The UpWords Podcast
Each week, we sit down with scholars, authors, and leaders to explore faith, vocation, culture, and what it means to think and live well. For curious Christians and honest seekers. An initiative of SLBF STUDIO at Upper House in Madison, WI.
The UpWords Podcast
Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? | John Fea
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In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Dan Hummel sits down with historian John Fea, distinguished professor at Messiah College and visiting fellow at the Lumen Center, to explore one of the most debated questions in American history: Was America founded as a Christian nation? John shares insights from his Upper House lecture, unpacking the complexity behind this question and why it matters today. They discuss definitions of “Christian” and “nation,” the role of religion in the founding era, and the cultural and political stakes of this debate.
📌 What You’ll Learn:
· Why this question is more complicated than it seems.
· How religion influenced the founding era—and where it didn’t.
· Why the debate is rooted in modern culture wars.
· The historian’s challenge: communicating nuance in polarized times.
🔗 Resources & Links:
· John Fea’s book: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? - https://a.co/d/5ZHqfgt
· John Fea’s podcast: The Way of Improvement Leads Home - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-way-of-improvement-leads-home-american/id1071244872
· SLBF Studio: https://slbf.org/studio
📣 Upper House Commons Lecture Series:
· LECTURE ONE
Apple Podcasts = https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upper-house-events/id1715922039?i=1000737152176
🎧 Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SKgSp7Ch0n3gz0JWCYdpe?si=fa4951404ca44b00
· LECTURE TWO
Apple Podcasts = https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upper-house-events/id1715922039?i=1000737152192
🎧 Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/episode/058DbBKLtPspshjYC0F1Io?si=77f904172c004bbb
· LECTURE THREE
Apple Podcasts = https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upper-house-events/id1715922039?i=1000737152775
🎧 Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CcXH1w0YdYe96JGsuEq5G?si=5e4f34631cf240c2
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This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.
Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour
Edited by Dave Conour
For the purpose of this question, what are we talking about when we mean a nation is Christian or not?
SPEAKER_01Well, part of my part of my whole argument in the book, and you know, we get too into this into the lecture. But part of my whole argument is that how you define that term is going to shape the way you think about this politically charged question.
SPEAKER_02Hello, and welcome to the Upwards Podcast. My name's Dan, one of your hosts, and I'm excited to share with you an episode with John Fia, a historian and a visiting fellow at the Lumen Center this year, as we debrief a lecture he gave at Upper House on November 14th on the question was America founded as a Christian nation? You can check out those lectures in the show notes. There's three of them. It was a packed night. And we go over some of what was covered in the lectures, but also some of the follow-up conversation to them. John also has his own podcast called the Wave Improvement Leads Home Podcast. Be sure to check that out. Also linked in the show notes. Now to the conversation. Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we discuss the intersection of Christian faith in the academy, church, and marketplace. I'm here with John Fia, distinguished professor of history at Messiah College and a visiting fellow this year at the Lumen Center here in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, John.
SPEAKER_01Good to see you, Dan.
SPEAKER_02It should be fun. It should be fun. We talk a lot down the hallway, so it'll be fun to put it on recording. What we're doing here is we're doing a follow-up conversation to an event, a lecture you gave a few weeks ago now. On November 14th, uh it was one of our Friday night lectures, and it was called uh, as they all are, a question, uh, Was America Founded as a Christian nation? Right. So uh this is a follow-up, so we're not gonna go into all the things you you argue and talk about in those lectures. Um, but I think it'll be helpful to uh talk about the question in particular, what we make of the question, and then uh just a few follow-ups on the the way you as a historian, uh American historian who talk about these pretty contentious uh questions of the past, yeah um, how you do that in settings where um there's diverse viewpoints, um different uh levels of education, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, great. Okay. So first of all, uh give us a sense of what did you do on November 14th.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Sure. Uh so this is a tradition from you know what I what I learned very quickly when I got here. The the upper house, Stephen Laurel Brown Foundation Lumen Center has a tradition of a Friday night lecture. And it's uh it's a lecture in three 30-minute segments. So right there, this lecture is usually a sort of when I give this lecture other places, usually like a 45-minute lecture with like 15 minutes of QA. So this is 30 minutes, 10 minutes of QA, then another 30-minute lecture, 10 minutes of QA, and then a third round. So uh, you know, to be honest, it's exhausting. I know you've done one, Dan, and we've kind of exchanged notes about that. So yeah, this one was held due, I think there was a there was a sporting event here in downtown Madison, so we held it at in the headquarters of Innervarsity here in Madison. I thought there was a good turnout, but uh what I tried to do is I just tried to lay out some thoughts about the whole question, right? Was America founded as a Christian nation, uh, thinking about that question as a historian. Uh and then I I just kind of gave some um some sort of highlights of my 2011 book uh by the same title, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? We looked at uh, I think the first lecture we sort of looked at the idea of the United States as a Christian nation. So we sort of historicized that idea, right? How have people thought about America as a Christian nation? Uh then we kind of focused in on the uh the second lecture was on the Bible, the use of the Bible at the time of the founding. And then in the third lecture, we focused on the uh some of the primary or the central documents to the revolution, uh the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution specifically. There could have been seven or eight more topics I could have chose, you know, but but those are the ones I thought would resonate well with the foundation crowd, yeah, so to speak.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well so on that on the foundation crowd. So uh we're here in Madison. Yeah. You've been here a few, you've lived here for a few months now. What did you make of the crowd that would show up to something like this uh in Madison, particularly at the University headquarters, maybe a little different than our normal clientele as well?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Well it's a it was I I thought it was a it was an interesting group. You know, because Madison is a university town, Christians, you know, Christians who would come to a lecture like this tend to be a little more thoughtful than normal, maybe a little more open-minded, you know, maybe lean towards a particular answer to the question, was America founded as a Christian nation? Which would mostly be no, I think. Um again, even the Christians, uh, you know. Uh you know, there were university people, members of the history department, right, of of Madison who were there too, who uh, you know, it's it's and that was the difficulty, right? Speaking to this is a question that's bandied about within kind of Christian circles, but then having having others there who maybe didn't know the subtext or didn't understand the, you know, you know, I'm I'm I'm speaking to a group that, you know, is is very interested and concerned about this question, and then I frame things in in certain ways. So it, you know, I would say when I give this lecture in central Pennsylvania, which is largely, you know, the middle of the state is very red politically, or when I give this lecture in um, you know, rural places or at colleges or universities in rural towns. I'm thinking of like Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, right? This rural, rural place in Indiana. Um, there's a lot more diversity on the question. People come uh in terms of how they perceive the question. People come thinking that, you know, yes, America was founded as a Christian nation, and they want to see me give them historical evidence to justify the case. Here, I think the overwhelming majority would have kind of probably said no or taken at least a nuanced, a nuanced view of it. So it's that was interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I think we we notice that a lot here in Madison. It's not uh a news if you're here, but just a very highly educated audience. So there's a lot of people in the room that actually have firsthand experience reading around this topic or even some of the primary sources in a way that in a lot of other settings that wouldn't be the case.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. And it took me a while. It took me a while to sort of adjust adjust to that, right? I'm always used, I'm always thinking of people who are gonna push back on the you know, from the right on this question, so to speak, right? That yes, of course we were founded as a Christian nation. And there wasn't much of that, even in the even in the one-on-one conversations that I had with people like during breaks and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so that that takes us into my next question, which is actually getting at, let's spend some time talking about the question, was America founded as a Christian nation? You've mentioned a few times, you know, there's political significance to this question. This might be one of the main reasons why people ask it uh these days and try to argue one way or the other. Um but before getting to the significance, for you as a historian, when you ask yourself the question, was America founded as a Christian nation? How are you defining I guess the two biggest key terms are Christian and nation? So let's maybe start with Christian. For the purpose of this question, what are we talking about when we mean a nation is Christian or not?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Well, part of my part of my whole argument in the book, and you know, we didn't get too into this into the lecture, but part of my whole argument is that how you define that term is going to shape the way you think about this politically charged question. Right? So there's a lot of different ways. I think I think as a historian, I kind of push against, you know, the idea that um there's only one way to identify Christian faith or adherence in the 18th century. So let me throw out some examples. What are we talking about? Are we talking about pure demographics, right? You know, the number of people who are Christian in the society, that's a Christian nation. Are we talking about the way in which the founding fathers uh instilled Christianity into, or didn't instill Christianity, into the founding documents, right? There's nothing about Christianity in the Constitution. There's vague references to God and Providence in the Declaration of Independence, right? They didn't seem concerned about making those explicitly Christian in terms of theological ideas. Are we talking about who's Christian, right? You know, an evangelical might say someone who has been born again, or, you know, I would I think that's a probably narrow definition for the 18th century. Is it someone who who goes to church, who's a member, who takes communion, right? So this is part of the kind of complicated nature of when you take a 21st century or late 20th century question, you know, was America founded as a Christian nation, then try to superimpose it on the 18th century. There's, you know, it all depends on how you define these terms. Right.
SPEAKER_02So one of the slides you you had in that first lecture was listing a bunch of different people that don't really have similar politics or anything and are from different centuries, who all at various points would have answered yes to the question, I guess, was American Fans Christian Nation, but had very different definitions of Christian and different reasons why they'd want that answer to be yes. So I I think of you had um Martin Luther King Jr. on that, you had a Pope, Pope Pope Leo the Thirtieth, uh, from the late 19th century, and you had Jerry Falwell, who's a much more recent conservative evangelical. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe talk a bit about those to me seem like some of the more extreme examples of how they're all answering yes to this question in their various times and places, but it doesn't mean that they're sharing the same reasons or even the same purpose for saying yes.
SPEAKER_01And this adds another layer of complication, right, to your first question about what is Christian. What's fascinating is about those pictures, I think I had uh Billy Graham up there too, um Merci Otis Warren, who many of maybe the listeners and viewers don't know was an early uh historian of the American Revolution, writing in the early 19th century, like 1802, I think, you know, so it's just a generation removed. But if you were to pull out their comments on America as a Christian, they all called America a Christian nation at some point. And if you were to take those comments and take them out of their historical context, for example, or, you know, just kind of read them without any um, you know, knowledge of who the figure was or what they were known for in other, you know, in other endeavors, you would think you would be reading some of these so-called like Christian nationalists, you know, uh, you know, you would be thinking, you know, we need to reclaim this country as a Christian nation, you know, the social gospel author Washington Gladden said, right? We need to, you know, it almost came, almost sounded like some kind of uh, you know, Calvinist kind of Dutch reformed, you know, like we need to get every square inch and make it Christian. Well, what he meant was we need to solve the problem of poverty, we need to solve the problem of homelessness, we need to solve the problem of industrialization, of urbanization, and so forth, and all those social ills that come with that. But out of context, it looked like someone like David Barton. Maybe some of your viewers know this guy, you know, could have said those things. Martin Luther King was constantly appealing to the Judeo-Christian. Uh, he used that term specifically, uh, also just also used Christian nation. And a Christian nation was one that didn't segregate. A Christian nation was one that didn't have Jim Crow. So that was my goal in that first, you know, that this is a contested topic. It's not a new topic, it's not something that sort of, you know, began in the late 70s with Jerry Falwell. There really wasn't an argument about whether or not America was a Christian nation broadly defined, allowing for all those differences until uh the culture wars began in you know the 1980s. And that was my point that that this is not a question that Americans have been debating for 200 years. Right. Right? This debate happened in a particular moment in time. Um, and then we've taken that debate and we've kind of tried to look at the founding through the lens of that modern debate, and then it forces us to ask kinds of questions that the kind of questions that people in the 18th century were not asking.
SPEAKER_02In some ways, the question was America founded as a Christian nation, is a very difficult question. Yeah. Because it's not a the emergence of the question isn't out of a, if there is any, pure historical interest in this question. I don't know if there's actually a pure historical interest question out there. We usually ask questions because we have some agenda. Um but this one in particular emerges out of a cultural political conflict in the 18 or 1970s, 80s period. And so any answer to the question is already going to be a little awkward because you're you're asking a question that wasn't being asked before.
SPEAKER_01Well, this is this is what I said in the lecture, you know, at the end, you know, and I've said this before, but it's a bad historical question. Now, that may be surprising for people who know my work for me to say that. I have, you know, I've had a book, I have two editions now of a book, a third one on the way of this book, which is, you know, titled, Was America Founders a Christian Nation? This was actually a little bit of a debate with the publishers, and they thought that this would sell better with that title than some kind of bland, you know, religion and the American Revolution or something like that. But but it is a bad historical question, right? Because it's again taking a question that rose out of a particular moment in time, as you mentioned, this the 1970s and 80s, and then trying to force founders into that model. I mean, this is this is uh the ultimate form of uh presentism, if you want to call it that, right? And then you and then what happens is the past, the 18th century at least, as you know, the the revolution, the the founding era, becomes little more than a place where you cherry pick what you need to advance your political agenda in the present. The left does this too, not only the right. And then that's not how historians work, right? That's not how we work. We look at the full complexity of the of the situation. I think sadly, there are actually trained historians who don't get this, but that might be another podcast. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so be we we mentioned we've talked about Christian as being a really difficult term to define, and it it actually really depends on how you define it to that will lead you a certain direction on your answer. What about nation? This was the other one. I remember talking to a few people in between some of the sessions, and this was another sort of like you have different definitions of what are we talking about when we talk about a nation? What are the different ways you might go about answering that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think there's a lot of people on the on the right who would answer yes to the question who believe who make an argument, and I didn't get into this in the lecture, but I do talk about this in the book, who would make an argument that, you know, the early settlers, right? And we're talking about like the pilgrims, Plymouth, 1620, Massachusetts Bay Puritans, 1630, even to some extent the the Anglicans in, you know, they didn't define that wasn't their primary identification as Anglicans, but they did have Anglican worship in Jamestown, right? And Virginia. You know, certainly there was no sense of nationhood during those periods. If there was any kind of nationhood, it was a connection to Britain, right, right, than it then it was to uh some kind of nascent United States, right? You know, I think the the the argument that the kind of seeds of American liberty were somehow planted in the soil of Jamestown or Plymouth or or Boston, you know, is just a really bad way of looking at colonial history. Uh, you know, and it's you know it's often referred to as a sort of Whiggish way of looking at, you know, uh, you know, I would argue by 1763, by the end of the French and Indian War, 13 years before the American Revolution, the the trajectory, the colony, the colonies have become more and more British than American, right? To the eve of the revolution, you know, you have in 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British victory over the French. I mean, the the level of patriotism in the colonies is at an all-time high, but it's it's British. Yeah, British. You know, Hail Britannia, you know, this kind of thing. It's really hard to say like the seeds of the nation of the United States of America were born in those early, early settlements. You could make a case, right, that 1776 is, or 1789, when the Constitution is formally ratified, you know, that was the beginning of the nation. If you do that, you have a whole other set of questions that you want to ask, you know, about uh, you know, how how much was how much were these colonies conceiving themselves, or these now states conceiving themselves as a nation? What about the Articles of Confederation, this kind of loosely connected group of uh this confederation of colonies uh that existed between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, where they had no sense of a nation whatsoever. They were all just doing their own things. There was no like a national, they called it a strolling government. It hardly ever met the national, quote-unquote national government. So uh, or you, or, you know, there are historians who have suggested some sense of nationalism emerged like after the War of 1812, or or even after the Union victory in the Civil War, right? Where the whole idea of kind of a confederation of loosely identified states, states' rights, could no longer be legitimate, right? So it's again back to the way I answered the Christian question, you know, how you define nation is going to, again, you know, help you to make some kind of a present-day argument about this question of religion and the founding. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Right. So my sense is if I'm I I read around enough to know where a lot of the the pro yes America was founded as Christian Nation stuff comes from. I don't know the more I don't read a lot of these books, but I I just know the conversation. My sense is it's something, I just wanted to hear your feedback on this. My sense is it's it's something where both of these terms are a little vague. Yep. Um, that there were Christian values, there were some of the founding fathers were Christian, but they didn't all have to be. There's something in the sort of milieu or the culture that was identifiably Christian, and that the nation is roughly it goes back to the pilgrims and things. So they're because the you know the Puritans and others are more religious, so there's there's sort of more evidence there. But we're talking sort of in a general sense, the culture of the of the founding area and sort of the inspiration for some of the distinctive values of American democracy come out of a Christian culture. Yeah. My sense is that's now it's it's sort of what are the implications of that are where we get into the politics. But how would you respond to sort of this um it, you know, I realize it's not very, as I'm describing it, it's not very historically grounded. So it's like, well, show me the evidence of where you're seeing these things. But how would you respond to what I gather would be a pretty general sense by a lot of Christians in America that like that's that's what we're talking about when we talk about a Christian America? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Well, certainly, certainly the 18th century was a deeply Christian, even someone asked me this actually at the at the lecture in the Q ⁇ A, uh, deeply Protestant um culture. Absolutely. You know, and I think you could make an argument that a lot of even, you know, I think some of the some of the more thoughtful defenders of a kind of Christian founding, you know, who are kind of conservative intellectuals, say, right? You know, I won't name names. But uh, you know, I think I think some of these arguments that ideas of liberty and freedom and you know, these things that have long been associated with the Enlightenment uh may or do have roots in older Christian ideas. You know, I'm thinking of people like you know, Tom Holland or even Nick Walterstorff has made this case about, you know, liberty and freedom and so forth. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. What I would say is the founding is much more complicated. And to claim that they were also not drawing upon Enlightenment thinkers, ancient thinkers, right, and so forth. I mean, you know, you know, some of these people existed before Christ that they draw from, right? You know, Cicero and, you know, people like this. So, so I think it's I don't want to simplify the founding. I certainly think Christianity had something to do with it, right? But when you're building public policy in the present, the fact that there were ancients or so-called quote-unquote pagan philosophers, as the early Christians would have called them, basically meaning non-Christian, right, were also contributing to the ideas that the founders were tapping into as classically educated men. You know, when you ignore that, you're building a political program on shaky historical ground. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah. Would you say so again, I I don't know this military as as well as you do, but I get the sense that there's a reaction there to a perceived other argument that the founding was entirely secular, or something like that. Help us understand that. Like what's what's the point?
SPEAKER_01Which is problematic. Which is problematic, yeah, to claim that that religion played no role whatsoever uh in the founding, or that all that it did. Was like offer up this idea of religious freedom, right? I think, you know, uh, I'll take a shot here. I think Ken Burns' uh documentary handles religion, but all it is is, you know, religious freedom. Um, you know, you read some of the founders, right? You read Washington's farewell address. He's talking about morality and religion as a pillar uh of the republic. John Adams said that religion and morality, uh, the constitution was was built for a religious and moral people, right? You know, which, you know, a lot of a lot of people, you know, say Trump supporters or whatever like that quote. Uh, but that also cuts the other way, too, right? A moral and religious people, right? So certainly the founders believed that religion, Christianity, even, because it was really the only game in town, was central to creating a good, and the word they would have used is virtuous republic, creating a republic of citizens who at times were willing to lay down their own selfishness, their self-interest for some the greater good of the republic. So um, yeah, I think there's I think there's a lot of really bad books out there, kind of the mirror image of the sort of whatever you want to call them, Christian right, Christian nationalist books, the the yes books, that are just as bad. And they they don't they don't reflect the complexity and the nuance. And I think, you know, sometimes you have seen even left political agendas in the present invoking these, you know, this this vision of history, right? You know, I think someone like uh, you know, very popular writer Howard Zinn, you know, uh would be an example of someone who who seems to have no use for Christi for Christianity, only in the sense that maybe it would have riled people up to like, you know, you know, the mobs and the stamp act or something, right? You know, that's about it.
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SPEAKER_02Okay, so uh coming into the present, we've we've already established this is a question that's particularly important to late 20th century, 21st century Americans to answer one way or the other. And then we just talked about that the answers or there are a lot of answers that are very extreme on one side or the other. All yes, all no. The historians in the middle saying it's much more complicated than this.
SPEAKER_01Um I wish more were saying it was much more complicated because this has polarized a lot of ways, a lot of historians, the way they think about the 18th century, too. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You're the historian at least sitting in the middle saying it's more complicated than that.
SPEAKER_02And so I mean, help help us understand what is at stake from your perspective. Like you know, that that's part of the, I think, the the complicated nature of from the outside looking in. It's like, you know, what about the twenty late 20 first late 20th, 21st century matters, whether or not you answer this like there's some duplication that if it was in the past a certain way, we need to somehow make it that way today or something like that. But help us understand what what's at stake in this debate.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, you know this as well as I, this story as well as I do, Dan. You know, again, if you're gonna target or you know, focus on the when the question emerged to the late 70s, early 1980s, uh, you see many evangelicals getting engaged in in politics in a way that they hadn't been for much of the 20th century, right? And it mostly was conservative politics. It was the cr the religious right, the moral majority, the Christian right, whatever you want to call it. You know, I think the bicentennial here is really interesting because you know, a lot of these figures, like Jerry Falwell, for example, are are you know uh are are starting to emerge right around the time when we're celebrating the 200th anniversary of the nation. Uh, you know, Falwell does a God and country tour in 1976. You know, he goes to every state capitol with his choir from Liberty Baptist College. It was called at the time, now Liberty University. And they travel and do these God and country rallies. And and and then, you know, he writes this book, Listen America, in which he it basically articulates that we're a Christian nation and we've we've uh we need to reclaim that. So so the crit the idea of the myth, if you will, or the idea that America was a Christian nation, founded as a Christian nation, becomes what we historians call a usable past for the Christian right, the moral majority. I think uh the idea that church and state should be separated, that there's a high wall, it's impregnable, according to the 1947 Supreme Court and Hugo Black. I think the kind of secular version of American history, uh, in terms of the world of religion, pretty much held today for much of the 20th, you know, much of the 20th century. So uh so I think the the argument then becomes, you know, more secularists. And when I say secular, I don't mean like secular humanists, like, you know, worried about atheists around every corner. I'm talking about the more historic understanding of the word secular, right? Separation of church and government, separation of church and state. I think that group are pushing back on this new revisionist history that seems to be taking hold in evangelical communities around the country with Falwell's moral majority. So uh I think that's where that's where now it becomes a battle. The culture wars, in my mind, are essentially at the at the base. At the foundation of the culture wars is an argument about the about American history and about the history of the American founding. You can't go elsewhere, you know, it's hard to go elsewhere in those debates, whether it be marriage, abortion, uh whatever, without the foundational belief that America was founded as a Christian nation or wasn't founded as a Christian nation. If you can get that right, then you can make kind of American arguments, so to speak, for any moral problem that you see in the country.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I think this is a place where I really appreciate being a historian, I guess, and just having some perspective on this to realize this is an interesting way of making arguments about contemporary society that is not what all countries do, right? Like it's not every country that has to somehow align what they're doing now with some founding set of creedled claims or documents like the Constitution, and say we're just living out in continuity with those things. Um you can imagine, I mean, there's other countries who say we want to be radically different than our past. Like we're actually trying to get away from that. But it it seems like an interesting part of the American political culture that we're we're all fighting over who's sort of more genuinely aligned with the founding era in this in this.
SPEAKER_01Or who has Abraham Lincoln on their side, right? That's the other one.
SPEAKER_02I think about Lincoln is actually someone who did this very well. I mean, he made a very strong argument that all he or not all he was doing, but what he was doing was just fulfilling the very intentions of the founders through keeping the union together and so forth.
SPEAKER_01I think part of that too, I think part of that, that's a great observation, Dan. I think part of that is um we are a creedal nation, which makes us unique, right? You know, and I think I think that there's a sense in which um, you know, we have a we've had a republic for a long time. Like we're not constantly changing governments and so forth, right? There is something else embedded in all of in all of those things that you've said, and that is this idea that, you know, you mentioned this in your question. There's this other idea, you see it in the originalist interpretation of the Constitution, for example, right? That somehow the it's bad historical thinking, that somehow the 18th century, 1760 to 1790 or whatever, is you know, has been sort of frozen, and all we need to do is get it out of the icebox. This is I'm really butchering this metaphor, but you know, get get it out of the icebox and just un you know, thawed out in in the 21st century, and there we have it, right? Um, and this this goes against the whole historical kind of kind of practice of change over time, right? As if nothing has happened between, you know, 1776 and the present. You know, so we just you know need to go back. And what did the founders believe on this question? Well, the founders were products of an 18th-century world that's very different than our own world. They were asking a bunch of different questions. They were living in a society without the kind of modern, you know, things, the diversity that we experience today, right? So so that's another way of kind of getting at this argument that we were founded as a Christian nation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's great. Okay, we're gonna go to the last question here. And this is around more about communication. Yeah. Then um the first question here I'll ask is when you've given, I'm sure you've given this these types of talks about the American founding dozens, maybe hundreds of times. What tend to be the most common points where people don't like your presentation? And and I know that would depend on the audience in part, but and maybe I'm curious, did you see those in your Friday night lecture you did here, or were there different things that came up?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've also had a chance now to read the um the responses. Like there's a the foundation gives the feedback. Uh yeah. And uh Most of them were at least the ones in the ones at the one in Madison on November 14th, where no one pushed back from the yes side. It just must have been the makeup of the audience, maybe the makeup of the evangelical community here in in Madison. There was one kind of subtle, you know, like a historian could make up anything they want to make up and use facts any way they want to, which I assumed was a kind of yes person, right? But uh, who knows? I think the thing that people are most well it depends what your position is. If you're if you're no, we weren't founded as a Christian nation. I think when I talk about this the individual states and the deeply Christian language in their constitutions, right? You know, uh, you know, my state I used to live in, Pennsylvania. You had to obey the Christian Sabbath in order to vote. You had to uphold the divine inspiration of the old and new testaments, right? And and that really makes someone who wants to answer no get very antsy, right? And uh they'll quickly, they'll quickly shoot up to like post-Civil War. And if there's if they're knowledgeable enough, they'll say, well, you know, the 14th Amendment basically said that, you know, and of course it was the slavery issue at the time, but the 14th Amendment means that the states have to abide by uh the Constitution, and now the 13th Amendment ended slavery, so now you can't have slavery. And then and then it was the 14th Amendment that was applied in 1947 in the Hugo Black Wolf separation case, right? That now these states can no longer say you have to believe in the New Testament to vote or run for office because the United States Constitution doesn't say that. Right. Right? Article, Article 6, the test oath uh clause. So I think that gets people and then and then I like to I like to kind of you know really get them nervous by saying, well, and uh and also if you want to say what were back to your question about the nation, what was a nation? Back to this Articles of Confederation, right? All of these states had their own test oaths, religious establishments. Virginia was the only one that didn't. And okay, if that's your nation between 1781 and 1787, yeah, right in the heart of the founding period, you know, there's no central government. Right. You know, this this complicates things.
SPEAKER_02A lot of the things we would attribute to a nation were not there during that period. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And each of the 13 states were making their own calls about religion. Right. And and they were very Christian, right? I think those who come with the yes, they want to they want me to answer yes, will, you know, kind of immediately start thinking about, you know, they don't like the way that the Bible is employed, because most of these founders took very metaphorical liberties, if you will. I talked a little bit about this in the lecture, liberties with the Bible, you know, or um, or though they also don't like the fact that like I say, you know, I call the Constitution godless, right? Because it doesn't mention God, it doesn't mention Jesus Christ, or, you know, already Christianity or so forth. And um, you know, I think that bothers that bothers them a little bit. And then, but then I didn't do this, I didn't do this uh at the Madison lecture. But, you know, so I'll usually end by talking about what I talked about before about Washington saying religion is the pillars, you know, and then the and pillar of the republic or John Adams, the Constitution is made for a moral and religious people, and then they, you know, that group kind of all right. But the very fact that they're reacting that way, you know, suggests that how much this period is politicized, right? People, you know, the uh history educator Sam Weinberg at Stanford, right, always called history an uh an unnatural act, but our then our psychological condition at rest, another one of his phrases, is to want to see good or bad. And historians must see the complexity of it. That's that's where they're at. They're not, you know, you can use it later for some kind of political agenda if you want to, right? But our primary goal is to try to understand what happened in the 18th century. Right. And that's always not gonna fit in one way or another with our contemporary what we how we want to use the past in our contemporary debates. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Right. Okay. That actually is a good segue into the final question here, which is as a communicator where you're an expert on this area and um and yet you are often trying to reach a public that is not an expert on this area, what are the biggest challenges that you found doing that type of communications work? Translation work from an academic to a public church or just civic setting?
SPEAKER_01On this question, it's tough because I don't know if I said this at the lecture uh on November 14th or not, but when I've given this lecture, people show up with their minds already made up. I think I referenced this earlier in this interview, and they are simply there for me to give them historical ammunition, right, to justify their view. Right. I mean, I have had people come up to me before the lecture and say, I don't care what you say. And that's actually a quote from one woman, right? I don't care what you say tonight. We were founded as a Christian nation. It's like, all right. I go, please come up to me afterwards and tell me if there's just one little thing that I maybe forced you to rethink and they never come back up. So that's frustrating. I mean, yeah, I think when you're tr when you're trying to bring good academic scholarship to bear on public uh questions like this, you know, you always have to understand the limits of this exercise. That that sometimes there's people that are just gonna be kind of unreachable, you know, and and so you so I think you try to uh you know just be faithful to the task of the historian in this case is calling, right? Which is to present a nuanced, you know, perspective. And that's impossible even to do because you know I think I think some people might think I was there, you know, I justified their position or they looked at they thought I was leaning in one direction or another. I'm sure people felt that way. But it's to present the nuanced the nuanced view, and then there's nothing you can do to kind of control the audience. Now I will I w or how they respond. Now I will say this over the years so I've been doing this, I've been lecturing on this topic now for 15 years or more. I started off really cocky, right? I was the academic, I knew this stuff, you know, and blah, blah, blah. And I and that wasn't kind of winning over people's hearts and minds. It wasn't going well, you know. But then I just let the material speak. You know, if you let the material speak, it's always history's always complex. The human experience is always complex, it's always nuanced, right? No, you know, my kid yells, my daughters yell at me all the time. Dad, don't put me in a box. You know, I'm not like that. You're assuming I'm, you know, we're all complex human beings. If you lean into that and allow that to be the guiding principle of a history lecture, usually you you realize that there's a certain kind of humility involved in this work. We can never truly know. And the past is so far away, we do our best, right? And and that's caused me, I think, to be less kind of snarky or less kind of antagonistic in the lecture. Now, again, some people may have thought I was antagonistic at the Madison lecture. Well, I would just say you should see me on you should have seen me when I was, you know, 35 years old or you know, 40 years old. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't think that was the main uh takeaway, John, is that you were being antagonistic. Uh I don't think so. I hope not. But it it it's an enduring challenge of the of this work, whether it's that topic or many of the topics a lot of us here at the Lumen Center talk about, that there is a lot of I mean, that's one reason why they're interesting questions. It's because people have a lot of investment in them and in their answers. Um and then there's also this if people do have investment in the answers, then they're going to be less open to new ideas or new perspectives.
SPEAKER_01Well, one of the things I really appreciate here about being at the Lumen Center is we're I think we're committed, right? You're the director of the center, so feel you know, feel free if I say anything wrong to correct me. But I think we're we're committed to sort of talking about building those bridges, right? I don't think there's any place, I don't think there's any place in the country where we have long and deep conversations about how to build bridges, not only between uh Christian scholarship and and the academic world of, say, Madison or the University of Wisconsin, but also the church. Right. And and in some ways, I think you once said this, Dan, and it's right on the mark. You know, in some time, in some ways, a lot of our work is less about the content of history than it is about communication. It seems like a lot of our conversations at the Lumen Center are largely about how to communicate rather than, you know, our disciplines.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah. That's something I've just come to realize that it's it's one thing to know something, it's another thing to be able to communicate it well to others. So thank you, John, for the conversation. Thanks. This was fun. Yeah. Thank you for tuning into the Upwards Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed today's conversation. For more information about the Stephen Laurel Brown Foundation, you can head to slbf.org and check out the upwards podcast. We have uh over 150 episodes that are conversations like this on all types of topics. Um, also check out slbf.org slash events for our upcoming events here in Madison. Until next time, go in peace.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for tuning into the Upwards Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. For more information about the S. L. Brown Foundation and Upper House, please visit slbf.org. Go in peace to be a light on our campuses, in our churches, and in our businesses so that all may flourish.