Church & State 250: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

Was America founded as a Christian nation, or is that question usually about today’s politics more than the eighteenth century? 

John Fea, historian of early America and American religion, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to slow the conversation down. Fea explains why many Americans historically believed they lived in a Christian nation, while also showing why that does not settle what the founders intended. 

The discussion moves through state constitutions, religious tests, the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the Constitutional Convention, anti-Federalist objections, and the difference between religious freedom and religious toleration. Fea argues that Christianity clearly mattered in the founding era, but the federal Constitution did not create a Christian republic. The episode also asks what America’s 250th should mean if we want better history, better citizenship, and a more honest public conversation about faith and democracy.

Guest Bio
John Fea, PhD, is a historian of early America, American religion, and the founding era. He is Senior Fellow at the Lumen Center for the Study of Christianity and Culture in Madison, Wisconsin, and taught U.S. history at Messiah University for more than two decades. He is the author or editor of several books, including Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, Why Study History?, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, and the forthcoming In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? His work helps listeners think historically about the founders, religious liberty, the Constitution, Christian nationalism, and the difference between using the past responsibly and using it for present-day political agendas.

Book Mentioned
In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? by John Fea
Publisher: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780664269579

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I've spent a lot of my time not only teaching like the facts of American history and the things that we've talked about today on this podcast, but I'm deeply convinced that the major contribution that history makes to our democratic society, even to our churches, is in the way historians think about the world. We think about the world by putting ourselves and trying to understand, putting ourselves in the minds of people, maybe most of them are dead, but by the documents they left behind, trying to walk in the shoes of people who are different than us, understand the world on their terms rather than our terms. That's what we call historical empathy. And that's different than sympathy. I can empathize with someone who I might despise, but in order to be a good steward of that person's dignity, of the past, right? I need to at least try to understand what their view is before I critique it. I think that's a unique, sort of unnatural thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hey, welcome back to Church and State 250, where we are looking at over 250 years of faith in America and the role that religion has played in shaping this country's history, politics, law, and public life. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined as always by your faithful host, Josh Bertram. And today we have joining us John Fia. He's a distinguished professor of American history at Messiah University, a historian of early America, American religion, and the founding, and is the author of several books to include the third edition of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? For this series, John's gonna help us slow down and look carefully at the founding, what the founders actually believed, what did the constitution say about religion, and all those fun things that people have been talking about coming up with the anniversary of America? So welcome back to the show, John. It's good to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Good to be back with you guys. Love the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah. So we're just gonna jump right into it and just and just start really kind of with the with the premise of your book. So your book was called Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? And I think that's probably a good place for us to start. So was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, just let me say one thing kind of in advance before I get into that. I am I am recently retired from Messiah. I want to give proper proper shout-out to the place where I work now. I'm now working at a center for Christianity and culture uh called the Lumen Center at the University of Wisconsin uh on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Madison. We're not connected to uh to UW Madison, but I'm out here in Madison now. The third edition of the book is actually a more concise edition of the first two versions, and it's has a different title actually this time. It's called In God We Trust. And then the subtitle is Was America Founded as a Christian Nation. So there's actually three new chapters. You know, my publisher makes me do this, you know. She says every time you go on a podcast, you gotta you gotta explain this to people. But but what do people mean when they when they say America was founded as a Christian nation? Well, one of the things I think that's important to realize is usually when people are talking about this question today, uh, it's a conversation much more about the present than it is the past. The idea of was America founded as a Christian nation or the idea of the a Christian founding was really something that became a hot political topic after 1976, after the bicentennial of the United States, and it's really been going strong for the last 50 years. What I'm about to say, I'm not suggesting, I'm saying this as a historian, but Americans from say the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 through, say, the 1960s and 70s, most Americans believed that they were living in a Christian nation. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were interpreting the founding correctly by saying that. That doesn't mean they were right in thinking that. But generally, people believed that they were living in a Christian nation. I was recently, uh, well, not recently, about five years ago, I was on a panel in Rhode Island, which was an early advocate of religious liberty. And I was on a panel about uh Roger Williams, the one of the founders of Providence, Rhode Island. This was in Newport at the Quaker Meeting House of Newport, and I was with a on a panel with a Jewish, uh Jewish historian who was a member of Toro Synagogue, which is the oldest still functioning synagogue in the world, uh in the country. This is the synagogue that George Washington wrote a letter to protecting the religious freedom of Jews. And I made this claim that up until the 70s, most people believed they were living in a Christian nation. I was a little, I was a little antsy. I wasn't sure what this uh Jewish scholar was gonna say. Uh and you know, then afterwards he says, great point about the Christian nation. If any, right, if anyone knows that we've been living in a Christian nation for the last seven six.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

It's Jewish people.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

It's Jews, you know. So I was like, whoo, yeah, I didn't wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

You're like, thanks, someone finally said it.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, yeah. But it, but it, but it well, my point here is this that today, when people fight over whether or not we're founded as a Christian nation, they don't seem to be interested in the complete fullness and complexity of the relationship between religion and the founding in the 18th century. What they're really interesting, interested in is using the past in some way, cherry-picking what they need from the past in order to promote whatever their present-day agenda is. And this is done by the left and the right. I do think the right is more notorious in this area, the Christian right. But but so yeah, so when you hear people arguing over this, it's really an argument about sort of present-day politics or present-day American identity that it isn't necessarily about anything to do with the 18th century.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Yeah, it's like this is a historical question, right? When we're asking, was America founded as a Christian nation? Because it's different than the question, is America a Christian nation today?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Versus I would answer that question perhaps a little differently about is America a Christian nation than I would was America founded as a Christian nation.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yes. Oh, absolutely, right? They're two different, they're two different questions, really. And then what do we want America to be? Do we want America to be a Christian nation or to be even more explicitly Christian than it is now, right? And they're separate questions that get all like tangled in and mixed together. And so you're trying to suss them out. And then when people are trying, you're trying to answer the question, you're like, oh, wait, let me first divide that into three questions. People start snoring and getting bored, and and well, can't you just get to the point? Well, no, I can't, because the past is complicated. And yeah, no, yeah. I mean, I would love for you to go into this, like with because I think this will probably connect to me what you're thinking. Like, what is true about this claim? Let's get even a little bit more granular. What's true about the claim that the that this nation was started as a Christian nation? And then what is wrong about it? What do people get wrong about? I mean, no, you're saying they're cherry-picking, but can we get more specific? Can we get more granular on it? What is true about that claim? When we say it's a Christian nation, what data is like, yes, this fits in that well. And then what data militates against it? Go ahead, sir.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

If you wanted to make an argument that America was founded as a Christian nation, right? You would you would turn to several things. You would turn to the founding fathers' views, for many of them at least, that religion was absolutely essential to sustaining a republic. This would be George Washington, for example, in his farewell address, where he described religion and morals as a necessary support for a republic. There, you know, I always find this to be very interesting because, you know, these founders, and we may have talked about this in a in a previous episode I was on with you, but these founders were primarily statesmen. They were building a republic. That was their penultimate goal, that was their most important goal. They wanted to create a republican form of government following independence from Great Britain. Now, if if religion and morals could serve that goal, that primary goal, the founding fathers were all for it. If there was a form of religion, and there was Quakerism, for example, the Mennonites brethren, and we we call them Anabaptists, who who were deeply religious. Certainly their religious liberty would have been protected, but had a role of critiquing the republic, calling it out for its sins, standing apart from the government like the church should do, I believe, and how dare they and challenging the government. I'm not sure, I'm not sure the founders would have much use for that kind of religion to achieve their primary goal, building a republic. But certainly it is the case that they believe that religion, even Christianity, was a way to create virtuous citizens. And what I mean by virtuous citizens, I mean people who were willing to at times sacrifice their own selfishness, their own self-interest, their own rights for the greater good of the republic and its survival. So that would be one place I would turn to make that argument. But even then, as I just did, it's a little more nuanced. You know, I think a lot of people might turn to, and I think this is the strongest argument for America being founded in a way that sort of privileged Christianity, you could turn to many of this, not all, but many of the state constitutions that were formed after 1776. Let's just take the state I lived in for the last 23, 24 years, Pennsylvania. You know, in the state of Pennsylvania, in their constitution of 1776, which was largely written by devout Presbyterians who took over the state assembly, you you have in order to hold office, you have to believe in the divine inspiration of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And if you do not, you cannot hold office. It's clear that the state of Pennsylvania, in its current manifestation, where in which these Presbyterians were controlling the General Assembly, the legislative body of the state in Philadelphia, that they wanted only Christians. Now, there's great stories there about the 1790 Constitution, 14 years later. Great stories about the Jewish community in Philadelphia fighting for their religious liberty. Of course, they always had the religious liberty there to worship freely. No one, the government wasn't interfering with the Jewish community in Philadelphia, but they also fought for uh removing that divine inspiration of the New Testament. And by 1790, they were successful in getting the 1790 Constitution to take that out. But there are other nations, other states as well, rather, like New England states, Connecticut and Massachusetts. They have religious established churches. That means taxpayer money going to support a church that you may not be part of that church, but you still have to pay the taxes. They had state churches, the Congregational Church, Connecticut until 1819, New England until 1833. So this then leads to this larger question, right? Of what is a nation? Between 1776 and the Constitution in 1787 and then ratified in 1789, there is no real unified nation. There's no federal government, there's a loose kind of Congress. All the power under the Articles of Confederation rested in the states and they could decide on their own. So you had Virginia, where there was no established church, no testos, no privileging any religion. You had Massachusetts privileging the congregational religion. You had Pennsylvania saying you got to uphold the divine inspiration of the New Testament and the Old Testaments, right? So, so you know, if you want to say we became a nation immediately after 1776, you know, you that's when we were founded, right? You could make a decent argument that these many of these states, not all, but many, this is again more of the complication, wanted Christians to be in office and privileged Christians running their states. Again, you know, the other side of this debate is you know the Constitution itself. Well, first you have this. Yeah, first you have Virginia, right? The state of Virginia, which was in some many ways a model for the First Amendment. They they never has Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, they did not have a test oath, they did not have an established church. But the First Amendment, right? You know, no, no test oath in Article 6 in the Fed for federal government in the Constitution. The First Amendment disestablishes religion, free exercise of in religion in the first and nothing about God. Now, technically, technically, you know, God is mentioned in the Constitution. In the in the last line, it says, in the year of our Lord, 17. Oh, there you go, dude. Yeah, that's it. You laugh, you laugh at that, but I've been in rooms where I'll make the claim that the constitution is godless and someone will bring that up. Um, so I so I actually I actually had to research that I actually had to research that. Of course, it's the standard way of of of doing the date back then, right? But it was also I researched this and also realized that actually the word Lord was not written. The year of our lord would have been written by a scribe long after the members of the Constitutional Convention had left the building and had gone home. It wasn't like they were debating this, like should we put the Lord in there or not? You know, it was it was just the scribe, of course they were putting a date in the scribe was paid to do. Of course, he wrote in the year of our lord. That's how everybody wrote. So, but but you're right, there's nothing in there. You could make that argument, you could make the argument again, especially on First Amendment grounds, that there should be no religion privileged by the state. Taxpayer money should not be going to support religious agendas, religious programs. You know, so so the whole argument that you hear today about, well, the separation of church and state was meant to, you know, it was the it was the church wasn't going to interfere with the state, but but the same wasn't true the other way, that's really complicated, much more complicated than the debate we have today. So, you know, in 1947, when Hugo Black, the Supreme Court Justice, said that there was a wall of separation between church and state, and that wall is high and impregnable. I mean, I don't know where he was getting his history from, because religion always passed through the, you know, I mean, then we have military chaplains that are paid by the government. There's a there's a chaplain who prays before meetings of Congress. Thomas Jefferson actually worshipped in the Congress at a church service, right? Almost shortly thereafter he wrote that famous Danbury letter where he says there's a wall of separation. So, in one sense, it's there's always been these checkpoints, as one historian called it, between the wall. But that doesn't mean the wall doesn't exist. So, so the idea of like if you if the federal government is going to promote a particular brand of religion over another brand of religion and taxpayer money is paying for those things, that is a violation of the establishment clause. And it's historically, that's exactly what the colonists were trying to get away from, and that's why they did not want established churches. Because, you know, uh Jefferson says this very clearly in the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty. He says, we cannot coerce someone with their tax money, he literally says, their tax dollars, to support a religion that they do not believe in. Right. So uh yeah. So, you know, that's that's the that's a very big argument against the idea that America should privilege one nation or one religion over another.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

You know, John, the the way that you have kind of described that part of history seems in conflict with the way that I think I've often seen it portrayed. And I'll I'll give you a real solid, concrete example. Recently, the administration released a quote-unquote documentary called By Dawn's Early Light, which is based off of a 565-page anti-Christian bias task force report that was recently put out. The the documentary has a lot of AI, but a lot of the AI is like showing sort of this America that was praying all the time, people kneeling, you know, the constitutional convention, you know, it's just a lot of imagery that that showed you know a connection to Christianity much closer than than the connection that at least you're you're describing. So like help us kind of just just think through that. Like when we think about like the constitutional convention and the role that faith played, like how how does all that kind of like wash out?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah, a lot, not all, but a lot of those stories that you hear, you know, I haven't seen this documentary, but a lot, I know I know the I know the discourse well enough. A lot of the things that say people like David Barton from Wall Builders, who's a big Christian nationalist kind of historian, you know, or Eric Metaxis, who hasn't scare quotes for those who are listening. Yeah, who's pitching, who's pitching this new book on the American Revolution. He was in the documentary, by the way, Eric McCarry. A lot of a lot of a lot of the facts are correct. Last month at Rededicate 250, this big event on the Washington Mall to celebrate the 250th anniversary of George Washington. I'm sorry, the the Continental Congress's call for a day of of Thanksgiving, humiliation, and prayer. It was it was on May 17th, 1776. May 17th, 2026, 250 years later. You know, that happened, right? The the the first Continental Congress opened with prayer from Christ Church minister Jacob Duche. He he prayed for the United States. I was actually there on the 250th anniversary. I gave a talk, I got to actually give a talk or actually had dinner inside Carpenter's Hall after I gave a talk. You know, it happened. I was there to talk about it and contextualize it 250 years later. So all of these things that sort of some you know conservatives or Christian right people appeal to did happen. Religion is important. And I think as we think about the 250th anniversary, I think it's important to acknowledge these things, right? Here, though, I think is where you have to be very, very careful. And this is where historical interpretation comes in, right? And this is where the fight really takes place uh and the culture wars. Number one, there is this question I would call of proportionality. In other words, these things certainly happened, but to what extent did the prayer at the first Continental Congress or the Ben Franklin's call for prayer during the Constitutional Convention, or these days of Thanksgiving and fasting, there were multiple, right, that took place. You know, to what extent were they the defining events of what today we call the American Revolution or the Revolutionary Era? Anyone who teaches that period in a in a in a college history class, and and I'm not just talking about like secular universities, I'm talking about where I taught for 25 years, Messiah University. I'm even talking about professors I know at places like Liberty University or Bob Jones University, will teach that period by going through from 1763 to 1776. They will talk about the Stamp Act, which was a protest against taxation. They will talk about the Townsend duties, which was a protest against certain enumerated articles that were being imported into the colonies. They will talk about the Boston Tea Party, they will talk about the coercive acts, they will talk about political tyranny, they will talk about taxation, they will talk about the resistance to all of these things. That is the central narrative of the American Revolution. It was about political tyranny, taxes, economic tyranny, and and what's certainly true is that there were Christians who were living in this time who were possibly interpreting all of those things through the lens of their biblical faith. But they weren't the central narrative. Right? So so you could you could be like you know, like any Christian watching the news today and saying, like, oh, I really don't like this. I wish God was more, you know, involved, or uh I'm gonna pray for our country. They're not praying. Like these, these the Christians were not like saying, Oh, I'm praying that we'll establish a Christian nation. They were praying that the injustice of the taxation and the put you know the political tyranny would go away. So, so to put the Christian story or the development of some type of Christian nation or some kind of providential nation at the center of the narrative, I think, is the problem that I see in a lot of people like Eric Mataxis, David Barton, uh, and others. So that's the first problem. And I'll be real quick on the second problem. The second problem also has to do then, and it's related to the first, is about how to think about the relationship between the past and the present. And I may have said this to you guys when I was on before, right? You know, there are many who want to take the 18th century, the founding, especially as it relates to what the founders said about religion, and freeze it and then somehow transport it to the 20 to 2026 and just kind of unthought and say, here we go. We need we're a Christian nation, then we're now, as if nothing has changed in the United States from 1789 to the present. We've not become a more diverse population, we've not become a more diverse religious, religiously plural population. So, you know, what instead of going to the founders to try to say, like, we need to reproduce the Christian nation that they founded, you know, maybe we should look at the founders and say, well, what did they think about the potential, or did they talk about the potential of what the republic might look like in relationship religion, in religion moving forward? Did they have, you know, did they have a vision of religious liberty that might apply to to non-Christians or others who might come into the infidels, they called them, atheists, right? Did they did they think about them? And and rather than just kind of freezing them in this moment, 1776, and then bringing them to the present. So that's a big challenge. I think a lot of people like Eric Mataxis, David Barton, other sort of so-called Christian nationalists who use the past to promote their political agendas are in essence just freezing, you know, they're originalists, right? Much like the originalist interpretation of the, say, constitution.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. And I was thinking as you were talking, John, you know, they they celebrate they. I mean, you know, we celebrated the this the calling of the first continental congress or the continental congress, right, to humiliation and prayer and all that. But interestingly, they're not, I don't hear a lot of celebrations about Richard Hen Henry Lee's June resolution that actually got the declaration of independence even like as an idea that was in people's minds. No one talks about that. No one knows like about things that even Jefferson seemed to exaggerate within the Declaration of Independence. We treat it like it's an inspired document straight from heaven. Now, I think it's an inspired document and many of its philosophical principles and its ideals, but I don't think we should get it twisted. And it there's something in our minds that we have to sacrilize these people and almost mythologize them, right? Make them heroes, make them bigger than they actually demigods. Yes, bigger than they actually are. You know, you look at Thomas Jefferson, and man, what a we could look at Thomas Jefferson and and have a lot of thankfulness and also have a lot of questions about his morality, about his uh views of world, religion, all that kind of stuff. He is not necessarily the guy I'd want my daughter to bring home, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

So it's like membership in your church, Josh. Yeah, he's not gonna pass the doctrine.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

I'm not gonna ask him to teach on the gospels and so so here's the thing, right? It's like we mythologize these people and then we're building all these arguments on them. And so then we have to double down. Yeah. Because if you if you call into question Thomas Jefferson's, you know, his his holiness or his piety, then this stack of this house of cards or the Jenga that they're building begins to loosen, right? It gets unstable. And so, like, I I really would love for us to, even when we're thinking about the founders, demythologize the founders in terms of their religion, right? I think one of the things that I hear, we've even had people on our podcast, and we struggle with this because we want everyone to say what they think. We want, we want to give everyone a chance. That's what our you know podcast is about. We want people to be able to speak their minds where we're not just sitting here trying to get gotchas and catch them and all this stuff. And yet we've had people literally say things that were we found to be factually inaccurate about the founders, about their, you know, the seminary degrees that the founders had, quote unquote. Whatever it is, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

And I think that people here had seminary degrees. I've heard that one a lot.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yes, that that's actually what was said. Yeah. So, like, so can we dem demythologize this for people just factually? So at least we're starting on the right place.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah, well, think well, first let's just first let me make a comment about kind of uh sort of a more general comment. Yes, please. We need we need we need history more than ever. And yes, I I'm a I I'm a I'm a Christian and I'm a historian. Professionally trained historian, taught it for 25 years, written six books on on American history, mostly American history. And I'm also a Christian. I identify as an evangelical Christian, right? I was just with a group, I was just with a group of of Catholic school history teachers at Notre Dame. I was doing a workshop with them this earlier this week. And you know, one of the things we're talking about is I told one of the things I said to them is which I've said to my students for years, there are no there are no heroes in in history, or any historian knows this. There are no heroes in history, there are no villains in history. And then everybody says, Oh my god, you know, what what do you you know what do you mean, right? And and it, you know, I'm kind of kind of messing with their minds a little bit by saying this, but but all of the heroes that we build up to heroes, if you have a robust view of of sin, well I'll just I'll name that, right? As a Christian, if you have a strong view of sin, you should expect, I mean, King David, right, immediately comes to mind, but you you know, you should expect, you know, you should never hold up someone as a hero because there's a probably a good chance, because of their fallen nature, that they're gonna disappoint you at some point, right? On the other hand, there are there are no villains. Of course, there are people who do what might be called villainous acts, right? But if you believe in the human dignity of all people and that all people are worthy of of redemption, right? That God has has provided redemption.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

It's good, John.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

You're not gonna, you, you can't completely identify. I mean, the Bible says to love your enemies, right? I mean, so yeah, so of course we want to call out as historians the so-called villainous acts. Of course, we want to lift up, to me, at least as a Christian, glimpses of when sort of the kingdom of God breaks through and we see hope and we see positive things and we see loving, loving actions, and you know, all these kinds of things, right? Of course, that's what we do. But but I think that's when I when I started the answer to this question, I said we need more, we need more good history. Because any historian who spent enough time in the past knows that our heroes are going to fall or might disappoint us at some point. And I think that really, I that idea really should be applied to the founding, to the founders. You know, and and I break I talk about the theology of it here simply because I want people who might be listening to what I just said, where I'm kind of suggesting it the founders are flawed human beings and not demigods, to know that I'm coming at this question, not as some like secular person, but but as a Christian myself because of my theology, that I don't expect them to be perfect, right? So in terms of the religious beliefs of the founders, you know, I I've said this for a long time. You know, I think there's a there's a there's a danger sometimes in connecting the religious beliefs of the founders to how they perceive the role of religion and society or religion and government. And, you know, so you have you have everything from with the founders' own personal religious beliefs, you have everything from Thomas Jefferson, who is, you know, a skeptic, does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, does not believe Jesus is God, you know. Uh, you know, hopefully some of your listeners know about his Jefferson Bible, which he cut out all the supernatural and so forth, right? And then you have, you know, even an orthodox, on the other side, you have an Orthodox clergyman, the president of the College of New Jersey of Princeton, John Witherspoon, who, you know, actually, Josh might might be comfortable in your church. Yes, definitely. You know, so so so it's a wide range. You know, I always, I always the the hair comes up on the back of my neck whenever I hear people say, well, the founders believe this, you know, like on religion. I'm like, which one? You know, or well, you know, the founders were theists or the founders were Christians, right? I mean, well, let's let's get into the weeds a little bit, you know. So again, I know we don't have the time to go through every founder and what they believe. You know, like John John Adams would never, who evangelicals love, would never be uh willing to sign a doctrinal statement in an evangelical church or whatever. He was a Unitarian. He didn't even believe in the Trinity, right? I mean, so so but yet, but yet, and this is where I said the founding fathers' religious beliefs may not be the best barometer, right? John Adams also believed that he wrote or he wrote the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which put the congregational church as the established church. Because he, you know, even though he disagreed with the Trinity, which the Congregational Church taught, he thought it was really good to have a money go to support a church to create a more moral society, right? Or or or you have John Witherspoon, who would have argued that, you know, he loved the Presbyterians. You know, I think if he had his way, he would have wanted it to be a Presbyterian country, right? But but was willing to sacrifice that idea in order to have religious freedom and was able to sign on to you know documents related to uh religious freedom for all for all groups, right? So, so a lot of you know, we need to be careful, you know, it's it's a fun, it's a good intellectual exercise, it's interesting to talk about like what the founders believed, but oftentimes that does not always translate to what they would have thought about church and state.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Yeah, and I would would it be would it be accurate, John, to say that the primary way that the founders viewed, even though they had varieties of ways of of belief, spectrum of belief and faith, the primary way that they viewed religion when it came to government was instrumental in the sense that it would it would create a the kind of of populace that could be governed. Is that based with is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

I think I think I probably wouldn't quite put it that way because because there is I would suggest that the founder, you know, the founders did respect people's actual religious beliefs. They wanted people to be able to worship freely. The way you suggested it, Josh, I'm not picking on you here, but you didn't want a kind of, you know, like a Marxist idea of like religion is the opiate of the mass, gotcha, gotcha, control them, right? You know, gotcha, okay. But but it's something in between, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:21

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

And this gets back to what I said earlier in the podcast, right? They wanted a religion. They believed that religion was useful. Let a thousand religious beliefs bloom. We don't want to get involved. You can, you know, even the little sect known as the Swedenborgians, this like today some people might call it a cult. Washington writes a letter to them. You can worship freely, we're not going to interfere. Do whatever you want in terms of your religious beliefs, as long as, of course, it's in the bounds of the law. But, you know, we just believe that if people religion teaches good morals, the founders believed. And they knew this from studying the ancient Greeks and Romans, right? In order for a republic to survive, you have to have a citizenry that is thinking of the common good, the public good, not always just their rights. Rights are important. The American Revolution is about rights and defending rights. John Locke, right? And this liberal tradition of rights, but they also were always thinking about rights in the context of a community, a national community, a republic that they were hoping to build. And if those rights got in the way of this kind of virtue that they needed, this self-sacrificial virtue, that was a problem. If everyone, to quote the book of judges, did that which was right in their own eyes, the republic would erode based upon individualism and selfishness. So religion, they believed, was a way in which maybe that kind of selflessness, you know, they wouldn't have put it in religious terms like love of neighbor or caring for your community, right? But but that might strengthen the republic. You know, it was instrumental in that way.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

When you said earlier that so the the constitution has provisions, no establishment of a religion, no religious test. And you also said that the colonies, though, in their own little uh constitutions, did have those those types of religious tests. So like how did how did the colonies like receive you know, like word that the federal government isn't going to, you know, require require this, or or was it like a non-issue because the 14th Amendment mean it didn't make it require.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Well, well, this is you know, this is an issue of what you know political philosophers, legal scholars call federalism, small f federalism, right? And that is the idea that you know, whatever is not specifically forbidden or endorsed by the United States Constitution, it's up to the states to to navigate and support. So the 10th Amendment, for instance, basically says what I just said, you know, if the if the federal government, you know, is not specific on something, the states can do it. I mean, so this was this was a way to justify doing what the states could do whatever they want with church and government. They could have testos, they could have religious established. By the way, it was also a way that was often used by some to justify, you know, later on the institution of slavery, right? You know, we can we can do whatever we want. But of course, in many ways, the Confederacy and the slaveholding South prior to the Civil War actually had the Constitution on their side to begin with, with the three-fifths, with the three-fifths compromise. But that that's a whole other story. So, so they were allowed to do what they wanted with with religion. And that's why you see such diversity, right? Like we talked about before. You see Virginia doing one thing, Rhode Island doing something similar, Massachusetts doing something with an establishment, Maryland, interesting. I think Maryland, I have to go back and look at this, but I think Maryland's constitution of 1776 actually refers to Maryland as a quote-unquote Protestant state, which is really ironic because it was actually founded by by Catholics fleeing, you know, fleeing persecution in the 1630s. But by the by a generation, the Catholics no longer have control over that colony. It's largely a Protestant colony. So so there's that, I think, dimension of this that you need to need to consider. This is why New England could have an established Massachusetts could have an establishment until 1833. Um that that was that establishment was not removed based on any kind of legal reason.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

I mean it wasn't unconstitutional, right? There wasn't a judgment.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

They just decided to get rid of it because the cut the the colony was becoming much more diverse. Or the state, rather, the state, right, yeah, the person in their in their religious in their religious beliefs, and there are people pushing against it. So so there was there's that dimension of of this conversation about the relationship between the state. Now, what's really interesting as well is in the debates over the United States Constitution, these would be the debates. So you have eight 1780, get your listeners oriented chronologically here. You have 1787, which is when they met in Philadelphia to basically write what became known as the United States Constitution. Then you had in 1788, uh, you had the ratification controversy. This is where you had the Federalists, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, writing the Federalist papers to defend the Constitution, because ultimately, under the Articles of Confederation, which was the existing government, you couldn't do anything unless you had nine of 13 states to approve what you did. So imagine these guys coming out of Philadelphia, you know, in 1787. It's a hot, long summer, and they're like, we got this new document, the Constitution, we made it, we created it, right? And that it means nothing at that point until nine of thirty, now they have to convince nine of 13 states to essentially give up all this power that they once had under the Articles of Confederation to a strong central government. I mean, that's that's a, you know, in some ways the Constitution is like the greatest political coup in Western history that they were managed to pull this thing off. I mean, it barely passes in like some of the bigger states because they don't want to, you know, today you tell it to students and they say, why who wouldn't be against the Constitution, right? You know, but it was the it was the Federalist, but the critics of the Constitution, the ones who voted against it, were known as anti-federalists. And one, not it wasn't the central argument. This gets back to this question about proportionality we were talking about. But one of the arguments that they made was that the constitution did not declare America to be a nation under God, or mention it was a religious nation and so forth, and that they wanted that put in to the United States Constitution. That was one of their arguments. Because if you don't have a test oath, they would some of them would say you might have like Jews or infidels, right, or Hindus, or all kinds of weird, quote unquote, weird religious people holding office, and we can't have that. So this is why we we oppose the constitution because of article six, the test oath, right? So so it's interesting, it's the it's the the the Christians who really want the Christian nation who are the ones who oppose the constitution, right? Because the constitution says nothing about any of that, and they think this is too secular, the constitution. Well, they lose, and the constitution remains a a uh you know generally secular document. The testoster stays in there, and then you know, the the amendments are passed a couple of years later, the first amendment, which which has the disestablishment and religious freedom clauses.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

So I want to stay on that topic of the First Amendment, but get to the sense, like, I mean, obviously the context of the First Amendment is super important. How did it get brought about? How did people understand it at the time? What was the what were the causes of this? And maybe you can hit those as you hit this question, because this is really, I think, the most important one. When they were imagining religious liberty, right, today we hear that and we think a certain thing about it. Anyone can believe anything in the United States of America. What did they mean by religious liberty? Did they understand it in the same way we did? What I guess let me put it this way, because obviously I think because it's 250 years in the past, they didn't understand it in the same way we did. They wouldn't have thought about it in the same terms. So what's the difference? Maybe we can contrast them. And what endures in there? What principle endures do you think that we still have today?

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Yeah, we've mentioned this now several times already, but you know, the First Amendment says everyone, every every American has the right to worship freely, the free free exercise of religion, right? Thereof. And then there is no privileged or established church, right? That's that's the first amendment. That's it. Right? It doesn't say like whether or not you can pray at the 50-yard line at the football game.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

No, no, nothing at all.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

It doesn't say whether you can put a Ten Commandments up in front of City Hall, right? I mean, so so clearly the founders created a court system, ultimately the Supreme Court, to be able to interpret the United States Constitution and what these clauses mean in the context of historical development when things come up, like can you pray at a 50 yard on the 50 yard line, or you know, can government money be used to bust Catholic kids to school, right? You know, all these kinds of huge religious liberty questions, right? So, so if we're gonna go just on the First Amendment, it's really, really hard to figure out like. What you know what the founders believed about. Now, having said that, there are, you know, depending on which founder you read, and Jefferson and Madison, especially Jefferson, are the clearest on this. We do know that the founding fathers certainly had in mind, were looking forward, right? Well, looking into the future, to imagine how these ideas of religious liberty that they championed might apply if the country became more diverse. The best example here is Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, 1786, I want to say, which, you know, is before the Constitution. There's some debate among historians as to how much that informed the First Amendment or not. You know, we won't get into the weeds on that here. But clearly, Jefferson, and he he wrote this later in life when he was talking about the Virginia Statute, essentially says that what we wrote in the Virginia Statute in 1786, I think it's like in the 1820s, towards the end of his life, he's looking back and interpreting what he thinks the Virginia Statute means. You know, he says clearly these religious liberty issues apply to everyone. And he names religious groups Jews, Mohammedans, right, Muslims, Hindus, always spelled with two O's, right, in the 18th century, Hindus, right? And infidels, those who don't believe, right? So so Madison does something similar, but but some of these founders are certainly thinking about how their ideas in the 18th century are going or should be applied to non-Christian groups going forward. And you know, we can have a debate about how much those ideas are representative of all of the founders. Most of the founders just didn't address these kinds of future issues. But we have enough, I think, in Jefferson and in some sense cases Madison to make an argument that the founding fathers clearly believed that this was a country, not a Christian country, where Christianity would be privileged over other religions, but that all religions would be able to come and worship here freely. Religious freedom is different than religious toleration. And again, I may have said, I can't remember what I said to you last time I was here, right? But but religious toleration is essentially, I don't put it crudely, is we have we're the privileged religion. We don't really like you, we disagree with you, but we will tolerate you and let you worship freely, right? Like you we'll let you be here. Religious freedom, which goes back to even the 17th century, William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania, but also I think the founder's view that's embodied in the First Amendment suggests there is no privileged religion, right? There is no established church, but rather we are a religiously plural nation which everyone can come here and worship, you know, within the bounds of the law, right? Immigration laws, you know, again, we can have a whole debate about that. But within the bounds of the law, right, you can come here and and worship or not worship, right, if you want. And we're not, you know, government's not going to interfere and we are not going to privilege one religion over another.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

John, you're uh yeah, your your work has been really, really impactful, just to my understanding of history and religion, and you know, it it's also, you know, one of the one of the many bases for which the church and state separation or church and state 250 series is is a thing, because the the more I read about the nuance and sort of the relationship religion in America, just the more I think people would would benefit from from understanding it. But you've you've been teaching history for you know over two decades. This is sort of like your time to shine because it's 250, right? So phone's ringing a lot these days. Everybody's looking for a historian. I bet it is. What what better historian than John Fia? So so I'd love to just get get your thoughts. This is my last question is like, what does this moment mean to you? I mean, a person that knows this history better than anybody I know, it it has to probably bring up something. So I'd love to just get your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

I I'm looking at the 250. I'm, you know, I I love I love my country, but I also want to be a faithful citizen of my country, which means that as a citizen and as a Christian, I want to weigh it against the teachings of the church, the kingdom of God, whatever you want to, you know, whatever you want to call it. So so I'm I'm a patriot in the sense that I I want to I want to praise my country for the good things that it's done, and it's done many good things. I, you know, I'm not one of these America haters, right? You know, you should see me during the Olympics, you know, I'm like, yeah, you know. On the other hand, I think as a historian and even as a Christian who is a member of what I believe to be an alternative kind of kingdom, I have a political responsibility as well to speak out when the history is bad, when we're using history irresponsibly to advance political causes, but also as a Christian to speak out prophetically. And if you're if you're calling, if you're caught up in the whole government, right? And you're you're sort of flattering the king, so to speak, you know, if government becomes Christianity in some ways, Christianity takes over government, what role does the church have in a kind of being a prophetic voice? So there's that dimension of what I'm thinking about. The next way I'll answer that question is just as a historian. I've spent a lot of my time not only teaching like the facts of American history and the things that we've talked about today on this podcast, but I'm deeply convinced that the major contribution that history makes to our democratic society, even to our churches, is in the way historians think about the world. We we think about the world by putting ourselves and trying to understand, putting ourselves in the minds of people, maybe most of them are dead, but by the documents they left behind, trying to walk in the shoes of people who are different than us, understand the world on their terms rather than our terms. That's what we call historical empathy. And that's different than sympathy. I can empathize with someone who I might despise, but in order to be a good steward of that person's dignity, of the past, right, I need to at least try to understand what their view is before I critique it. I think that's a unique, sort of unnatural thing to do. But it's something that there's a great book by a historian named Sam Weinberg called Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, right? Because we want to go into the past looking for something to promote the present. Everybody does it. And sometimes when that gets on that idea gets on steroids, it goes in all kinds of crazy directions because we start to ignore the proportionality and the, you know, we cherry pick and so forth. I would, I would hope in the 250s, not only do we use the history of the founding responsible, but I've been on this kind of mini kind of crusade to push for the absolute importance of historical thinking, to think in terms of empathy, to think in terms of the human dignity of our subjects. What does it mean, even maybe even to love a person? Like Jesus says to love our enemies, right? What does that mean when I have like, when I have when I'm teaching like the pro-slavery argument in the 19th century, right? I don't sympathize with it, but historical empathy helps me to understand why these men believe what they believe. I want my students to do it, even if it's just to prepare them for a debate, right? You need to know the best argument that your your opponent has, right? So you need to, you know, so I think history is the one discipline that that challenges you to do this rather than to critique or to provide moral condemnation on all those people who burned witches or whatever. You know, that's not an excuse for dismissing immoral behavior in the past, but it's a it's a it's a way of thinking, a habit of mind, if you will, that we need more of in our democratic society. I think someone who studies history deeply and learns how to think historically, and I don't mean just in terms of empathy, but in terms of thinking contextually, right? Thinking in terms of change over time, like we've talked about today, thinking in terms of the complexity of the human experience as it unfolds through time, right? All of these things are what historians do. I'm convinced that if people learned how to do this more better, our democracy, our churches would be richer, more, more intellectually, intellectually responsible. And so so that's what I also hope. We're in this moment where everybody's talking about history. And yeah, there's the facts we you can bring on, probably you've already had like fact checkers come on this show who, you know, this person was wrong or that person's wrong. And that's that's obviously important. Don't get me wrong. I'd have I've done plenty of it myself. But I think the real issue here is what does the this approach to the past that I'm trying to suggest, this responsible approach to the past, how might that make us better people, better, better, better Christians, better democratic citizens? So there's my soapbox.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

Yeah, I I love your soapbox. Uh I love it. And this is great. Thank you so much, John. This has uh been a really, really good conversation. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

Good luck with the series, guys. This has been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Yeah, thank you. And and uh to our listeners, and yeah, make sure you stick around and watch the rest of our church and state 250 series where we look at over 250 years of faith in America. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. We'll see you next time. Take care.