“Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?” A Conversation with Historian John Fea

Sep 28

Historian John Fea delivered a lecture on June 22, 2026, at Philadelphia’s Historic Christ Church as part of the Dialogue Institute’s Religious Freedom Trails programming for America 250.

Fea is the author of “In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?” published by Westminster John Knox Press in September 2026. You can also watch his interview with Judy Woodruff from PBS News while sitting in Christ Church.

Fea addresses six major points regarding the historical question in the newest edition of his book. The lecture is followed by a conversation moderated by David Krueger, executive director of the Dialogue Institute. The full transcript, edited for concision and clarity, is included below the video.

11:56, Point #1: The question "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" is a bad historical question.

It emerges as a part of our modern political culture wars rather than as an idea present at the time of the founders. Historically, Americans have believed they lived in a Christian Nation. Fea details the historical reality of the U.S. as a demographically and culturally Christian nation and how that shaped public perception of the nation.

26:02, Point #2: How the Perception of America as a Christian Nation was Challenged

The idea of America as a Christian nation was challenged from the 1940s to the 1970s through several Supreme Court cases that affirmed a commitment to the separation of church and state. A change in immigration law resulted in newcomers from countries with non-Christian majorities.

32:50, Point #3: The Importance of the Bible to the Founding Fathers

Fea highlights that the Bible was culturally prominent in the founders' lives, shaping their ideological beliefs and serving as a rhetorical source for political discourse.

48:30, Point #4: The United States Constitution is Godless

The Constitution makes no reference to God and prohibits the Federal government from establishing or favoring any religion. It also protects its free exercise. Fea emphasizes the Constitution's uniqueness at the time.

53:45 Point #5: The Founders were champions of Religious Freedom

Fea holds that the Founders were champions of all religions, not just Christianity. None was to be discriminated against in America on the basis of religion.

55:50, Point #6: The founders supported Religion as a matter of statecraft, not theology.

The Founders thought religion, of all stripes (not just Christianity), would create good, virtuous citizens of their new republic and therefore supported it so far as to make a more stable and prosperous republic

1:00:40, Question #1: What was the founders' commitment to creating a more open and diverse cultural milieu in the United States?

1:08:10, Question #2: Why did states remove religious stipulations before they were required to if people saw themselves as living in a Christian Nation?

1:11:48, Question #3: What do the founding documents, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, specify as the origins of the rights?

1:15:55, Question #4: When did ideas like the Separation of Powers, representative democracy, and checks and balances start to be portrayed as Christian ideas and Christian values?

1:23:43. Event concludes.

Matthew Havens: Welcome to Christ Church. My name is Matthew Havens, and on behalf of Christ Church and Christ the Church Preservation Trust, it is an absolute pleasure to have each and every one of you here tonight in this historic sanctuary. Next year is another milestone for Christ Church. In 1727, they started building this exact sanctuary we are in. Next year, we're celebrating the 300th anniversary of this building and the centuries of history that have been built and spoken about. Over the centuries, this space has become a gathering space for community conservation and monumental turning points in our nation's history. It is a room that has witnessed the full yet complex spectrum of American history, from religious debates of the colonial period to the political divides of the American Revolution. And it's always incredible to have people here seven days a week, including you guys, because we don't just look to the past; we actively engage in the sanctuary through thoughtful discussion of today's world. Tonight, we are thrilled to host John Fea. It promises to be a fantastic presentation. We are also deeply grateful for the partnership of Dr. David Krueger and the Dialogue Institute, whose hard work has helped make this evening possible. Before we dive into the main program, we were thinking of passing out index cards and pens in case you guys want to write down any questions during the presentation, and then we can always have a Q&A afterward. So if anyone is interested in a pen and an index card, we are happy to hand those out. With that, I am happy to turn things over to our co-host of the evening, Dave Krueger, the executive director of the Dialogue Institute, who will share a bit more about his work and the institute's ongoing projects. So, please help and join me in welcoming Dave Krueger.

David Krueger: Good evening, everyone. Welcome. I'm so glad to have you all come out tonight on this very rainy, unpredictable evening, and with all the incredible number of America 250 activities going on at the same time, including the Iraq-France soccer match that is going on right now. I welcome you on behalf of the Dialogue Institute. We're a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) based at Temple University. For the 250th anniversary of the U.S., we have taken a specific focus on public history. For several years, the organization has been offering walking tours to the general public on the theme of religious diversity in early Philadelphia, examining the significant and complex impact religion had during the nation's founding era. And illuminating the story of William Penn founding this city as a holy experiment and colony that had a higher degree of religious freedom and tolerance of practice than virtually anywhere else in North America during the founding period. So we think Philadelphia has a unique story to tell, and the Dialogue Institute is part of several initiatives to tell it.

Back at our table, we have two wonderful public history interns who are working with us from the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Villanova University’s Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest. They're both assigned to us this summer to research various aspects of our project.

There are a couple of things I want to draw attention to. One of our projects is a tour app you can download as you walk through the historic district, giving you brief introductions to these amazing historic religious sites in the city. It also includes various public spaces where religion was practiced and contested. We're expanding the app to cover more of religious diversity in the contemporary era. I have my team working on rolling out soon a digital tour on the app that will include mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist communities, and show the incredible diversity, interfaith, multi-faith reality of Philadelphia, both past and present. We also offer in-person physical tours. You can sign up for a couple of upcoming tours, including one in the city's Germantown section. Sometimes we think history only happens in Old City, but it's all over our amazing city. So, come to Germantown. We also have a training program for public history officials, public history leaders, and tour guides in Philadelphia. All of this was made possible with a grant from the Philadelphia Funders Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial.

And do we have any tour guides, current tour guides, or tour guides in training in the room? If you could raise your hand. Lauren's working with us. Debbie's going to get started. John, of course, is a veteran tour guide for Christ Church and other settings. So we're excited about these various projects. And I'll also mention that, outside, if you go to this fence, there is a banner called the Religious Freedom Walk. That is actually the title of the walk on our app. But we're partnering with Interfaith Philadelphia, an organization that hosts a series of events exploring the city's multi-faith reality. There are two QR codes on that sign as well, so you can explore some of those activities.

Hopefully, you’ll sign up for the mailing list. You can find out more about the activities that are continuing to grow throughout the year. We're also working with a new documentary, In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America. We'll be holding a handful of screenings throughout the year, which will again provide opportunities to examine history in greater detail and engage in dialogue. So without further ado, you are here tonight because you want to hear from Professor John Fea. Talking about his book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? I've had the pleasure of working with Dr. Fea for the past, I don't know, 10 years or so, just on different projects and things. I've been a huge fan for many years, and this book is particularly important. And I'm not going to give away some of the things that I find interesting. We'll get to that a little bit at the end. But I'm really excited that John will be presenting tonight. John Fea, of course, taught at Messiah College, which is just west of Harrisburg. It's a Christian college about two and a half hours from here, and he just retired. So congratulations after many years of teaching. Some of his former students are here in the room today. And he's also in town, specifically leading a group of K-12 educators through the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, where he's been teaching for many years. And currently, you are a fellow at the Lumen Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. So he has relocated to the Midwest, but has graciously come out east to explore history with all of us. So without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Fea.

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John Fea: Thanks, folks, for coming out to this. This is 18th-century style, folks. A hot summer evening with no air conditioning, right? So, it’s good to be here. It's a real honor to be standing up here. For the last 25 years, I have come into this church with students and K-12 teachers on Gilder Lehrman and other kinds of teacher seminars, piled them into Washington's pew over here, taken selfies, and listened to Neil Ronk expound on the history of the church. Some of you know that name. So yeah, it's great to be standing up here now and giving a lecture here at the historic Christ Church.

When I lived outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I would probably get into Philadelphia maybe twice or three times a year for educational purposes, you know, either to give a lecture or do a teacher seminar or something. Since I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in August, this is my fourth or fifth visit to Philadelphia in 2026. So, it's a lot of airline miles, a lot of airline tickets, and so forth. But I'm pretty sure that's all going to dry up after December 2026, right? The phone will stop ringing. But we'll see, right? The Revolutionary War didn't end until 1783.

So, what I want to do today is one of the things I really enjoy about lecturing on this subject: the opportunities for questions and conversation afterward. I'm going to do my best to make it brief. Now, having said that, I'll probably talk for way longer than I'm supposed to, but I love the back and forth, the dialogue. So, you know, fill out those cards and, if you have questions, definitely let me know, don't be shy, ask them. But, obviously, this is a huge question right now in the 2026 election, the 250th anniversary, and in the midterm elections. What is America, especially as we celebrate the 250th, and what role did religion play at the time of the American founding? That is the historical question that I'm particularly interested in. It's coming out in the third edition, a concise edition, with three new chapters in September. Don't ask me how we managed to pull that off. Half the size of this book, but three brand new chapters. When I talk about this book, people usually come in with their minds made up about this question. I've literally had people come up to me before the lecture and tell me the answer is yes or no. And I was like, well, at least listen to the lecture and then tell me if I've offered any nuance or complexity on this question, right? But it's a hotly contested issue, as many of you know, you're here, so you know this is a major question that goes to the heart of our culture wars in the United States today. What I want to do is, in the limited time that I have with you today, is I just want to offer you let's say five or six, seeing how the time goes, bedrock principles if you will about the relationship between religion, specifically Christianity, and American founding. And then what I hope is that something will trigger and you will pursue some of these themes in more deeper ways on your own.

So I want to start off by stating that the question of whether America was founded as a Christian nation is more about a question of the present than of the past. In fact, it's a really bad historical question. Now, you might say, why is this in the title of your book? I think the proposed title was something like “Religion and the Founders,” but the publisher wanted a catchier title.

Still, it's a really bad historical question. What I mean by that this is a question that emerges out of a particular moment in very, very recent United States history. I'd say it re-emerges in the last 50 years, and we'll get to this in a second. It is not a question that the founders in the 18th century were asking. So whenever you hear somebody say ask this question or debate this question with talking heads on cable news or something like that, realize that this is probably more of a discussion about present-day politics, present- day cultural agendas than anything about the actual diversity and complexity of religion and the founding in the 18th century. And here I'm going to indict both those who answer yes and answer no to this question.

During the 250th anniversary year, we're all in search of a usable past, as historians often say. We want to take from the past what we need in the present to advance our agenda, whatever that agenda happens to be. Both sides do this in this debate. We tend to cherrypick. We tend to find what we need and then marshal that historical evidence to justify whatever cause we want to advocate for in this year, you know, the 250th, right? I'll just start with that to get your brains moving a little bit. But again, was America founded as a Christian nation is a question more about the present than the past. And hopefully you'll understand what I mean as I move through this lecture. You'll get a better sense of what I mean by that as I try to unpack some things for you.

Okay, issue number two. This one's going to be a little controversial, but just give me time to unpack it. Americans have always believed that they were living in a Christian nation. Now, that is a historical claim. I'm not suggesting they were right or wrong to believe that, right? I'm not suggesting they interpreted the founders correctly. I'm not suggesting they interpreted people who believe this, interpreted the First Amendment correctly, even understand American history.

But historically, from roughly 1789 to I would argue the mid to late 1970s, most Americans, whether you were a Christian or not, believed that they were living culturally at least in a Christian nation. Now the examples here abound on this question and really what I'm interested here is the way in which people through the 19th late 18th 19th into the 20th and 21st century use the language of what today we might call you know I hate using this term Christian nationalism because it means something today in a kind of loaded political way, but all through the 19th and 20th century people used the language of Christian America that America was somehow founded as a Christian nation and that somehow we need to restore it, renew it, reclaim it. Let me give you some examples to illustrate my point. Just bear with me here because these examples are all over the place, but I deliberately chose to kind of pick out different examples from different eras with different kinds of ideological views on them.

So, let's start in a dark place, right? Here is the preamble of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. “We the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character in order to form.” Those of you who know the preamble to the United States Constitution may recognize some of these phrases. And you should also note where it departs and why it departs. “To form a permanent federal government, establish justice, value domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God. Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”

Now, there is this culture war in the late 19th century over the Confederate Constitution because the Confederate Constitution often used its constitution to tell all those Yankees that God was on our side. You know why? We have God, almighty God, and Christ in our Constitution. And if you remember the United States Constitution, there's nothing about Almighty God in that, right? So, whose side is God really going to be on in this war? The Confederates said, right? Someone who has, a group who has, invoked the favor of God in their constitution, or that secular thing that all you Yankees up there wrote in 1787 and passed in 1789.

This actually bothered many northern ministers, both fundamentalists and modernists, if you understand what I mean by that, all Protestant clergy. This argument that the Confederates made bothered them so much that they actually formed an organization known as the NRA, not that NRA, the National Reform Association. And the entire purpose of the National Reform Association was a northern effort to put a Christian amendment onto the Constitution. So, look, we challenge you. We have God in our constitution, too. So there's just, you know, one example. Obviously, the Confederates believed that they were promoting a Christian nation.

This is an image of Rufus Schae. He was the predecessor to Daniel Webster in the Massachusetts Senate seat in the early 19th century. A member of the Whig party. If you know anything about the Whigs, they were your kind of Christian patriots in the early 19th century. Were really strong nationalists, but also wanted a religious and moral country. You know who often referred to America as a Christian nation. Here, I just have one small quote from him. “A united, loving, and Christian America we need to create in this country” is what he said. So there's a kind of northern example of this. Ironically enough, those in the North who were arguing for America as a Christian nation often argued on the basis of the fact that the union was somehow sacred. You would think they would argue because they're abolitionists or they're against slavery, right? But that wasn't the primary way that they argued.

They actually argued that the Union was somehow blessed by God, right? And at least that's the way it started in the early war. Here's my favorite one. Historically, my favorite one. The man you see here is Washington Gladden. Has anyone ever heard of Washington Gladden? Washington Gladden was a liberal Protestant. He was a champion of what was known in the early 20th century as the social gospel. This was a gospel that set out to take the teachings of Jesus and bring them to bear on social ills in society, poverty, injustice, corporate greed, all of these kinds of things. And Washington Gladden, along with Walter Rauschenbusch, another name you might be familiar with, and others, founded the social gospel movement. Some historians have even suggested that Gladden was this close to becoming a Christian socialist in the early 20th century. Listen to this quote.

“Every department of human life, the families, the schools, amusements, arts, business, politics, industry, national politics, international relations will be governed by the Christian law and controlled by Christian influences. When we are bidden to seek first the kingdom of God, we are bidden to set our hearts on this great commission to keep this always before us as the object of our endeavors to be satisfied with nothing less than this, the complete Christianization of all life is what we pray and work for when we work and pray for the coming of the kingdom of heaven.”

Now, if you took that quote and dropped it into 2026, like, some figures I'm going to throw out here. You may or might not know them, but like very kind of Trump-supporting MAGA evangelicals. I'm thinking of a guy named Lance Wallnau who advances the idea of seven-mountain dominionism. We must conquer every region, and every area of influence must be under Christian control. If you didn't know who this was, it sounds a lot like one of these new apostolic reformation prophets out there right now. Of course, Washington Gladden, when he thought about the complete Christianization of the country, thought about it very differently than, say, Lance Wallnau or one of these independent charismatics who are now flocking to our current president.

But nevertheless, the language there is almost identical to these kinds of things. Right? So again, the idea here is that Gladden wanted the country to be Christian. In fact, both he and Walter Rauschenbusch, his fellow social gospeler, believed that if the country were to become Christian in the way they saw it; solving poverty, solving social ills, justice and so forth it would precipitate the return of Jesus Christ to the earth.

This one maybe doesn't need as much explanation, but Billy Graham was just as much a preacher of the gospel or just as much a cold warrior, I should say, as a preacher of the gospel. He clearly wanted people to get saved, not only because he believed that they would have eternal life if they were born again, but he also believed that if more and more people became saved, America would become a more Christian nation and that would position us better To fight the cold war against those so-called godless communists from the Soviet Union. So if you listen to Graham's sermons from the 50s and the 60s, it is deeply deeply embedded in this idea that the United States, we need to save more people so that there will be more Christians as he understood a Christian in the world and then we will form a more stable and solid Christian nation that will help us win the Cold War.

Now, this one gets me in trouble, but bear with me. This is Martin Luther King Jr. letter from a Birmingham jail. Uh, I'm just going to read it, then I'll say something quick about it. “One day, the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up to what is best in the American dream. And for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.” Today, if you hear the word Judeo-Christian heritage, you immediately start to think Christian right, Mike Johnson, that's like a giveaway, a key word, right? But here's King, “Judeo-Christian heritage thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the constitution and the declaration of independence.”

So in other words, next time you hear Mike Johnson give a speech where he talks about how the declaration of independence and the constitution are informed by Judeo-Christian values like that we're all created with dignity. Think about Martin Luther King who said identically the same thing at least rhetorically. Probably meant something very different about that though than Johnson does or someone on the Christian right today. But nevertheless, my point here is that however they defined what a Christian nation was. Americans always believed that they were living in such a nation and needed to apply the Christian faith as they understood it. And they understood it all differently and emphasized different things to the advancement of and the betterment of the country. So there's the introduction to that second point.

Now some of you may be asking when did this become a debated question? The idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. I'm sorry for the small print here. walk you through this a little bit, but I would argue that there were several cultural changes that took place between 1947 in 1976, the bicentennial, that led to this idea of was America founded as a Christian nation being a contested issue for the first time. So I've already suggested everyone believed they were living in a Christian nation in one form or another and wanted to advance a Christian nation in one form or another. Right? But in the 40s to the 70s you see a series of events that led conservative Christians for the first time to advocate that their Christian nation was under attack and needed to be renewed, restored or at least their vision of what a Christian nation was needed to be renewed and restored. And thus more secularists pushed back against that idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. And now this question becomes a contested one for the first time.

What were those things? I'll just run through them very quickly. In 1947, the Supreme Court in Everson versus Board of Education, Hugo Black wrote, Justice Hugo Black, wrote the majority opinion, which was about a busing case about parochial schools and so forth. But the key takeaway here was Black’s statement that there is a wall of separation between church and state. And that wall is quote unquote high and impregnable.

That decision was applied again in 1963 for the first time applied in 1963 in the Angle v. Vital case, Black was still on the court at the time. And based upon what happened in Everson, prayer was removed, mandatory prayer was removed from public schools. A year later, Abington v Schempp kind of a local case here in Philadelphia up in the suburbs. Mandatory Bible reading is removed from public schools based upon the wall of separation decision in 1947.

1965, some of you may be familiar with the immigration act of 1965 or the Hart-Celler immigration act. This act for the first time opened the doors to the United States to non-western immigrants, Asia, the Middle East. And of course these groups brought their religious beliefs with them when they immigrated. The religion scholar Diane E has written greatly about this, This created a much more diverse, religiously pluralistic society after 1965. But it also posed a threat to those who believed America was a Christian nation and should remain such and that these intruders were somehow undermining the Christian fabric of the nation. Again, I can answer more detailed questions about this in the Q&A. I'm moving through them really quickly.

1971, Green v. Connelly. Here the United States Supreme Court says that if an academy, either a K through 12 academy, most of them in the south, or a university or college and they specifically had this, often known as the Bob Jones case, they often refer to Bob Jones the university, if they discriminated based on race, if they segregated based on race, they would not be able to receive federal grant money, federal funds, and so forth. Most of these southern academies, some did desegregate, but others were strongly resistant. And this is the first time where you see within southern evangelicalism or really evangelicalism generally in the United States this idea that the big government is coming in and taking away our rights and telling us how to live. They're saying we can't get federal money unless we desegregate. And I mean it's essentially the same argument that the Confederates made in the 1850s, right? You know, we can't have this big government coming in. Now, it really hurt hurt their feelings when a southern president named Jimmy Carter, who was also a born-again Christian, sided with the Supreme Court on this. And historians have talked about this as the main reason why evangelicals turned to Ronald Reagan in 1980. So there's that.

Row versus Wade of course challenges certain patriarchal views of society that have long been held in the United States. And then you had the bicentennial where you know much like this year it's a time to reflect on who we are as a people. Who we are as a nation. And much of the Christian right at the time believed that we had gone astray. The 60s and 70s had derailed the Christian country that everyone took for granted. Something needs to be done and they began to organize politically. And this is where we have the so-called religious right.

Probably the most prominent figure was Jerry Falwell, the pastor of a huge Baptist mega church, Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. [He] later became the chancellor of Liberty Baptist College now Liberty University and he began to mobilize Christians and part of the mobilization of Christians to engage politically was to fight for the idea that America was a Christian nation. It had been lost and now we need to get it back. And I think Jerry Falwell is probably one of the most important political figures in modern American post World War II American politics. He was able, he and his moral majority were able, to mobilize millions upon millions of largely white evangelical Christians to vote a certain way in every election. It is a huge huge political story that oftentimes you know they get Falwell gets like a paragraph or something at the end of a chapter in the second half of a US survey history textbook. I mean if you want to understand why evangelicals vote 81% for Republican candidates you need to understand the impact of this man and the Christian right movement again. That's a historical claim I'm making. I'm a historian I'm not here to say it was good or bad some of you who know me though may know my personal opinion on that.

Number three, now let's get into the 18th century. We did our homework. We did all the background. We set the stage here in terms of the way the past speaks to the present and so forth or the way in which people think about it. Let's say a few words about the 18th century. Here is my third claim. The Bible was important to the founding generation. Now what do I mean by that? What do I mean when I say that? Let's look at some statistics. This is from a political scientist named Donald Lutz. He's a political scientist that certain people on the right, like David Barton or Eric Mataxis, I don't know if these names ring a bell to anybody, love quoting this study. Donald Lutz a political scientist at the University of Houston decided to study all the citations, all the quotes, that the founding fathers used in their published writings. Okay so, it's limited by published writings. The founding fathers are defined as anyone who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation or the United States Constitution.

So, they went in and they found in the 1770s, 554 citations among these people. Okay? Where they [the founders] actually quoted somebody, right? They referenced who they were quoting. More than any other book or document the Bible was quoted 44% of the time in the 1770s. And then 20% political writings. This normally means writings like contemporary political writers. They're often referred to as not necessarily 1770s but Commonwealth writers, these kinds of political writers of the day. The enlightenment people like Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Lock, Hume, these people were cited 18 times. Classical meaning Roman and Greek, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, these kinds of things. Legal and then other, right?

If you look at the 1780s, again I haven't looked into why the Bible dipped, but that's not the point here. The point is the Bible is still number one, right? And then the enlightenment grows a little bit more political. There's of course many more citations in the 1780s because they're also tapping in now to the Federalist Papers and a bunch of other documents. So yes, the Bible is the most cited book. As an 18th century historian of religion, this doesn't surprise me one bit. I don't think it should surprise any 18th century historian who doesn't even study religion. That the Bible was an important book and that culturally people read the Bible and understood the Bible more than any other book. Of course one other way statistics are funny things. There's another way to look at this too. You could say that in both the 1770s and the 1780s, non-biblical sources, whether they be political, enlightenment, classical, legal, far outnumbered, not far, but did outnumber the amount of times that the Bible was quoted, right? So sometimes those who want to say well the Bible was at the heart of the revolution forget about the fact that the Bible actually had a pretty good head start, except for classical, compared to these enlightenment and political writers. So you know that's interesting. I don't make a big deal about it. I don't think you can make a really strong interpretive case. I mean it does say the Bible was important, right?

But, what interests me the most though is the way the Bible was used in these documents and particularly the way the Bible was not only used in these founding documents but the way the Bible was also used from the pulpit and just in kind of everyday life in terms of print and what's been the documents that have been left behind. So, just to show you real quick, I'll go back to the point of the influence of the Bible here. This is an address by Sam Adams. He gives this speech to the Continental Congress in September of 1777. And what I have here is is just a small caption of the speech. And then over on the right, I have all the Bible verses that Samuel Adams seems to be clearly drawing from here. So, let me read it real quick because I know it's far away for some of you. “Let us awaken then and a different spirit.” I mean, think about this in terms of political, right? He's making a political speech over at the state house. “Let us awaken then and event a different spirit, a spirit that shall inspire the people to preserve in this glorious struggle until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock.” Matthew 7:25. “And the rain descended and the floods came and the wind blew and beat upon that house and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock.” That's probably the least kind of direct connection, right?

“We have appealed to heaven for the justice of our cause and in heaven we have placed our trust. Numerous have been the manifestations of God's providence and sustaining us. In the gloomy period of adversity we have had our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Ecclesiastes 7:14. “That the day of prosperity be joyful, but the day of adversity consider God also hath set the one over against the other to the end that man should find nothing after. And then Exodus 13 where it talks about the Israelites following a pillar of a cloud to lead the way. Adams goes on, “we have been reduced to distress in the arm of omnipotence. He has raised us up.” Psalm 136 with a strong hand and a stretched out arm for his mercy endureth forever. Let us still rely in humble confidence on him who is mighty to save.” Isaiah 63:1. “Good tidings Luke 10 and others will soon arrive. We shall never be abandoned by heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.”

So again, you can't argue with the fact that the Bible [was used heavily]. There's a great book by a political scientist named Daniel Dreisbach, who has gone well into this and shown the way in which the scriptures are used. Tom Payne quoted the Bible all over common sense, right? To try to convince people that God liked democracy better than monarchs, right? But how is the Bible being utilized and how are these people using it in this sense? the second most cited verse in America in public, Now I'm not just talking about the founders but I'm talking here about published literature in the 1770s, was Galatians 5:1 New Testament written by, most scholars believe, the apostle Paul. Galatians 5:1 “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourself be burdened by a yoke of slavery.”

Now, when I saw this verse everywhere, and there's actually some really good books that have done the homework to tell me that these were the most cited verses. I was really fascinated by the fact that this verse was used so much. So, I went back and I studied it through church history. So, I read the early Christian founder's origin. I read Augustine, St. Augustine 4th century, St. Aquinus, I read um Martin Luther, the Protestant reformers, I read John Calvin on this. They all commented on this verse. And usually the interpretation changes here and there for the theological intricacies and so forth. But generally the argument went something like this. A Christian argument that Christ died on the cross for our sins and has set us free from the yoke of slavery. The burden of slavery, which was normally interpreted as sin, the sinful nature, original sin, was sometimes referred to as having set us free from the bondage of of our sinful character, right? Again, changes here and there depending on who you read. But this was the general interpretation.

So I'm down at Ruckers University Special Collections about 20 years ago and I'm reading through the papers of a Presbyterian minister named Enoch Green from Deerfield, New Jersey, down in Cumberland County, and I'm looking through his sermon notebook, right? I'm just paging through it and I see a sermon he delivers on Galatians 5:1. And like I had already known this about the verse. So it drew my attention and this was in 1763 that he preaches this sermon and I read it. I said okay nothing new here. He's just articulating the exact same thing I just said right. Then I kept paging through and I got to the 1770s. He was still the pastor of the same church and I get to a sermon on Galatians 51. Again, now this is May 1775. Some of you who know your American history, this is after Lexington and Concord. The second continental congress is meeting and it says on the top of the sheet Galatians 5:1.

So you know I've been around enough pastors and ministers in my life where I'm like okay 13 years you know he's got the file drawer sees the Galatians 5:1 sermon 13 years they're not going to remember this. It's been a rough week you know I think I'm going to preach this sermon again and I doubt any[one will remember]. So that's what I was expecting but this time in his notes, he defines freedom, not in spiritual terms, but in political terms and literally writes that. This is a manuscript sermon he never published it, so you have to take my word for it or go to Rucker's special collection and find the Enoch Green letter books. Go and dig up for yourself. Freedom, he says, is freedom from the tyranny of parliamentary taxation, right? He literally writes that do not be burdened by a yoke of slavery. Anyone who knows the political language of the 18th century revolution knows that there was this kind of whig language in which slavery meant bondage to tyranny, political slavery, right? The founding fathers were always like despite what was in their backyard in Monticello and other places, they were always talking about we're enslaved, we're enslaved, right? But so slavery was a political term that meant we were burdened by someone who was taking away our liberties, our rights. And that's the way Enoch Green described it this time. Not slaves to sin.

But here was the kicker again. Go to Ruckers, look this up. In the sermon, and this is my interpretation, but [he] has the word Christ then with an equal sign, literally an equal sign, and then writes the word Continental Army. Right? So think about this. It is for liberty, political liberty, that the continental army has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourself be burdened by a yoke of taxation

Now, you might think, oh, this is just one crazy example, right? Go get the book. I don't even have all the examples in the book but this was standard interpretation in the 1775-77 years of Galatians 5:1 by many many many ministers all patriotic of course. So don't let anyone tell you that like oh it's such a shame how pastors are bringing their politics into the pulpit these days right. Enoch Green was clearly using the Bible to advance a political cause here. Now, I said Galatians 5:1 was the most popular or second popular, the first popular, was Romans 13, right? I'm going to read you this part of Romans 13. Think about it in terms of the revolution. Okay? “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.” Right there, you have this mandate about rebellion being a bad thing. be subject to the powers. “For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resists the ordinance of God. And they who resist shall receive to themselves damnation” right? Obey the government. Favorite verse of any loyalist Anglican preacher uh in the 18th century.

Some of you know the Hamilton musical, right? There's this character there, Samuel Seab Murray, right? who appears early in the play. He's relentlessly mocked by Hamilton and his buddies in the musical because he comes across as very effeminate, wimpy,because he's essentially arguing this interpretation of Romans 13. He preaches an entire sermon on this. There are others, too. Charles English, a pastor from New York, preaches a sermon on this. And essentially, their argument is that the American Revolution was conceived in sin. a violation of Romans 13, right? And you're gonna rebel against this[Romans 13]. You're gonna rebel against the parliament over high taxes. How do you justify breaking Romans 13 over high taxes, right? Is the argument.

Seabberry makes a really interesting argument when he says, "When was the book of Romans written?" Well, at that time, most people believe the book of Romans, as many do today, too, was written right about the time when Nero was the emperor of Rome. Now, some of you know about Nero's relationship with Christians, right? Burned them at the stake, lit the coliseum with the burning bodies of Christians and so forth. And Seabberry almost laughs this off like how pathetic the patriot interpretation of Romans 13 is, right? The Christians were dying under Nero and Paul was telling them in 64 AD to submit to authority because authority comes from God and you're upset about taxes. So nevertheless people like Seabberry, people like English people, like many loyalist Anglican clergy, especially those in, you know I don't think there's any evidence of people here at Christ Church like Jacob Duche or William White or others who would have used this, but it was mostly New York Anglicans who were much more conservative and much more loyalist than Philadelphia Anglicans which tended to split there were a lot of patriots as well. So the Bible's used, how is it used is also an interesting thing to think about to take it one step deeper

The next ones I'm going to be very quick on because I realize my time is almost up. Fourth, The United States Constitution is godless, but nearly all the state constitutions established between 1776 and 1780 are not. Now, if you were to look at the United States Constitution, we talked about this a little earlier, you will find two references, well, one reference to religion in the original document. That is article six, which says that there is no religious test for federal office. Notice that word federal. If you look at the first amendment, you find two other references of religion in the first amendment religion clauses. You have the disestablishment of religion, right? There will be no state church. There will be no state religion. In other words, government funding will not go towards the promotion of religion. A state church, you all know what that means. It means like, say I'm a Baptist, I'm not, but if I was, I still have to pay taxes to the established Anglican church because they're the establishment, right? They're the established church. I have to pay for the upkeep of that. So, no established church. And of course, then the free exercise clause, right? Free exercise of religion.

You might hear this in certain circles. Sometimes there'll be someone who calls me out on this. They'll say, "It's wrong. God is mentioned in the Constitution because it ends with the year of our Lord 1787” right? You got me. You know, now what's interesting, it bugged me so much that people would bring this up that I actually did some research on it and I found out that those who make this argument make it sound like they were like sitting there deliberating over whether to write the year of our Lord, but on the mean, that was a typical way of dating a document, right? But also this would have clearly been written at the end of the document after everyone left Philadelphia. It was the scribe who would have signed in the year of our lord 1787. But anyway the state constitutions though are interesting which leads to this question like what is a nation in the 1780s, right? Under the Articles of Confederation, of course, all of these states had their own individual ways of dealing with church and state, and they were free to do that in any way they wanted. So, like look at the Pennsylvania State Constitution of 1776, often described by historians, those of you who are with me this week in the Gilder Lairman, I'm going to talk a little bit about this in a couple lectures from now.

But look at this. I do believe in one God, the creator. This is the oath you have to swear to be a member of the government. I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the old and new testament to be given by divine inspiration. Who does that leave out? At least one group it leaves out are Jews. And actually there's a great story which I think the religious freedom trail is telling about the way that Jews fought this and then in the 1790 constitution the divine inspiration of the old new testaments was removed. I mean but if we're thinking about the actual founding of 1776 it's clear that most of them were like backcountry Presbyterians who wrote this thing. It's clear that they want Christians running their state, ironically, in what is often described as the most democratic constitution of all that were probably ever written at that point, the Pennsylvania state constitution.

Now, if you go to other states, you have religious establishments. Massachusetts has a religious establishment until 1833. Connecticut has a religious establishment until 1819. you have test, oaths all over the place. The only real major example is Virginia. And Virginia, I'll get this to segue into my next point here. Thanks to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Jefferson specifically with the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty in 1786, is the only colony that does not have a test, oath or an established church. All the other colonies have either one or one or the other or both. So this makes the Virginia statute of religious liberty which essentially argues that no person should be required and forced by the state to, it literally says this, to I'm paraphrasing, to pay taxes for the promotion of a religion that they do not believe.

So you often hear, well separation of church and state only goes one way, right? It's to keep the government out of the church, but you know, the church can give you in the government all they want. Well, the statute of vi[rginia], and statute of religious liberty simply says that no, if the government is promoting a particular form of religion with taxpayer dollars, that is a violation of religious freedom.

So five, the founders to a man, were champions of religious freedom. They would, George Washington for example, when he was president wrote a letter in his first term to almost every religious denomination and group in the United States securing their religious freedom. The most famous that are often talked about is his letter to the Toro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. He also wrote to this, this is really going to test your knowledge of religious history here, he even wrote to this tiny little sect which actually has a church or something out in the area Brin Athen the Swedenborgians. He actually wrote a letter to them and said we will protect your right to worship and most people saw the Swedenborgians as this strange cult that existed outside of Christianity but they were on Washington's mind and he wrote that letter to them to say they could worship freely.

Now this is where it gets tricky. This gets a little complicated, right? But based on the 1776 Constitution in Pennsylvania, Jews could worship freely. The government was not going to interfere, but until 1790, they couldn't hold office. So it's still a little messy. It's still a little complicated, right? And that's why this question, was America founded as a Christian nation, is so problematic when you try to superimpose this idea onto the 18th century. What was a nation? Were we a nation under the Articles of Confederation? Did we become a nation when we passed the Constitution? Did we become a nation in 1776? Did we become a nation in whatever theories of nationalism exist? The War of 1812 or 1860, right? But clearly there's a period in which these states do not have to abide by article six of the US Constitution or the First Amendment. That actually doesn't happen till after the Civil War. They're forced to do that for the 14th amendment.

Okay, final point and then I'll wrap up. The founders believe that religion was good for the republic to a man, even those who were skeptics like Jefferson and Franklin. They believed that religion could create good virtuous citizens. And virtue was absolutely essential because they learned this from the Greeks and Romans. Virtue was essential to a successful republic. But what did they mean by virtue? Virtue was a political term, not a moral or theological term to the founders. A virtuous person was someone who at times, not always, because you have rights too, right? But at times was willing to put aside those rights for the greater success and good of the republic. That was a virtuous person in the 18th century world. It was largely a masculine trait because men were the ones who were doing the public [works]. We tend to think of virtue today as a feminine trait because we're looking at it through the lens of the Victorian era, right? But masculine trait, men were virtuous and religion thus created virtuous citizens because the founders believe that people who knew how to sacrifice their own self-interest to something greater, God, might also be good candidates for sacrificing their self-interest at times for the success of a republic.

You have to remember these founding fathers were not theologians. They were not pastors. They were statesmen. They were here to build a republic. And if religion was a good way to create good, virtuous republican citizens, let's support it. As a matter of fact, let's promote it if we have to. Like George Washington said, religion and morality are the pillars of republican government. If this is going to work to help us sustain this republic, then we want to promote it the best we can, and many of them thought that perhaps Christianity or religion generally was the best game in town for promoting good Republican citizens.

Now I often say this, I can't prove this, but I'd like to try at some point if I live that long. My thesis is this: if there was a form of religiosity, of Christianity even, that spoke in a prophetic voice that spoke truth to power to the government. In other words, you're creating this republic, but my religion says that this republic is a slaveholder's republic, for example, and I'm going to, based on my religious faith, be a prophetic voice against what you're doing, Founding Fathers. You might find these kinds of ideas swirling around in certain Anabaptist communities, right, among Mennonites on the Pennsylvania frontier somewhere. You might find parts of Quakers making these cases. I'm not convinced yet because I haven't studied it, but my thesis is this. If there was a religion that spoke truth to power against the moral sins of the republic that the founders were building, I don't think the founding fathers would have any use for that form of religion, right? Because religion was meant to support the republic. These were statesmen, right? And religion was a necessary pillar in helping them advance their nation.

So there you have it. Was America founded as a Christian nation? And that's a question about the present. Americans have always seen themselves as a Christian nation up until the 1970s, for reasons I mentioned. The Bible was important to the founders. How they used it is also interesting. The Constitution does not mention God, but the states are filled with test oaths and religious establishments. The founders believed that religious liberty should be championed, and they believed that religion was good for creating good republican citizens. There's my argument. Thanks for listening.

David Krueger: Thanks, everyone. At this point, we're going to ask some questions. Hopefully, you've written down a few questions on note cards, and if Matt, if you'd be willing to collect those and kind of bring them up to the front, and John, you and I are just going to grab a couple of chairs and we're going to sit in the front. As we are collecting some questions, I just had a couple of thoughts that just a couple of reactions that I noticed in myself when you were speaking and one of which was this mention about this quote by King Martin Luther King. Reference to this kind of Judeo-Christian culture which wasn't surprising. I mean he was a Christian minister that's kind of was, I mean it wasn't surprising in that sense that he is a Christian minister speaking out of that tradition but I always wonder you know if King in a different time period would articulate things in a different way in a different cultural milieu I do think about like this image of King marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel you know this beginnings of an interfaith cooperation and the civil rights movement and that type of and thinking to today if King were in a new situation, a new context, you know, he would be recognizing a multi-faith America of people of many different religious backgrounds, you know, fighting for civil rights, fighting for other issues. Some of the folks that are here today were at the American Atheist sponsored organization event a couple weeks ago at the Quaker meeting house and it was called in search of religious pluralism and it was sponsored by the American atheist but there were a number of people of faith that were a part of that organization and I remember Bishop Dwayne Royster who's a UCC minister and also the national clergy organizer and he was the keynote speaker at an American atheist event. And clearly the framing of this event was such that in America today there needs to be an effort to have people of multiple backgrounds, faith or no faith working together. The specific theme at that conference was kind of speaking about the challenges of Christian nationalism and as you know the wall now. The pastor Doug Wilson kind of approach to Christian nationalism. And even Maggie Sadiqqi who's a Muslim speaker with the Interfaith Alliance was there as well. So I'm thinking about the founders that you mentioned at the end, even at the founders and even at the founding period was deeply saturated in Christianity, Christian language was expressed through the biblical text. It was kind of like a literary cultural language that people used because people learned how to read by reading the Bible. I was so immersed there. So I don't have any quibble with that, but it just reminds me of thinking about the founders setting kind of like a framework that we could grow as a nation into a multi-faith reality. Even thinking of folks like Benjamin Franklin who, just down the street there was a civic initiative to found a public preaching house at that site and Franklin in his autobiography talks about that preaching house being a place where people of any religious persuasion could come and to share their faith. So that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to come to Philadelphia and to preach Muhammadism he could find a pulpit at his service. And even thinking of Jefferson, I think when he was arguing for passing the Virginia Constitution, I think there was a quote that I read recently

John Fea: Jefferson in 1821 reflecting back on the Hindus and the Muslims

David Krueger: Yeah, Hindus and Muslim. Yeah, that's right. So if you could comment a little bit more about the founders, their commitment, the space they created in conversation with a larger cultural milieu.

John Fea: You kind of answered the question for me. Well first I thought you were going somewhere with MLK. You know I'm a historian to me it's an ahistorical move to try to put Martin Luther King in another time period, right? He's a product of a specific time period. So maybe if you have a theologian or an ethicist or someone else they can do that. I'm not trained to do that. I'm trained to understand Martin Luther King.

David Krueger: So my degrees are in theology and ethics.

John Fea: So yeah, you could take that one. I defer. My the reason why I taught at a liberal arts college for so long is that you could have me speaking about the the same topic historically and then the students could walk down the hall and take a class in ethics or a class in theology or whatever and they'll get or politics and they'll get the same discussion from a different disciplinary perspective. Right? To address King really quickly. I think King is as much of a prophetic voice as he is; he's also his understanding of America comes out of a kind of liberal tradition in which he still believes in the founding fathers. He still believes in the ideals, maybe not necessarily the fact that they own slaves, but he believes in the ideals and he wants to cash that check, right? As he puts it, right? So I think King unlike some other more radical approaches coming out of the black power movement. I think King is deeply rooted in a kind of liberal founding tradition that says all men are created equal. I want to cash that in. Right? I mean the founders had a good idea there. Right? So I think that's what he's saying when he's talking about and he clearly sees this rooted. I mean if you read a letter from a Birmingham jail he's also talking about Aquinus and Paul Tillik and theologians and so forth. So, it's hard for me to take King out of his historical context in terms of know, you stole my thunder there a little bit with the 1821 Jefferson letter, but yes, I think there were some founding fathers who envisioned their ideas of religious liberty moving beyond simply Christian. Jefferson and Madison are prime examples of this, who clearly envision a religiously diverse society. You know Hindus, they always spelled it with the two O's in the 18th century. Hindus right and Muhammadans they mention and infidels Jefferson mentions right so there's the sort of atheism part of it or skeptics part of it so I do think they had a vision. I do think you find, again historian here right, I'd love things to be a certain way but I study the 18th century as it played out, I do think there were others like most of the anti-federalists, people like Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, those who opposed the United States Constitution, some of them were very upset that there was no reference to America as a Christian nation in the United States Constitution. And they literally said if we don't have a Christian reference in this United States Constitution, there's a chance that Hindus and Muhammadans and all these other people could hold office in our country. We’ve got to reject this thing unless we get a Christian statement. So it's messy the founders but certainly you could find founders looking towards the future and thinking of a nation that was welcoming, at least on the religious liberty front, welcoming to all kinds of people believers in all kinds of faiths and non-believers.

David Krueger: Here is a question: Why did the religious stipulations in state constitutions pass away in the early 19th century if people saw themselves as living in a Christian nation? So if you could talk about that transition.

John Fea: Yes. So just to sort of rephrase the question a little bit. Technically, this sort of goes to the point the person asking is making; it fortifies their question a little bit. I think you find all of these states removed establishments, Massachusetts being the last in 1833, but test oaths and so forth, well before they had to. It's not until the 14th Amendment. Now remember that the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery after the Civil War. The 14th Amendment basically says that all states that had slavery no longer have the right to do their own thing because, now, the 13th Amendment says slavery is illegal. So the 14th Amendment says to states, no more doing your own thing. The union won the war. You're done with all this stuff. Hugo Black actually applies the 14th Amendment to religion in the 1947 Everson case. That's the first time the 14th Amendment is actually applied to religion, which essentially says it is now illegal for you to have a state church or a test oath. Now, having said that, all the states did it well before they had to. 1947 was when they were forced to do it. There's not a straight trajectory here. It depends on the state. So in Massachusetts and Connecticut, I think you have other Christian dissenting groups that are just growing to such a great extent, especially during this revival known as the second great awakening in which Baptists, Methodists, an [other] sort of dissenters if you will, religions are flourishing and developing and these churches are are are growing and they're challenging [the establishment churches]. I mean, this is the whole part of Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, right? They're itching to get out from under Connecticut's congregational establishment. So,I think many of these dissenters win positions in office. They become lawmakers. And I think that's the main way I think to describe that. Pennsylvania is really interesting because [in] Pennsylvania there's a strong attempt to, after 1790 when the old and new testament is taken out, in the next debates over the constitution in the 1830s for the state constitution you actually have a strong movement to restore those things, and bring back the religious test oaths. You know the other great example of this is in 1776 constitution, free blacks are given the right to vote in Pennsylvania. But in 1838, those rights were taken away. So it's like we think about history as kind of a story of progress, right? It's all over the place. Yeah.

David Krueger: We have a question here about in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I think the question is really asking where do these documents specify as the origin of these rights? I think the Declaration of Independence is maybe clear about that, but could you say anything more about the Constitution?

John Fea: Well, let me say something about the Declaration of Independence real quick. I was talking to some people about this today. All those rights in the declaration, those first two paragraphs, that we all know. Most people, when they quote the Declaration of Independence they don't quote the grievances, which is the bulk of the document. They tend to quote “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”. In certain circles, the Creator is emphasized, and nature's god is emphasized. If you talk to some, those ideals in the first two paragraphs are like any British person would have embraced. Loyalists would have believed that they were endowed by the creator with rights to life, liberty, and property, right? John Locke, this was British, right? Now, what struck me about actually touring today was just how quickly it becomes a document on rights. There's a great book by Pauline Meyer called American Scripture, in which he shows that the Declaration of Independence was originally meant as a foreign policy document more than anything else. We're declaring our independence, so help us, right? Meyer argues it's in the early 19th century when abolitionists, women's suffrage, women's rights, Seneca Falls, when Abe Lincoln in 1863 mentions four score and seven years ago, and so they all invoke the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It becomes kind of American scripture that was not, you talk about the original intent of the Declaration of Independence, I would argue was not to promote those ideals, and in fact Jefferson, John Adams and later John Quincy Adams said it had nothing to do with those ideals, but later they were it was reappropriated, to be used for these social reform movements in the 19th century. So I mean that's a theological question to me. Where do our rights come from? I'm not equipped to answer that question. But certainly all the founders believe that, they believed. You can decide whether they were right or wrong. That and all British people would have believed that their rights came from God. I mean, it's in every document. It's not really an arguable point, right? The Constitution and the First Amendment are much more complicated because many of these things stem from the 1780s and from what the founders lived through during that decade. As a result, they begin to see the dangers. They've already seen the dangers well before the revolution of established churches. They saw the threat of established churches from just watching the colonial period. Baptists getting dunked in rivers in Virginia. They can recall Mary Dyer and her four Quaker martyrs being taken in Boston Commons and hanged. All of these kinds of things. There was a long history of established churches being seen as bad, and they didn't want to model this country after the European idea of a state church. So that was in the air for a long time, but the 1780s also prompted them to suggest that religious freedom would be the way they would approach this issue, at least at the federal level.

David Krueger: I'm not sure I fully understand this question, but I'll take a crack at it. One of the most interesting facets about this discussion is that political values considered secular, such as representative government, checks and balances, and cohereditary monarchy, I'm not sure what that is, were transformed into Christian values. Do you think there was a primary point in history where that happened for America as a whole? Was it the revolution or earlier?

John Fea: When you mean things like the separation of powers became portrayed as like

David Krueger: Would the person who asked that question be willing to ask it directly?

John Fae: Sorry to put you on the spot.

Audience Question: Yeah, trying to fit this into a note card was tough. So I apologize. I think in the readings I've done, one of the things that's most interesting to me is, I mean, I remember growing up in Evangelical circles where things like the Constitution were clearly seen as a Christian document because there's the separation of powers and checks and balances. One of the interesting things like it seems like over time now some of that I think makes sense even your timeline, about you know cold war the 40s and stuff like that, but one of the things that's interesting that language even as you referred to in Enoch Green occurred much earlier of like these things that really were enlightenment values of you know of things of like against hereditary monarchy, having those checks and balances against those became to be considered popularly Christian values.

John Fea: Yeah, I get your point. So, thanks for the question. I think I understand it now. It depends on what part of the founding you're talking about, right? So the revolution itself was inherently political. It was about stamp taxes, enumerated articles, Townshend duties, and coercive acts; it was a political-economic event. That doesn't mean there were people in the colonies who saw these developments in the political world taking place in the 1770s and 1780s and did not understand them through the lens of their understanding of Christian faith. What I just said is different from the idea that the American Revolution happened because of Christianity. So you hear in certain circles in the ways you were raised and heard, growing up, you hear in certain circles that the American Revolution was an inherently Christian event. I know people at Bob Jones University and Liberty University who are actually teaching from standard US history textbooks that describe the American Revolution as a political and economic event. These are right-wing schools. Everyone teaches it that way. Except for people who have a political kind of axe to grind. So, I do think you can find, you know, people making, ministers make, one of the new chapters in the third edition of the book is on this thing called the black robe regiment. Has anyone ever heard of this thing? Well, maybe I'll teach something on this. It was a handful of ministers in Boston in the 18th century who preached politics from their pulpits. They were patriots and so forth. And Peter Oliver, who was the loyalist tax collector, randomly, in passing, called them the black robe regiment. He was referring to these preachers who used the pulpit to preach patriotism. I mean, it really got ugly, too. There are legitimate cases of them preaching political sermons from their churches, and then people literally running out and tearing apart Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of the Massachusetts House, right? Literally running from the church and creating violent acts. But that's neither here nor there to this. The point here is that these ministers, right or wrong, clearly understood the political events in Boston at that time through some kind of theological lens. Does that mean the American Revolution was about that? No. But that's how some people interpreted it. When you get to the Constitution, checks and balances. I've heard these arguments, and I can't repeat them. I don't know how they work. I haven't studied them close enough, but you know, I've heard executive, legislative, and judicial branches that come right out of Leviticus, something. These arguments are always out there, and the Constitution, the most unchristian of all the founding documents or unreligious, is sort of a sacred religious document. I just don't know as much about the arguments that they're making there. But I would argue your question was when did this happen? When did this start? And I would argue it really doesn't start until the late 70s, 80s, right? I know of no founder, and I by all means I don't know every word that they wrote, but founders were not like the – there's nothing in the Federalist papers or the minutes of the constitution that is quoting Leviticus. I'm a historian. I need a smoking gun. I need evidence. I need to see this. I need to see a debate on the floor of the constitutional convention where they're saying, because of Leviticus, we need to have three branches of government, right? I often debate these conservative political scientists, and they say, "Well, it was in the air. It was the culture, right? You know, they would have just assumed it came from Leviticus in this example, right? They didn't have to say it. They didn't have to argue it, right?

I was debating a guy at a college once on whether America was founded as a Christian nation, a political scientist who was kind of making a soft case for a Christian nation. He was making this case that they didn't have to say it. They all knew that the branches of government, all these things were biblical ideas, Hebrew ideas, right? And I made the smoking gun argument, you know? I said, I don't see it anywhere. I can't bring that to my audience in a book or a lecture. It's not in there. Like no, but it would have been the culture, right? So, I went back to the hotel after the debate and it was the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. I turned on the TV, you know, and like there's one, some of you know what I'm talking about. There was a one seed against the 16 seed, right, playing each other, and the announcer goes like, "This is a real underdog battle. It's David and Goliath, whatever." And I'm like, "IT'S A CHRISTIAN BASKETBALL GAME!!, You know? They're referencing the Bible, you know?" But some of it's just silly, right? You know, yes, it's in the vernacular, but that doesn't mean that they were trying to create some kind of Christian, you know, that separation of church and state is biblical.

David Krueger: We're coming up on the end of our time together, and it's a warm night, and we probably all need to make our way. But I really appreciate Dr. Fea's ability to challenge us all to think historically, and one of his books illuminates that topic.

John Fea: It’s an unnatural act, as the famous Stanford educator Sam Weinberg once said: historical thinking is an unnatural act.

David Krueger: And it's a trained skill as well, and you've done a great job for us tonight to train us to think in some new and critical ways, so let's show our appreciation. I would encourage you to sign up for our mailing list by the door, and we'd love to follow up with you. There's a great video. John's very humble, and he didn't mention this, but Judy Woodruff from PBS NewsHour interviewed John Fea recently in this very room. I would be happy to send along that clip to all attendees. We're going to have a number of really exciting events throughout the rest of the year, and we would love to stay in contact. We encourage you to take a tour with us and to download the app to explore more.

John Fea: Quick Judy Woodruff story. We went into the Washington Pew, but she wouldn't step in. She was like, “This is not right. This should be preserved.” So, and I said, I've been taking people here, and I've been getting selfies in this pew with students for the last 20 years, you know, like you could come in, Judy, feel free. So, anyway, yeah, watch the video.