The Christian Past That Wasn't: Formerly Telling Jefferson Lies

Send us Fan Mail The episode begins with a role play of a teacher presenting a history lesson right out of the Christian nationalist playbook. Mrs. Johnson's students try to help her with questions but she doesn't take the help. Her disinformation campaign continues until slavery comes up and then the lesson abruptly ends. Could this happen? A better question is, what do we do now that i...

Send us Fan Mail This is an opportunity to observe whitewashing as it happened. The Texas State Board of Education has been revising social studies standards for students in K-12. One member wanted to remove a description of why Ruby Bridges was special in civil rights history. As the first Black child to enter an all-white school in the American South, Bridges helped open doors that are still ope...

Send us Fan Mail The claim that the Declaration of Independence was based on the Bible is common among those who believe America was founded as a Christian nation. Recently, Tim and David Barton are promoting the idea that the exact wording of parts of the Declaration was taken from sermons delivered in the early 1700s by Congregationalist preacher John Wise. They add that Cornell University histo...

Send us Fan Mail Randall Balmer joins me for remarks about why he believes America is not a Christian nation and why separation of church and state is the American way. This is the topic of chapter 6 in my new book The Christian Past That Wasn't. In the book, I cover the topics in this segment as well as the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Jeffers...

Send us Fan Mail During the America 250 celebration, the Trump administration has partnered with Hillsdale College to produce various educational resources to promote a  view of America's founding which is slanted toward Christian nationalism. In this segment, I take on Mark David Hall's video on the faith of the founders. You can watch it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Send us Fan Mail Chapter 4 of The Christian Past That Wasn't takes up the question of this episode. This episode cites the book and expands on it as well. In sum, I take the position that the experience of colonial and state governments are historically interesting but not directly relevant to our secular system of Constitutional government. What the framers did in the Constitutional Conventi...

Send us Fan Mail Today is the official publication date of The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History.  Although it has been available for a couple of weeks at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, today it goes on sale everywhere. This segment continues to be guided by the contents of the book. Today, I focus on the first myth: America is a covenan...

Send us Fan Mail America as we celebrate it today was founded in stages. Independence came via the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. Our current system of government came later via the Constitutional Convention in 1787. In this short episode, I focus on the system created by the Constitution as amended by the Bill of Rights.  For more information see www. Christianpast.com . W...

Send us Fan Mail In my book The Christian Past That Wasn't (Broadleaf Books) , I spend two chapters on the factors that make Christian nationalism attractive. In this segment, I interview Dean of Oklahoma Christian University's College of Bible, Jeremie Beller on the subject of terror management. This theory provides a powerful, research-based account of what makes nationalism attractive...

Send us Fan Mail Why did I write The Christian Past That Wasn't? Answering that question requires me to revisit season one of the podcast and reflect on the rise of Christian nationalism in the African nation of Uganda in 2009. More recently, my work in fact-checking started with a pundit named Bryan Fischer who once broadcast on the American Family Association radio network. As I contended w...

Send us Fan Mail Today I interview Todd Allen, Founder of the Common Ground Project and administrator at Messiah University (PA). Todd and I talk about his work in civil rights education and history. We also discuss my forthcoming book, The Christian Past That Wasn't. Todd is an enthusiastic endorser of the book and makes a good case for why it is needed as the administration is manipulating...

Send us Fan Mail On April 28, the first episode of the podcast series The Christian Past That Wasn't is scheduled for posting. This is a continuation of the podcast formerly known as Telling Jefferson Lies. TJL gets a new name in recognition of the publication of my new book The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History. On May 19, Broadlea...

Send us Fan Mail Roger Finke is distinguished professor emeritus of sociology and international affairs at Penn State University. Roger is also the founder of the Association of Religion Data Archives, which is an online archive of the best religion data available, a standard research tool for social scientists. He is the author of several books including the subject of today's interview: The...

Send us Fan Mail Today's segment is the second part of my interview with Paul Matzko, historian and senior program manager at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. Paul is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Our topic today is Paul's answer to the question: has Christian nationalism ever worked?  Listen in to find out.  As a part of addressing the questi...

Send us Fan Mail Paul Matzko is a historian and senior program manager for AI and emerging technology at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and host of the Unintended Consequences podcast .  Today, he joins me to discuss how Christian nationalism differs from citizen engagement with politics. Often Christian nationalists...

Send us Fan Mail This segment includes a significant amount of a recent interview with historican and author Jemar Tisby. Although I interviewed Jemar in the spring, the content is incredibly timely and relevant now. In this discussion, we cover the Trump administration's war on due process, diversity programs, and foreign aid.  A recurring theme is the grift, greed, and cruelty of the Trump...

Send us Fan Mail Today I feature an interview with Katherine Stewart, the author of the New York Time bestseller Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.   The segment is timely in that we discuss income disparities accentuated by the passage of the recent Trump budget. The dominance of Christian nationalism in the current administration isn't helping many of t...

Send us Fan Mail Why are Christian nationalists angry about the New York City Democratic mayoral primary victory of Zohran Mamdani? They surely are. Many are blaming "unchecked" immigration for his win. White Christians nationalist fear they are being replaced by too many non-Christians and too many black and brown people. In light of this event and the overall attacks on immigrants taki...

Send us Fan Mail Be it resolved: America's founders established a secular government with provision for a religious people. When the delegates met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they deliberately prevented the government from favoring any religion. Then when the Bill of Rights were added, freedom of religious expression was guaranteed.  Those who wanted a Christian government at the t...

Send us Fan Mail Recently, David Barton and Matt Krause testified in front of the Texas House of Representatives Public Education committee. Barton and Krause both said some historically questionable things to support the placement of the Ten Commandments in every Texas classroom. A premise of this podcast is that it takes faulty history to pursue Christian nationalist goals, one of which is to er...

Send us Fan Mail In this segment, I examine the notion that there was something remarkably Christian about America's founding era. Last week, I fact-checked Charlie Kirk's viral video defense of the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation in the legal sense. Most of what Kirk had to say was irrelevant or incorrect.  Today, I consider an overview of moral and religious faili...

Send us Fan Mail In 2024, Charlie Kirk distributed a five-minute video defense of the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. It has been played at least 20 million times on various social media platforms and is full of faulty history. This segment serves to correct the false claims and defend the proposition that America's founders set out to found a secular government with prov...

Send us Fan Mail On January 3, 2025, Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson was re-elected to be Speaker of the House. In his acceptance speech, he quoted a prayer that he said Thomas Jefferson said every day during his presidency and every day of his life thereafter.  There is a problem with this story. The prayer was written 56 years after Jefferson died. Jefferson never said the prayer even one...

Send us Fan Mail In 2024, a video featuring Charlie Kirk defending America as a Christian nation was viewed over 10 millions times on social media. Many of the claims were false or misleading. This season of Telling Jefferson Lies will examine this video and other Christian nation claims by Christian nationalists in addition to Kirk.  The first full episode is planned for April.  There are lies, t...

Send us Fan Mail Although the dates have not been set, new episodes of Telling Jefferson Lies are coming this Spring. I want to go deeper into the faulty history of Christian nationalism but also examine the psychology behind it as well.  Christian nationalism as an ideology is much more complex than fake quotes and false stories. The way history has been written from the beginning of the arrival...