John Fea on Why America's Founding Isn’t So Simple

This conversation takes a direct look at one of the most debated claims in American politics: whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation. John Fea, a historian of early America, walks through how historians approach that question and why it often gets misunderstood in modern debates.

He explains that history isn’t just about facts—it’s about context, causation, and change over time. Using examples from the founding era, Fea shows how different states handled religion in public life, including religious tests for office and established churches. At the same time, he highlights how those systems evolved as the country became more democratic and more religiously diverse.

The conversation also unpacks common talking points like the Treaty of Tripoli and why it gets misused in today’s arguments. Fea makes clear that both sides often cherry-pick history to support present-day political agendas.

The episode closes with a practical takeaway: you don’t need America to be a “Christian nation” to live out faith in public life. The real question is how individuals bring their values into a pluralistic democracy without distorting the past to justify it.

Notable Resources Mentioned

• Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780664262495
• Why Study History?: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780801039652

Guest Bio

John Fea is a historian of early America and Professor of American History at Messiah University. His work focuses on the relationship between religion and public life in the United States, particularly during the founding era. He is the author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? and Why Study History?, where he explores how historical thinking can bring clarity to modern political and cultural debates.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

And then I'm trying to look at the 18th century in all its complexity and its fullness and say, you know, those who believe America was founded as a Christian nation, are they right? Are they wrong? You know, how do we think about the past as opposed to uh and then you can use, you know, my historical work on this in any way you want to advance a pro-Christian or anti-Christian uh nationalist agenda.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined as always by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Birchram. How's it going, Josh?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Good, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Well, I am wonderful because today we have with us John Fia, who is a historian of early America and a professor of American history at Messiah University. His work focuses on the relationship between religion and public life in the United States, particularly during the founding era. He's the author of several books, one of which is probably my new favorite now. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation, a historical introduction, where he examines the historical record behind one of the most debated claims in American politics, and we are just so delighted to have him with us here today. Welcome to the show, John. Good to be here. Thanks for that introduction. Very kind. Yeah, no, I mean, as as we we were talking just right before we were recording, myself and and Josh have become it feels like on the show we kind of go through these phases. We we read as many books as we can about Christian nationalism, and then it's like they're referencing a lot of stuff, you know, like back there. So then we read a bunch of stuff on history, and we're like, oh my gosh, like we should probably learn more about this thing. And and that's kind of how we came across your book and your work. And this is this is one of those unusual situations where we didn't have a publisher send us a book. We actually saw it out and looked for a book and came across your name, bought your book, audio and and actual like digital. And it's a phenomenal read. So I'd love just for you to help us understand like why did you write it? Sure. Like what was sort of the impetus for for you to the book will be coming out in a third edition later.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Just a little plug from myself here. A third edition later this year, although in a differ under a different title. It'll be called In God We Trust, and it will be a kind of concise version of the Was America founded as a Christian nation book. So it'll be a lot shorter and thinner, but also interestingly enough, with three additional chapters that were in the other two. So it's uh it's a kind of a crazy, I'm not whether I'm not sure whether to call it the third edition or a completely new book or something in between. But I am a I'm a Christian, you know, I'm a churchgoer. I'm also a trained American historian. I've taught American history in colleges and universities, mostly at Messiah College, now university in Pennsylvania for close to 30 years. So, you know, when you when you're in church and you know, people wanna, they what they're watching television, they're watching cable news, they're reading something, and they say, you know, you're a historian, right? You know, what what was America founded as a Christian nation or not, right? I mean, you know, just someone who really knows very little about history or just but but it but cares about, you know, how Americans should think about their identity. You know, and I I get that I got this question over and over again. So this was back in 2009, 2010. So I decided, you know, there seems to be a real interest in this subject among among Christians, and and that's what led me to write the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

I I mean that's I'm so appreciative that you did write it. We need books like this. And uh whenever I talk to a historian, I always especially well, any historian, but I love talking about method, and and especially in this one, I think it's important because I'll just tell you, like, I I've been a little bit more like bold in my posting, right? So I'm not MAGA and and people know that a lot of a lot of my evangelical brethren really don't like me. Or don't like that. Well, it has. They don't like me, they they're angry at me, but it's it's it's it's I it's understandable. I I'm I think what but but I think it's understandable because I'm attacking uh and criticizing their idols, Donald Trump and the nation. And and whenever you criticize idols, which what we is what we do when we're going back in history and trying to look at this, like did what do you mean it's a Christian nation? It's hitting against an idol that people get mad about. And so I often find people throw out conclusions that aren't arguments, they're statements, they're claims, they're not arguments. And I would love for you to kind of help how does a historian address this question? One thing in particular, you talk about five C's in your book, which I think are awesome. And I would love for you to talk about the five C's of history, kind of help our listeners understand how does a historian approach the question of is America founded as a Christian nation or what?

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for reminding me that I actually talk about the five C's in that book. I uh most people who want to talk most of the people who want to talk about the five C's are have read my a book I wrote called Why Study History, which really on, if you're interested in that method stuff, it really kind of unpacks that opening part about how historians are I'm gonna look that up, actually. Yeah, how historians think and how historians approach the past. There's a lot of ways to answer that question. I, you know, not everybody who explores the past or studies the past or uses the past are historians. There's a particular, you know, discipline of history. And we've perhaps approached the past in a different way than people in other disciplines happen to do, including the way sort of politicians or lawyers or these kinds of people look to the past. I will say this about the whole Christian nationalism bit before I get into the more general categories of how to do history. Uh, there's a lot of books out right now, at least in the last five years or so, on Christian nationalism. You know, I never quite really framed my book. First of all, Christian nationalism like wasn't even a thing. No one was talking about it when I published this in 2011. I someone reminded me that I used the phrase Christian nationalist three or four or five times in the book. Wow. But in 2011, but I was simply using it to come up with uh another way, another word. You know, that you, you know, when you're right, you want, you know, don't want to say, use the same word over and over again to describe people who believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. And then, and then sociologists and political scientists, some of them have probably been on your show, kind of kind of then ran with this idea in the immediate context of, say, you know, the Trump era or the you know post-20 post-2015 and so forth. What I'm doing is something a little bit different. I'm not, I'm not trying to, in this book or even in the third edition, I'm not trying to discern a kind of contemporary movement, right? You know, I'm not, there is one, and I believe there is one, and I believe it's dangerous, and maybe we could get into all of that discussion. What I'm trying to do is something that no one seems to be doing right now because they're they're saying, well, this thing, Christian nationalism, is out there. And then I'm trying to look at the 18th century in all its complexity and its fullness and say, you know, those who believe America was founded as a Christian nation, are they right? Are they wrong? You know, how do we think about the past as opposed to uh, and then you can use, you know, my historical work on this in any way you want to advance a pro-Christian or anti-Christian nationalist agenda. So when a historian goes into this, this is a great question because I'm always asked, you know, well, was America founded as a Christian nation or not? And usually the people who are asking that question, you know, have an answer in their mind already made up, or it's a it's a very loaded question. It's one of the most, I think, pressing political questions right now in the United States. And how you answer that question is going to tell you something about uh your own political convictions in the present. It's impossible for a historian to go into the past and be completely unbiased. Everyone brings their baggage, who they are, to bear on the past. But I think even though it's impossible to be objective when you think about the 18th century or any historical period, it's the goal, right? It's a goal we'll always fail at, but you're constantly striving to try to understand the people in the past on their own terms. So what when I wrote this book, I wanted to cut through as best as I could do, cut through the political agenda of behind that question and say, you know, if we left politics behind, if if we didn't have a political agenda in the president, right or left, right? Because the left is sometimes just as bad as at history as the right in terms of cherry-picking what they need, you know, and not looking at the full complexity of the issue. If we were to move that, what did the founders believe about religion and the founding? And what I found is there's a lot of things in the 18th century and the founding era that can be used, right, oftentimes in an irresponsible way, to advance this, you know, any any kind of political agenda in the present. So, you know, when a historian looks at the past, they're they're thinking back now to these five C's, right? They they want to look at the past in terms of context, right? You know, not just plucking out, you know, there's certain, especially Christian nationalists, if you want to call them that, historians who kind of pluck out little verses here and they love quote books. They produce these quote books, right? Totally out of context, right? So C, context, right? The other thing we often think about is contingency. That's you know, one normally one normally uh you don't normally hear too much when you think about the past. But but contingency is suggests that there are human beings act in time, right? If you want to know what God is doing in history, I speak here as a Christian, right? If you want to know what God is doing in history, good luck with that, right? You know, I I have a big enough view of God and his mystery, you know, the as a sort of God who's so unlike human beings that, you know, who are we to say, like, well, God initiated a fog, you know, so that George Washington could come across the Delaware after the Battle of Long Island in in the summer of 1776, right? That was God. You know, I providence is not a helpful category for the historian. I believe in it, right? I believe in Providence that God is in control, but it doesn't help us understand the past in any significant, in any significant way. So contingency implies that history is built upon the human, the choices that humans make in the past, and then the future is contingent upon those choices, right? Then you have real quick, you have causation, right? You know, not only this happened, but why did it happen, right? What were the reasons why this happened? That adds some nuance to your to your take. Complexity, back to the nuance, right? You know, all of these people in the past are very complex individuals. You know, I think we completely lost our minds as a culture with the whole complexity thing during our huge fights over monuments, you know, back in 2020, right? You know, we we you know, we were just kind of very flat, right? There wasn't a whole lot of nuance.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Um you're saying we lost nuance?

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Well, well, I support I support the taking down of other of some. We can't, I know this is not what this podcast is about, but there was just a general lack of nuance. And then finally, change over time. Change over time is huge in this Christian America debate because there's a propensity, I think, for people to go into the past, into the 18th century, 1776, as if, you know, that era was kind of somehow frozen in a in a uh some kind of time machine. And then we like roll it out, you know, whenever we need it in the present. This is like similar to the view of the constitution that we call originalism, right? You know, the founders lived in a very different world than our world, right? They were they were dealing with all kinds of other issues. The fact that nothing has changed between 1776 and 2026 is something every historian would reject, right? So, you know, I think this is one of the key problems, especially with the Christian nationalist historian. Uh, if you can call it that, I always like to put him in quotes. You know, they they uh go back to the 18th century and they believe that everything that the founder said about religion, about politics, about the republic is somehow always relevant for the 21st century. And they reject the fact that there was a lot of space in between those that that time period. So the issue is not, you know, someone like Warren Throckmorton, my friend, would would point to like errors, right? They have false facts, they have false, you know, they're that he's a fact checker, Warren, right? And he's a good one. And he's come up with some a lot of great stuff about uh about where people like David Barton and others get things wrong. But the real problem is like, so I'm often asked, right? I'm I'm often asked, would would you debate, I want you to debate David Barton. Like, could you can you debate him, right? A public debate. Debate him. Yeah, well, here's the thing. Well, I'm happy to do it, but it would be totally counterproductive. It would nothing would we wouldn't solve anything because he would hold up a quote of John Adams and say something like, John Adams believed that the Constitution was built for a religious people. And I would look at him and say, Yeah, John Adams said that. Right? You know, what does that mean for how we live how we live today? Or what does that mean? Let's let's look at that in context. He also said this, this, and this, right? You know, now maybe it would be productive, but the real issue between me and someone like David Barton is that, you know, things have changed over time. So there's the fifth, fifth C.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah. That I I swe I could spend the rest of the podcast just talking about process because I'm I'm nerd. I mean, I I like the content also, but it but it is like the process is important because we call it we call it historical thinking, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

So so many people think history is just a recitation of facts. If you could get the facts right, you could prove your point in the present. But but history without historical thinking, and at the root of historical thinking are those five C's, is is a much deeper way of thinking about the relationship between the past and the present.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, and and um one of the things that I really enjoyed about your book, and I won't give away the surprise ending. But is there a surprise ending that's new? Well, well, it it's fine, I'll give it away. It was like your your your your last chapter is like you may be surprised that I didn't answer the question.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

That's what I get that all the time. Like, like when the book came out, I would go on these radio stations and and my publicists would put me on like you know, the the right wing, like radio station, where it was like, you know, the whole day was kind of like Sean Hannity, Rush Limb, blah, blah, blah. And then there was always like I I wasn't good enough to be on those shows. So there, so they'd put me on like the six o'clock drive time with the local, the local right wing guy who's coming in after the day of syndicated, syndicated programs. And they'd ask, like, you know, they'd say, Well, what's the answer? Yes or no? And you know, me as a kind of academic, you know, would say, well, it's a pretty complicated question. And and, you know, once you say that, the whole interview's over, right? Because there's nothing else to well, you know, I I remember, I remember one guy just didn't know what to do with me after that. And and and we ended up talking about like Christian music and like DC talk, and you know, I was like, that's amazing. Well, no one wants to hear from a historian on this question. They want to hear from someone who cherry picks from the past to advance, you know, agendas in the present.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

You're right. And and I think, but I but I think the ending of your book was was the right conclusion because if if there is anything that I picked up from it, and combined with just all the other sort of readings, like additionally to yours, is that it's complex and it's nuanced. And like there could be an argument that we are a Christian nation if you just look at just pure demographics.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Well, found it, found it as a Christian nation. Maybe get into that here in the interview. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Found it is important.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah, and and and you make that you make that distinction. So, like, you know, present-day Christian nation, maybe, you know, founding, you know, whatever. So so I so I'd love for you just just to uh make a case for how we should you know look at the past through the context of the Christian nation argument.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah. Well, again, if you look at the 18th century, uh again, now I'm talking here about the 18th century, right? You know, were so so let's rephrase the question. Like, were the founding fathers trying to construct and create a distinctly Christian nation between, say, 1776 and the and the and the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, right? Again, that's a very narrow kind of historical, but when people talk about the founding, we were founded, that's what they're that's what they're talking about. You might be able to push it back to like 1765, the Stamp Act, and the lead up to the to the American Revolution, right? You know, it it all depends on how you define these terms. So, you know, I'm often asked, like, you know, based on the founding, make a case that America believed that Christianity was to be privileged, right? I wouldn't I would immediately go to 12 of the 13 state constitutions that were written. Now you you have to remember the first, we forget about this, but the first United States government that was created after the American Revolution was not the United States Constitution. It was the Articles of Confederation. And you might remember this from your American history class or your civics class, your listeners might, I mean, or your viewers. This was there was no real central government. It was mostly a confederation of 13 individual states who could control their own policies in terms of taxation, in terms of, in our case, religion and the state, church and state, right? So 12 of the 13 of those new state constitutions, written roughly between 1776 and 1780, right? Again, these are the former colonies who are now states, have either one or one or two things in them, and and many of them have both, right? They have uh a clause, uh test oath for holding office. Uh, you know, so my state home state, well, my state I lived in for 23 years, Pennsylvania, you know, you have to uphold the divine inspiration of the old and new testaments in order to hold office, right? So that immediately lim eliminates non-Christians, it eliminates Jews, it eliminates, you know, skeptics, uh, deists, you know, all these kinds of people.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

And and John, j just to clarify, so that would be considered an actual religious test, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Okay. You can't hold office unless you swear to that. That's a religion what we mean by a religious test. Now, if you go to Article Six of the United States Constitution, which gets passed, you know, about a half a generation after these cons these state constitutions were written, there is a there is a clause in there in Article 6 that says there should be no religious test for federal office. It says nothing about state offices. So this is why you have places like Connecticut and Massachusetts who have a test oaths all the way up through the in Massachusetts case, 1833. Right? You still have to be a Christian to hold office. So, so they also have these religious establishments, many of these, right? In other words, there's a state church, there's an official church in which, and what I mean by a religious establishment is that taxpayer, your taxpayer money goes to pay for the official state church. Whether it be congregationalism in New England or, you know, some other kind of, you know, Anglicanism. In Virginia, or Virginia's a bad example, Carolinas, you know, so forth. So in other words, you you might be Baptist, right? And you're, and it doesn't matter. You pay a religious tax that goes to pay for the salaries, the upkeep of the churches in the established church. So in New England, it would be the Congregational Church, right? That goes on as well until 1833. So it's so the question is, what is a nation like between 1776 and 1787 when the Constitutional Convention? It's a collection of individual states that have state test oaths, uh test oaths and established churches. Now, is if that's the nation, it's clear that 12 of the 13 of these states, Virginia being the lone exception, thanks to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who want complete religious freedom, right? And we could get into that if you want. But 12 of the 13 say, no, no, no. We only want Christians running our government. You know, that's it. No one else can. You're not permitted to. Which creates a really kind of weird dynamic we often don't think about because all of these constitutions provide for religious freedom. And what that means is you are so take Pennsylvania, for example, the example I gave, right? In Pennsylvania, you are anyone is free to worship God or not worship God in the way they want. The government is never going to interfere in your right to worship. Jews, Christians, right, skeptics, atheists, they don't have to go to church. No one's gonna get in their way, no one's gonna stop them from doing that or to that to from doing that or not doing that. But if you want to hold office, right, you can worship freely all you want as a Jew. But if you want to hold office, you can. So here's the complexity, right? The nuance of it all. You know, so so if I were to make an argument that America was founded as a Christian nation, that's the way I would turn. Now, just to f finish this out, I would not say, you know, by by 1866, you have the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is is forged in the context of slavery. In other words, states who have legalized slavery now must follow the United States Constitution. And since the Constitution just ended slavery with the 13th Amendment, now you can't have slavery. You could say, well, it's my state's rights to do that, right? No, that's that's done. In 1947, the Supreme Court applied the Fourteenth Amendment to religion. Now, by this point, all of the states did not have these test oaths and established churches anymore. But just to make sure and be clear, they said, you now must follow the United States Constitution on matters of church and state, meaning no more, no more governmental government-sponsored churches and no more test oaths locally, because of Article VI. So this gets to that point I was making before, Will, about you know, founded versus are we today, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Which is like an excellent point. And I think everyone has to understand like change, like things change, societies change. Change over time. Absolutely. It gets back to the five C's, and I and I love that. And I just think about like today, right? So pluralism, right, is is a major is a major assumption in in a lot in American politics, and it's in its what is it, it's being degraded, I don't know, it's being deconstructed, whatever, destroyed. I don't know. It seems like in right in the Republican Party or or the right, whatever you want to say, that might offend people. I offend people all the time now. I I never thought I would, John. I I I am a people pleaser at heart, dude, and I offend so many people, and I gotta say, it's like, man, I I I it it can be hard. But all that aside, is that uh it's just so important to see this change over time. Pluralism is a huge thing right now, and it has been for a long time in America, and because part of that, right, is because of different people started to come in, and culture was changing, votes were changing, people that did have power were trying to hold on to power, and then vice versa, and all this stuff, it creates this conflict that's part of the nuance of history. And I think that one of the things that I think is really misunderstood, right? Especially in these this founding era, I think one of the things you talk about, you talk about evangelical America in the book between 1789 and 1865. Yeah. And one thing I I just this might seem like it's coming a little bit out of left field, but I I want to talk about the Treaty of Tripoli because I hear this talked about so much on both sides of this, in the sense that, oh, haven't you seen the Treaty of Tripoli? It shows that America was not a Christian nation. That's what it was explicitly stated. But then I've also heard that this was that there's debate about that, and that when you look at the context, it's not quite as clear. And I just love to hear, like, what significance is the Treaty of Tripoli in in any of this? I hear it brought up all the time. What's the significance of it and and how should that be used today to help us understand this argument?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I've been I've been giving talks on this subject for 15 years, and I would say 90% of the time someone asks me a question about the Treaty of Tripoli. You know, it's just and it's usually still mind then, dude. Who doesn't, who wants to challenge the idea that we're a Christian nation, right, by quoting the trip.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

What about the Treaty of Tripoli? You know what's interesting, right? I'll just a little bit off track here for a couple seconds, if you'll indulge me. What always what's fascinating me about what's going on right now, so we're recording this in the middle of this Iran war, you know, and in the last couple of last couple of weeks, you know, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggseth, you know, has and even Trump to some extent has has kind of almost painted this as a holy war with Islam, right? So, you know, the first, the first kind of holy war with Islam that the United States ever fought was actually a war against the Muslim so-called barbary pirates on the North Shore of Africa. And and what's interesting is these these pirates were were attacking, were attacking American shipping in the Mediterranean, right? Not respecting American sovereignty. And the the response was the Treaty of Tripoli, which says we need to stop these pirates from doing this, but we're not a Christian nation, right? You know, it's so it's so different today, right? The reason we have to stop the Muslims is because we're a Christian nation, right? So that again, there's an interesting kind of change over time, if you want to call it that. The Treaty of Tripoli.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

It's disturbing. Go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

The treaty, the Treaty of Tripoli is the kind of gotcha, right? You know, it's well, I gotcha. What about the Treaty of Tripoli? And and those who bring it up are correct when they say that this was a treaty that was written by a American diplomat named Joel Barlow. He was a kind of deist skeptic. You know, he also had written some anti-Christian tracts. But this this was not as if this treaty, the whole the Christian nation line, was not like the main thing everybody was talking about in the 1790s when it was when it was passed. You know, Senate approved this unanimously, this treaty. John Adams signed it, right? They didn't now, there's this, there's this false idea that somehow like that's all they were just zeroed in on that Christian nation thing, and that's why they supported it and signed it, to prove that we are not a Christian nation. That was probably like the the the one of the last things on their mind when they were dealing with this treaty, right? It was kind of almost like a throwaway line. You know, it was in there, not that it wasn't important, but it was in there to just try to say, like, we don't want to have a holy war with you, right? We're not interested in that as the United States. We just want to protect our shipping. So it's almost like a kind of line thrown in there in passing, but it wasn't really until like the 1970s and 1980s when the entire debate over are we a Christian nation happened that everyone started plucking and pulling quotes from the past. And now it's like the Treaty of Tripoli, there you go, that solves all problems. It's much more complicated than that. And in fact, the historian Tommy Kidd, Thomas Kidd, I don't know if you've had him on, wrote a great book maybe 10, 15 years ago, on Islam and the history of Islam, Islam and Christianity relations. And you know, if you read his book, you realize that like it's not that like, you know, Americans still did not hate Muslims in the late 18th century, or that they somehow were much more enlightened than, say, the Trump administration is today. No, there was still a strong anti-Islamic sentiment in the country. You know, so it I would say just be careful using the Treaty of Tripoli. If you want to make an argument that America was not founded as a Christian nation, there there are there are better there are better ways to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

You know, when when you talked earlier about some of these states disestablishing, you know, and also just getting away with their religious tests that that happened seemed like over time. Well was there any, I don't know, like precipitating event or or like were the reasons that they disestablished kind of just all over the place? Like like because I I I one side of me once I just sort of jumped to conclusions and say, oh yeah, you know, that was this the decline of Christianity or whatever, you know, because I think that's something I've heard at some point in time. But but I I'd love to hear just just your thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

It was it was a complicated, it was a complicated process. You know, I don't know how much you want to get into all the details. It happened differently in you know the all of the all of the states. Most of it was was sort of growing diversity, right? It's not that Christianity kind of was was being challenged demographically in terms of numbers by other religious groups, but but I think it was a kind of a kind of inevitability that, you know, we have you know Jews, we have atheists, we have, you know, in some cases, some cases it was a I think Maryland, you know, Maryland's state constitution says we are a Protestant state, right? You know, ironically, Maryland was founded as a refuge for Catholics in the 1630s, but by 1776, they're claiming they're a Protestant state. We got all these Catholics, right? So I think it was a, I think there was a certain kind of pragmatism with this. You know, we need to, we need to remove these clauses. So as these constitutions became, as people rewrote them, right? So the the Pennsylvania Constitution removes those those New Testament, Old Testament inspiration test oaths in 1790 when they write their next Constitution. So very quickly, right? It takes New Englanders much longer to do this. In 1833, when New England gets rid of their established church and their test oath, it's it's almost just, you know, something, something that they just have to take off the books because no longer are they really enforcing that anymore. So it depends from state to state. But but yeah, so it gradually happens. Now, what's really what's really interesting too about the United States Constitution, right, is that really the the test oath and the disestablishment clause in the First Amendment, right? There'll be no national church, really then forces religious denominations to compete with one another because there's no state church anymore, right? The government's not gonna, you know, you don't just have to kind of sit on your butt and collect the government money anymore, right? So in the early 19th century, and this gets back to Josh, your point about the the evangelical period that I talk about between in the decades prior to the Civil War, when you don't have an established church, there becomes a kind of almost the consumerism, a sort of market kind of religion, where you need to have a good preacher, you need to have a nice building, you need to have, you know, today we would say, right, a good youth program or, you know, whatever, in order to attract people. So what happens is these churches become very effective at delivering a compelling message, packaged in a compelling way by a compelling speaker, and people start going to church because of this. And you have this is also the period of the second great awakening, right? Where you have all kinds of renewal of Christian faith in this period, mostly evangelical. So again, you have this incredible irony here that it is the separation of church and stuff, the disestablishment of a national religion that actually triggers more Christian activity and and is more effective, allows the churches to more effectively shape Christian culture because you separate church and state, right? So, you know, it's just again, there's another change over time. But but back to the back to the point you make, Will, about so so these state constitutions are not changing because like Christianity is is declining or something. It's be Christianity's booming during this period, but they're also becoming much more pluralistic in the way that they're understanding non-Christians in their society.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

That is absolutely fascinating. And I'm like trying to think, do I just want to push into that a little bit? Well, let me say one more thing.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

This is also the age of democracy, too, right? In the early 19th century. Democracy, age of democracy, right there. So so you also want to respect the beliefs and have as many people as possible participate in society. So that is part of the reason, too, why a lot of these, these, these testos and establishments go by the wayside. But yeah, let's if you want to push into that, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Yeah, I'm trying to think because it's like I'm I guess what I'm wondering about, because there's several different things I'm wondering about. One, this idea of providential history or like history writing, the way that the even the first generations of historians, how they understood American history. I think like I really would like love you to talk more about that. And and and maybe I guess I could connect it maybe in the sense that how how could it be that we were getting more like more Christian and more pluralistic, right? I mean, I'm not saying like I don't think they're incompatible, but I normally don't hear that. Like, that's not what I hear, that we get more religious and more pluralistic at the same time. And I'm just wondering, like, man, what caused that? Do you need to do that? I respond in and is it like today? Is it pluralism like today? Probably not. Is I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Well, yeah, I that's exactly right. I responded to, I think, Will's question and talked about this in light of the state constitutions, right? I think you could have both.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

You can have saying, like, okay, we want to be more democratic, we at least want to let Jews like run for office or vote, right? Culturally, though, that does not necessarily mean that we have suddenly become a culturally pluralistic country, you know. I mean, Christianity is still 90% plus, if you add Catholics into the mix, 98, 99% plus, right? So, so the culture is still is still Christian. So when you talk about pluralism, right, there's a certain kind of pluralism embedded in these state constitutions once they remove the testosterone and the disestablishment. But there's not a significant kind of cultural pluralism on the ground in everyday life when you're walking down the street, you know, so forth. So the perfect example of this is, you know, as I said, between roughly 1790 and 1865, it's evangelical America. I mean, they they are the cultural guardians of this, of this nation, evangelicals, right? So, you know, here's a perfect example of the limits of this kind of pluralism. All of a sudden, in the 1840s and 1850s, massive numbers of German and Irish immigrants start coming into the country to work in the canals, to help to build the infrastructure. The Irish are fleeing the potato famine and so forth. Evangelicals say, well, hold on a second, right? We don't want all these Catholics coming into our country. It's, you know, we call this nativism. There's actually a political party that evangelicals are at the, you know, part of called the Know Nothing Party, right? You know, their whole point is to try to keep Catholics out, or they're scared that Catholics are going to take over and gain too much influence in their Protestant nation. So when we're talking about pluralism today, you know, it's a very different conversation in the early 19th century about, you know, what pluralism actually looks like.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

What what what is the difference? And I know Will's got a crap, but what is, could you push into that a little bit more? Because I think this is where people really struggle because they're like we were Christian before, and we let people do what they want, right? Whatever. I don't know. It was good, it was better then. I I don't I shouldn't have said we let people do what they want. That's not true. But it was better then. We can't we try to give freedoms and so we're the good guys, which I'm not trying to say, I don't think Christians are the bad guys. I think people are people, I'm a strong Christian and I love Jesus, and I want Christians to influence politics. But I I I just the struggle is so big on this because right now I see a conflict of pluralism versus non-pluralism in our in our country right now. That is where the controversy lies.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

I mean, that's a huge that's a huge question because Christian nationalism, the idea that we want to make Christianity a privileged religion as it have some kind of power or authority in the culture, is the opposite of a pluralistic democracy, right? In which Christian voices are one of many in the mix. You know, in the early 19th century, again, this has changed over time. This is understanding the world on its own terms, the 19th century on its own terms rather than our own terms. So your question is a good one, Josh. We have to understand the early 19th century as, again, being a very evangelical Protestant society, right? So Catholics disrupt that evangelical Protestant society. Whenever there are newcomers, whenever there are new people who come into the United States from a different either religion, part of the country, and so forth, there is always, it's a historical fact, there is always backlash, right? Because the guardians of the religious guardians in this case of that particular society do not want their society to change based upon the religious beliefs and practices of the newcomers. You see this in the 1850s with Irish immigration. You see this with even the once, and then Irish Catholics and Germans over generations be assimilate, and they, you know, suddenly now we're talking less about post after the Civil War, we're talking less about an evangelical society and more about a kind of generally Christian society that includes Catholics, right? All of a sudden, then all of these Southern European Catholics start coming in, and Eastern European Catholics at the turn of the 20th century, Italians, Poles, right, Slovaks, you know, uh Jews, right? They're all coming in. Suddenly, then the Christian nation reacts to that. And even the Irish and German Catholics who have now assimilated in don't like these Eastern and Southern Italians, Catholic or Southern these Catholics, because they are more, they have more of a kind of folk religion or they don't practice the right kind of Catholicism, right? I think you see the same thing again in after 1965. After 1965, the United States passes the Heart Seller Act or the Immigration Act of 1965. This is now for this after that act, for the first time in American history, the the uh citizenship and immigration is opened up to non-Western people groups. People from Asia, people from the Middle East are coming into the country, they're bringing their religious religion with them. I think the entire rise of the Christian right in the early 1980s, late 1970s, early 1980s is partly a reaction to the the newly pluralistic, right back to that word, nation that's forming as as millions of non Christian immigrants start coming into the country. Backlash, right? So, you know, I think we're still we're still this has been a long period, right? I mean, it's been 50 years since the rise of the Christian right to some extent. And I think we're still in that period, right? And I think what happened with Donald Trump was Donald Trump then gets elected and he gives power to the backlash. He gives power to the anti-pluralists, you know, who want to restore the 1950s, right? When the sociologist Will Herberg said there are three religions in the United States, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, right? We need to get back to we need to get back to that. So I think, I think that's what we're seeing here. You know, is it the tail end of the backlash, right? Usually the worst comes at the end, like Pickett's charge or something in the Civil War. You know, the worst comes at the end. We'll have, you know, I'm a historian. I can't predict the future. But but yeah, I mean, I think this is this, these problems on a generic level have always been there. This resistance to pluralism. What we're seeing now is a very specific manifestation of that that comes out of a particular historical moment, right? The 1960s, the Heart Seller Act, the cultural changes that happened in the 1960s that Christians have reacted to. So there's there's these general principles you see all over. But then I think historians would want to also say, well, there are unique things here happening too.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Yeah, you've written a lot about, or not written about, but have mentioned writings of David Barton in your work before. I've written about him. Yeah. Okay. And written about him. And which, which to be honest, he's he's a name that's come up in conversation over and over again since we started this podcast six years ago. Yeah. I've never really kind of knew what he was or knew what he what he did until I really, you know, read your book and then read also Warren Throckmorton's upcoming book coming up in May, where he really kind of talks about him. But but but I'm curious just just uh about like, you know, what is or who is David Barton? Why is he somebody that we should, you know, question any sort of historical information that that that he puts out? And because he is, I believe, actively involved with the America 250 project for the White House this year. So yeah, I'll just stop there and let you let you talk about him.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

I was on I was on National Public Radio about a decade ago or something, and I think I called Barton the most influential member of the Christian right that no one knows about. He is a man who's a political activist, a conservative political activist who uses the past to promote his activism. I give that complicated definition of him because I don't like calling him a historian. Right. You know, so I always refer to him as a political activist who uses the past to promote his political agenda.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

I I do like that.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Yeah, he's not really he's not really interested in complexity or nuance or, you know, any of these kinds of things, you know, at getting at the full truth of what happened in the past. He will choose, you know, or or if he does talk about some of the darker moments of American history that don't necessarily suit his political agenda in the present, uh, he does so very quickly, kind of as a caveat, you know, get get over the speed bump and then continue, continue on my way. I mean, so he he operates this this website and this center based in Alito, Texas, called Wall Builders. And what he does is Wall Builders, him now, now I think he's he's his son runs it now, Tim Barton. He's the new executive director, but but David is still very active. And what they do is they they provide resources for those who want to advance the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and should continue to be founded as a Christian nation. You'll never hear from David Barton that that uh that 14th Amendment being applied to religion argument only to suggest that the Supreme Court in 1947 was wrong. That was a wrongly decided case. So uh one of the one of his other ways he's very influential is he holds uh regular meetings with members of Congress and state legislatures to try to teach them about religion and the American founding as he sees it again to advance his kind of Christian nationalist agenda. I again I I already alluded to this earlier in the podcast, but but I have two two major issues with David Barton. I spent most of my life kind of critiquing him, most of my career, I should say. You know, it's been an ongoing thing. You know, one, which again, Warren Throckmorton's book gets at. He also wrote a previous book on this about fact-checking David Barton's views on Thomas Jefferson.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

But can can can you real fast, can you just tell that story?

SPEAKER_02 49:24

Well, yeah, uh, David Barton, I can't remember the year, might have been like 211, 2010, 2011, published a book. I can't remember. I think Jefferson Lies. Jefferson Lies, that was the name of it. It was with Thomas Nelson, a major Christian publisher, and he essentially argued, you know, that that Thomas Jefferson was, if not a Christian, very close to a Christian. He advanced, was open to the idea of advancing America as a Christian nation. He did not father us, he did not father a child with his his enslaved woman, Sally Hemmings. Basically debunked, like well, quote unquote debunked, 50 years, 75 years of really, really good Jefferson scholarship in one fail swoop. Well, you know, enough was enough for, you know, not only that the scholars just kind of ignored him, but but Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College and a well-known fact-checker, who's blogging, I think, at the time. He he and his his colleague in the political science department, Michael Coulter, wrote a book called, I think they self-published it at the beginning, called Getting Jefferson Right, in which they went almost line by line through the Jefferson lies and just basic errors of fact that Barton had to, you know, the how he had to twist the facts to such an extent to even make the thesis work. Eventually, eventually, historians, qualified historians, got in the mix on this. And they managed to convince some other leading evangelical leaders, influencers, that Barton was, you know, this was a really bad book. Barton got it all wrong. And uh the pressure was enough for Thomas Nelson to pull the book from publication. And there's a famous picture of it, somewhere you can find it online, of a dumpster outside of Thomas Nelson's uh publishing house with like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of copies of this book sitting in it. And this is before AI. So it I think it's a legit, it's a legit, legit picture. So it's it was an embarrassment. The the the History News Network, which was a place where a lot of historians went for like, you know, learn more about what's going on in the profession. They covered the historical profession as news. They're still around, but not in the same form. Did a did a survey among American historians and said, like, who is the most, who is the most, who is the worst American historian working today, the most distrusted, or the one we need to be most careful about. And it was very close between one and two. But David Barton was was number one, and Howard Zinn, the the political activist on the left, was was number two, right? That surprised me. And many suggested that Barton, and I'm not sure this is, I wouldn't probably agree with this, but many thought that Zinn and Barton were kind of mirror images of one another. I mean, at least Zinn was using, you know, whatever you think of Zinn, Zinn was using scholarship.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

He wrote a people's history of the United States. Yeah, well, they were both when those famous.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Yeah. I mean, Zinn had all the facts, right? People historians just are kind of very allergic to like preaching the past. And that's what Zinn did as a kind of leftist. So, so yeah, so so Barton has been Barton has been debunked, he has been criticized, he has by every major historian. And when I say every major historian, I'm not just talking about I'm I'm sitting right now and we, you know, we could talk afterwards at the University of Wisconsin, right in the middle of the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, right? We're not talking about like the radical historians over here at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who debunk Barton, right? We are we are talking about, I mean, I can I don't want to name names, so we could talk, I could point to you to historians at Liberty University, Bob Jones University, you know, other very conservative uh Claremont? Oh, definitely Claremont, yeah. Very conservative institutions that, you know, they they want America to be founded as intellectually Christian or whatever, you know, have some kind of Christian roots, but but Barton's not the way to do it. But yet Barton is a Barton's perfect for this age of populism because he he he he plays upon the anti-intellectualism of much of American evangelicalism, and he manages to convince people that what he's saying is right, and he frames it in a culture war mindset. Don't let these, don't let these secular historians or people like me, evangelical Christians trained in secular institutions, to to, you know, it's all a political attack on you. And they're not trying to be honest historians, they're just trying to basically advance a political agenda, which is, you know, what he does as well. The problem is there's so many radical his leftist historians out there like Howard Zinn and and others, that that there's always going to be fodder for his canon, right? Because a lot of a lot of historians on the left also do stupid things with the past.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

We tend we just if we're not careful, we all can just do stupid things with the past.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Yeah, it's easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

It is. It's really easy to do. I've done all sorts of stupid things with the past. And I yeah, and I definitely understand why people want the past to serve their present. I understand why they want it to be.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

Yeah, we all want to use what we call a usable past. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

And we want it to justify what's going on, it to give us a sense of continuity, a sense of identity. And and if you if you're starting, if someone's starting to pick at some foundational things that you have, for instance, hey, it's airtight case that Christianity or that America was created to be a Christian nation and with a covenant with God, all the kinds of things that we had Throckmorton on, the myths that he debunked and on the show. But but you start to pick at that kind of stuff, and it's never just never, it's never about the past. It's always about the present. Oh, of course. I would just love for you to kind of just as a last question and we'll close. Like, how what's your recommendation for people that are looking for all of us who are looking into the past, but we want to we want to use it for the present. What what do we need to do? What what's your encouragement to us and what gives you hope even now?

SPEAKER_02 56:02

People confuse having a Christian informed or any religious informed politics with in the Christian case, we must be a Christian nation. Let me give you an example of this. I know about 15, 20 years ago, I had a student who was who was history and political scientist, double major, he wanted to go into government, right? He wanted to serve in government, and he eventually became a high school teacher, but let's just forget that for now. But excuse me, but so I'm talking now. He was in my American Revolution class, and we're talking about all these things we've been talking about for the last last hour here. And he comes up to me very disturbed. Evangelical kid went to a Christian school, high school, right? Really, really concerned. He's like, look, I want to be an influence for Christ, for God, in politics. But now if they're listening to you talking that we're not a Christian nation, like I don't know what to do anymore with my life. Like, I agree. I I buy into your argument, but what do I do? Like, what do I, how do I, why would I want to go into government and change? I said, like, what are your view? What are your views? You know, what are your positions, you know, that you're really passionate about? Well, you know, he grew up evangelical, so he starts talking, you know, abortion. You know, he was concerned about, you know, religious liberty for Christians. He was concerned about, I don't think this was a big issue at the time, maybe it was, but marriage, you know, all these classic kind of kind of things, right? I said, well, then go into politics and fight for those things. Why does America have to be a Christian nation for you to do that? Right? You know, go go fight for your moral convictions, whatever God's calling you to do in that realm, but do it. But you don't, you know, you can still do that. And America could be founded as an atheist nation. And you are you are a member of an alternative kingdom, right? The kingdom of God. This is how you should be engaging with these things. And and you know, a light bulb went off in this, he's a freshman, I think, went off in this kid's head. And I think that's what I would, that's what I would say. Whatever your more, I'm using a conservative example there, but whatever your moral issue is, right? Racism, social justice, poverty, right? Whatever the, whatever the, the, the, whatever, however, Christian faith informs your your political engagement, do it as a citizen of the kingdom of God, right? That wants to, that wants to advance his kingdom in the world. You know, that can get a little bit, you know, that's taken too far. You get into some of this crazy sort of Seven Mountain kind of stuff. So, you know, you got to be careful and you got to do it in a kind of nuanced way. So, you know, here in the 250th, right? You know, I get a lot of I get a lot of emails from, you know, you people like Will who, you know, want me to come and talk about this stuff. I'm not sure how hopeful I am, Josh, when it comes to this particular issue. Because in as long it until we are pol, until we stop this polarization, this culture wars, this this you know, just go on social evangelical social media. I mean, it's like a it's like a uh a a you know, steel cage match going on. Until until we stop this, until we until the culture, I mean James Davison Hunter, the sociologist, said, like, you know, culture wars always lead to shooting wars, right? You know, I don't think that's a necessarily a historical statement. I would probably disagree with that as a historian. There have been culture wars that haven't led to shooting wars, but uh but it the point's well taken, right? You know, it certainly happened during the Civil War. So so until we start committing ourselves to education, especially civic education, the study of American history, you know, until we start deeply thinking as Christians about these kinds of issues, we're still going to have this polarization where people are cherry-picking and not concerned about nuance and complexity to try to make arguments in the present. Sadly, I think you're seeing many universities as well as high schools beginning to dumb those subjects down, cut those subjects. Those subjects are not important because you know we want to, you know, create good business people or engineers or nurses or these kinds of things. We're training people, we've come to a point in our education system where we're training people very well for a capitalist economy. Right? Giving them skills and these kinds of things. We're not training people very well, Christian colleges and non-Christian colleges, uh for being citizens in a democracy and for being citizens of the kingdom of God. That's going to require a kind of deeper reflection on these kinds of things like history, literature, civics, political philosophy, right? All of these kinds, and until we, and you know, we have a whole generation, I think, now that doesn't really care or is concerned about these things. And then when you're not, you cease to be what the founders called politically jealous for your country. In other words, political jealousy is you're always looking for a way to prevent tyranny, right? Prevent your rights from being taken away, prevent tyrants from coming in and taking away those rights. We become prone to sort of follow pie pipers and activists and politicians until we learn how to think about these questions on our own. So I sorry for the sermon there at the end, but I felt, Josh, you were, you were, you were opening the door for me to get on my soapbox there for a second.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

I opened it up and you stepped right through it. I'm glad you did. I I appreciate it. I really loved hearing it, to be honest with you. And really appreciate you, John. Thank you for coming on and spending some time with us. How can people you got the third edition coming out of the book, and maybe you can just kind of tell people how they can connect with you or connect with words. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

So I have been writing a blog for the last 18 years every day. I also do what's called an evangelical roundup, uh, six days out of seven, in which I pr pretty much it's just I kind of lay out what evangelical Christians are saying about politics on on all sides. Usually it's the right, but all sides. You can find that. It's called the Way of Improvement Leads Home. And you can just Google that. I don't to be honest with you, I don't even know what the what the URL is. It keeps changing, like uh wayofimprovement.blog or something like that. But I'm I'm easy to find there. I'm on all the social media. Recently been on TikTok, trying to give like little snippets of information there. So I'm doing whatever I can to try to get, you know, all for the purposes of education. You're not going to see any like fun skits or anything on my TikTok. It's just going to be me talking. But but yeah, there's a lot of ways to get a hold of me. The best way is to just Google me.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

Well, that's great. Well, thank you again, John. It's been uh such a pleasure to have you on.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

Absolutely. And to our viewers and our listeners, guys, thanks for joining. Share this with someone who needs it. Someone, maybe it's your crazy Aunt Sally or Uncle Bill, and they just need it. Share with them. They're probably not going to listen anyway, so share with someone who might listen. But make sure you're having the conversations. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. God bless you.