't recall the name of it. I I think it's something like Great Awakening, I think, but it tracks George Whitfield and Franklin and then French. I saw that, yes. Yes, so that's another one where I think it can help re-re reconnect some dots on on some of the faith foundation that was vital to the founding fathers you mentioned with the the book Dad that you wrote, the bulletproof George Washington Rick, as you're referring to. Uh when when Washington himself identifies it was the hand of God that kept me alive in this, and now there's a movie about it that you know, the the first great awaken, there is good things happening, but these are the dots that people have to connect. That the foundation of America was built on the idea that there is a God and God gives us our rights, and that there's a fixed moral law, the laws of nature, nature's God. They understood and believed in fixed objective morals based on the Bible and Christianity. And and I do think that some of these films actually are going to help encourage and point people back in that direction. But it is just a little weird. As as the not Babylon Bee pointed out in their article, some of the most recent polling, people are very favorable to founding fathers or interested in the founding fathers, but not as much in religion. And we can't, we can't have that disconnect. We have to understand the founding fathers built on a foundation of faith.

Films Rekindling Founding-Era Interest

SPEAKER_00 15:57

And by the way, let me throw out one other thought. Because I mentioned, hey, it may be 22 years before the kids that are having these new textbooks we get done, we'll be teaching that to the next generation. That's not meant to be negative, because if you think about how any of us change over time, or if you've got a friend that that loves socialism and is now find out that's not a good thing, you didn't do that in one conversation. It was the Bible talks about you do things little by little, line on line, precept on precept, here a little, there a little. And it's another verse the Bible talks about the little leaven leavens the whole loaf. It's, you know, when you put yeast in the bread, it takes it a while to get leavened and then fluff up, and it takes a while to grow. And it's the kind of thing where the this is what relations are so important with. Is you first time you have a conversation with somebody and they say, Man, socialism the best thing ever, and you say, Well, I don't I don't know about that. There's and and he says, No, you're wrong. But he thinks about what you said after you left. And next time you come back, he opens up a little more in your will willingness to hear you. And it's like if you just keep sharing stuff little by little, don't try to get everybody converted all at once to your viewpoint, whether it's conservative or whether it's on immigration or anything else. Whatever it is, just understand we all move kind of slow. It takes us a while to process stuff when we hear it. And that's why it takes 12 years in school to get through school, because you you you can't get all the math stuff you need in the first grade. You have to keep adding all the way through. And it's the same thing with the relationship. So I I don't mean that to sound discouraging by saying it could be 22 years before the kids get these great textbooks and turn in teachers themselves. That's not necessarily the case. It's just that don't get in a rush and don't get impatient because you don't see it happen by next summertime somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Yeah, I was thinking uh even about you know when you wrote myth of separation of church and state and then and then you know it became original intent. But what was it thirty-six years from the t time you first started teaching people that separation church and state is not in the constitution in the first amendment that we finally get to the Kennedy case. And and five, you know, that's a long time to go, but that's what it takes. You have to educate enough people, you know, get people to understand it's not the most people thought it was in the constitution, and all these Supreme Court decisions acted like it was. And uh, you know, that was a long time to get that changed, but how important it was and what a great victory it was. Hey, as we're going to break, guys, I love the line, Tim, out of that commercial that I saw on that Whitfield movie. You're talking about where whoever it is is asking Franklin, you know, so so you you were friends with a pastor in the revolution, and uh, and and he said George Whitfield was the revolution. I thought that was so good. That tells you it's gonna be a good movie, man. Tells you it's gonna be good. All right, quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Wallfeller Show.

Patience, Generations, And Cultural Change

SPEAKER_02 18:41

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SPEAKER_03 19:44

Welcome back to the Ball Budder Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. All right, our first question from the audience. Sorry guys, I derailed us with my own question there. Uh, but thank you, not the bee, for uh for covering that story. Nicholas sends in a question that says, Greetings, wall builders trio. I appreciate all you do in leading the charge of liberty. A few friends and I were recently discussing all the past fraud and corruptions uh and how to move forward, whether it's J6, COVID, elections, etc., it seems like they assign a committee and maybe do an investigation or at least they uh make it seem like they do. And the further away from the said incident we get, the harder it becomes. What can we do to actually enact, change, and hold the wrongdoers accountable in a reasonable time frame and make lasting improvements? Uh of course, guys, we're glad to see the corruption uncovered. That's good. We'll bend its old line about uh sunlight being the best disinfected, but people do want to see that there's some accountability for that corruption.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

But you know what? I think part of the reason we haven't had accountability is how much of the nation took the bait and swallowed the bait. And how much of the nation went all overboard on that, even though within a year, year and a half, whatever, they said, hey, this is not a really smart thing. And I think part of that, I was just thinking even about the whole question, this is where we've got to get back to starting demand accountability, even our friends. You know, somebody will say something, and we need to say, hey, I I don't think that's right. Can you show me? And we should have done that with COVID. We should have done that with with J6 and so many other things. We should have been asking questions even of our friends rather than saying, hey, so-and-so said this, and so that's the truth. It go back to Jesus thing of asking questions. And there were so many good questions we could have asked at the time on COVID is hey, where's the evidence on this? And and is is this the only stuff that's out there? And where's the proof? I want to see some testing. And you know, we just didn't do that. We said the experts said so. And because the what makes an expert? Just saying that you're an expert b because you show up on on some news channel? We just we have to get back to thinking. And I really do think we have to hold each other accountable and ask questions even to our friends. Where'd you get that? Who told you that? Are you sure that's right? I don't I'm not sure. You know, all of that kind of stuff. We have to be a lot more, and I don't want to say it the wrong way, a lot more skeptical before we start receiving and and and swallowing stuff. And I think that's the whole culture. And I think that's why so many crazy things in Congress have gotten away. Congressmen saying things and get re-elected saying stupid things, is because we just don't confront that. And if there's no confrontation, they must be right. And so, you know, that's a little off the question you asked, but I think that's part of what we've got to get back to.

Listener Question On Accountability

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Well, guys, too, I I I think about one of the verses in Ecclesiastes, I think it's chapter eight, where it it talks about because justice is not swift, yeah, it encourages the hearts of men to do evil. And one of the problems with even this idea of accountability, and it's really built into the question, right? When you have a committee and it takes months or years to investigate, and nothing really seems to happen, it it it seems to uh encourage additional bad behavior because people know they're gonna get away with it to some extent. And I think there was a there's always a pendulum uh on issues that kind of at times will swing from one side to the other. But I think one of the negatives that's happened in some of our justice system is how long it takes to go through trial, to go through cases. And because of it, justice is not swift, and therefore it doesn't feel like there's accountability in so many ways in so many areas. And I say that because when we look at at stuff happening in our nation now, the Trump administration, they they actually, the DOJ is doing good in some areas. Now, there's lots of areas we whether it's DOJ, FBI, I mean that we can kind of go down the list. There's groups that were going, man, they're not doing a good job in some of these areas, but they are actually prosecuting and arresting and doing good things in some areas, but it's not always as swift as it should be. And we saw this if you go back to some of the BLM riots with the destruction of property and you know, slaps on the wrist and people got away. We have we have not held even our our justice system accountable. And I think this really even ties into some of the the first conversation. I think a lot of it, we just have a a bad worldview. We haven't had a good understanding, and so we haven't been promoting the right ideas or ideals. And if we would go back and say, what should the standard be? And what should we be pursuing if we change the expectation, it can change the outcome to some extent. And I think part of it's gonna have to be a re-education that there should be a swifter degree of justice. And even though we want both sides to be able to state their case and have fair trials, it we shouldn't be waiting years for some of these things to come to court. There should be swifter justice. That's actually a biblical idea. And I think re-educating and retraining that worldview is part of the solution going forward. Not all, but I think that matters.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, I think you're right on that, Tim, because I think we we heard from a uh a law enforcement official recently that it's like 85% of the crimes are committed by 7% of the people who do it over and over and over and over and over and over, and they're arrested the tenth time, the 11th time, the 12th time, the third, and there's no accountability of any kind. And so, you know, what you're pointing out, people see that, and if they can do it and get away with it, then I can do this, and and it just encourages that. You're exactly right, that that scripture that that if you don't have a swift justice, then people are encouraged to do wrong. And it's interesting to me what they're seeing even with ice is they're just going after the criminal folks, and they're finding these folks have been arrested and released six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen times. And now we have the lowest murder rate since 1900 in America because we've just gone after the criminals. And so that's nice that that happened, but you know, that's taken a year to get there. But you're right, Tim. We need we need faster accountability, and every one of us needs to do that with ourselves and our friends as well. We need to hold each other accountable, quite frankly, and challenge things that we think may be past the boundary and say, hey, think about that. That's not right. You need to back off on that, not just turn and walk away from it, but confront it and say something about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Yeah, I had not even thought about the the that the swiftness of justice uh weighs so much into that uh you know loss of of trust in the in the institutions and then people being willing to do more evil because they don't believe they'll be held accountable. That's really good, guys. All right, we are out of time for today. We had a lot of questions we didn't get to, so folks, you better tune in next Thursday for Foundations of Freedom Thursday. But first, tomorrow, we got a lot of good news to share with you. So don't miss Good News Friday. Tomorrow, thanks so much for listening to the Wall Polo Show.