The Founding Myth

by Andrew L Seidel

  42 Jimmy Swaggart, Questions & Answers (Baton Rouge, LA: Swaggart Ministries, 1985), 268.

  43 Michael W. Chapman, “Rev. Graham: ‘This Country Was Built on Christian Principles’ Not Islam,” CNSNews.com (January 20, 2015). Franklin Graham has also claimed that “America is being stripped of its biblical heritage and God-inspired foundations” and that “secularism came and it infiltrated and it infected our government.” Franklin Graham, January 12, 2016, remarks at the “Decision America Tour” stop in Tallahassee, FL, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP3PIn5tyUs. This first was a line from his father according to Franklin Graham, Through My Father’s Eyes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018), 266.

  44 Marc J. Ambinder, “Vast, Right-Wing Cabal? Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You’ve Never Heard Of,” ABCNews.com, May 2, 2002, https://perma.cc/A3Q7-HJLG.

  45 David Kirkpatrick, “The 2004 Campaign: The Conservatives; Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy,” New York Times, August 28, 2004.

  46 Council for National Policy, 2014 directory, https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/cnp_redacted_final.pdf.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Donald Trump, interview by Steven Strang, Strang Report podcast, August 11, 2016, Orlando, FL, at about 15:30, https://perma.cc/86R8-NGCD. See also Miranda Blue, “Christian Values, Things ‘So Different From What Our Country Used to Be,’” Right Wing Watch online, August 24, 2016, https://perma.cc/YQV6-6GFJ.

  49 See, e.g., Donald Trump, speech at Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference, June 8, 2017. Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, https://perma.cc/54JL-G29P; and Donald Trump, remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 23, 2018, Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Fort Washington, MD, https://www.c-span.org/video/?441592-1/president-trump-pushes-concealed-carry-teachers-cpac-speech; Donald Trump, Commencement Address, May 13, 2017. Liberty Univ., Lynchburg, VA, http://time.com/4778240/donald-trump-liberty-university-speech-transcript/.

  50 See Trump, Commencement Address, May 13, 2017; and Trump, speech at Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference, June 8, 2017.

  51 Marco Rubio, remarks during a town hall meeting Q&A, January 18, 2016, Waverly Country Club Waverly, Iowa. Video at https://youtu.be/gkP9RqPA2PQ.

  52 Ted Cruz, interview by Dan Bash, New Day, CNN, February 2, 2016, quote at 07:05:04, transcript at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1602/02/nday.04.html.

  53 Nick Gass, “Cruz Vows to Fight Trump on Abortion Plank in RNC Platform,” Politico, May 27, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/ted-cruz-trump-abortion-fight-223654.

  54 John Kasich, remarks at the National Press Club, November 17, 2015, Washington, DC.

  55 John Kasich, interview by Peter Alexander, NBC News online, November 17, 2015, http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/short-take/video/kasich-wants-new-agency-to-promote-values-568695875609.

  56 Rick Perry, remarks at the Thanksgiving Family Forum, November 19, 2011, First Federated Church, Des Moines, IA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY8Zw5NzUXQ at 57:35.

  57 Rick Perry, remarks for the 40 Days to Save America conference call, September 18, 2012, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/perry-christian-warriors-spiritual-warfare-satan-separation-church-state.

  58 Arlette Saenz, “Rick Santorum Disagrees with Pastor’s Statement about Non-Christians,” ABC News online, March 19, 2012, https://perma.cc/9B5F-8NJF.

  59 Ibid.

  60 Michele Bachmann, remarks at the Thanksgiving Family Forum, November 19, 2011, First Federated Church, Des Moines, IA,), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY8Zw5NzUXQ at 1:01:00.

  61 Mitt Romney, Presidential Candidates Debates, “Republican Candidates Debate in Jacksonville, Florida,” January 26, 2012. Online at APP.

  62 Doug Lamborn (R-CO), a member of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, has worked to ensure that nonreligious military men and women do not have the same access to Humanist chaplains as Christian servicemen and women. He believes that “our Nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.” Congressional Record (House), 113th Congress, 1st Sess., vol. 159, no. 162 (November 14, 2013): H7099.

  63 Congressional Record (House), 111th Congress, 2nd Sess., vol. 156, no. 81 (May 26, 2010): H3865.

  64 Congressional Record (House), 115th Congress, 1st Sess., vol. 163, no. 209 (December 21, 2017): H10411, see https://perma.cc/5L4C-QEAZ; see also Gomhert’s remarks, Congressional Record (House), 114th Congress, vol. 162, no. 31 (February 26, 2016): H994.

  65 Randy Forbes (R-VA), sermon, October 25, 2015, at Pastor Will Langford’s Great Bridge Baptist Church, Chesapeake, VA, https://youtu.be/w9nKqJm1VPE.

  66 See David Barton, “Unconfirmed Quotations,” January 2000, https://wallbuilders.com/unconfirmed-quotations/. Barton apparently edits this article regularly and it formerly resided at http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesbooks.asp?id=126, which can be accessed via www.archive.org.

  67 See Nate Blakeslee, “King of the Christocrats,” Texas Monthly, September 2006, https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/king-of-the-christocrats/.

  68 Elise Hu, “Publisher Pulls Controversial Thomas Jefferson Book, Citing Loss of Confidence,” NPR, August 9, 2012, https://perma.cc/DBT5-N6VN.

  69 Andy Birkey, “Meet David Barton, Bachmann’s Constitution Class Teacher,” Minnesota Independent, Nov-ember 16, 2010, https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/meet-david-barton-bachmanns-constitution-class-teacher/.

  70 Mike Huckabee, Address at the Rediscovering God in America: One Nation Under God Conference, March 24, 2011, Sheraton West Des Moines, West Des Moines, IA, quote at 1:07, https://youtu.be/N1O1dvN8lag.

  71 House Resolution 211, 112th Congress (2011).

  72 Ibid.

  73 Michael Novak, God’s Country: Taking the Declaration Seriously (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2000), 7.

  74 Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. M. D. Peterson (Washington, DC: Library of America, 1984) 1321–29.

  75 Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 578–79.

  76 Andrew Napolitano, as guest host of The Big Story with John Gibson, February 7, 2005, on Fox News, transcript at https://www.foxnews.com/story/the-future-of-islam-in-iraq.

  77 Bill O’Reilly, interview by Matt Lauer, The Today Show, April 10, 2014, on NBC, https://www.today.com/ popculture/bill-oreilly-revisits-last-days-jesus-younger-readers-2D79506022.

  78 Emma Green, “The Museum That Places the Bible at the Heart of America’s Identity,” The Atlantic, November 26, 2017.

  79 Bruce Stokes, “What It Takes to Truly Be ‘One of Us,’” Pew Research Center, February 1, 2017, PDF p. 4, https://perma.cc/42LE-HNYP.

  80 Mike Pence, acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, July 20, 2016, Cleveland, OH, www.c-span.org/video/?c4612581/governor-mike-pence-accepts-gop-vice-presidential-nomination.

  81 Catherine Lucey and Jill Colvin, “Clinton Says Trump Gives ‘Aid, Comfort’ to ISIS Recruiters,” Associated Press, September 19, 2016 (“We want to make sure we’re only admitting people into our country who love our country”).

  82 Michael D. Shear and Helene Cooper, “Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries,” New York Times, January 27, 2017.

  83 Donald Trump, speech at Liberty Univ., Lynchburg, VA, January 18, 2016, https://www.c-span.org/video/?403331-1/donald-trump-remarks-liberty-university.

  84 Ibid.

  85 Diana West, “It’s Time to Rally Around Donald Trump,” Breitbart, December 26, 2015.

  86 Jenna Johnson, “Trump Calls for ‘Total and Complete Shutdown of Muslims Entering the United States,’” Washington Post, December 7, 2015.

  87 Jeanine Pirro, “Judge Jeanine Pirro: Trump Sends the World a Message in Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital,” Fox News online, May 13, 2018, https://perma.cc/7XQV-PS4A.

  88 George Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress, vol. 1 (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 284.

  89 John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at Yale Univ., June 11, 1962. Online at APP.

  90 Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (June 20, 1785), in The Founders’ Constitution online, vol. 5, Amendment I (Religion), doc. 43, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html. Citing William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962–77 [vols. 1–10]; Charlottesville, VA: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1977 [vols. 11–17]).

  91 Treaty of Tripoli, Art. 11, May 26, 1797, American State Papers, vol. 2, Foreign Relations, 18–19, at 19, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=002/llsp002.db&recNum=23.

  92 Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1943), 6.

  93 When he ran for president in 2008, Senator John McCain, who otherwise has not typified Christian nationalism, embraced it. In doing so, he perfectly exemplified these two myths and the backpedaling from the first to the second. First, he said, “The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” After he drew criticism for the comment, he sought refuge in the second myth: “The United States of America was founded on the values of Judeo-Christian values.” See Alexander Mooney et al., “Groups Criticize McCain for Calling U.S. ‘Christian Nation,’” CNN, October 1, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/01/mccain.christian.nation/index.html.

  94 Donald Trump, remarks at the Values Voters Summit, October 13, 2017, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, https://www.c-span.org/video/?435728-1/president-trump-addresses-values-voter-summit.

  95 Kennedy, Commencement Address at Yale, 1962.

  96 Warren G. Harding, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1921, in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, vol. 2, Grover Cleveland (1885) to Barack H. Obama (2009), 65 (Carlisle, MA: Applewood Books, 2009).

  PART I: THE FOUNDERS, INDEPENDENCE, AND THE COLONIES

  1 Joseph J. Ellis, book jacket blurb for Steve Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (New York: Random House, 2008).

  2 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (New York: Viking, 1988. Citation from paperback ed., New York: Random House, 2008), 97.

  Chapter 1 • Custody of the Fathers

  3 George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, Collected and Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, vol. 10 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), 256.

  4 Sylvia Neely, “Mason Locke Weems’s Life of George Washington and the Myth of Braddock’s Defeat,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (Winter 1999), citing Mason Locke Weems, “Letter to Matthew Carey,” January 12 or 13, 1800, in Emily Ellsworth Ford Skeel, ed., Mason Locke Weems: His Works and Ways, vol. 2 (New York: 1929), 126.

  5–6 Ibid.

  7 François Furstenberg, “Spinning the Revolution,” New York Times, July 4, 2006.

  8 Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010), 813. See also Lawrence C. Wroth, Parson Weems: A Biographical and Critical Study (Baltimore: Eichelberger, 1911), 59, 92h; Harold Kellock, Parson Weems of the Cherry-Tree (New York: Century, 1928) 57–58; and Skeel, ed., Mason Locke Weems: His Works and Ways, vol. 1 (New York: 1929), 259. Weems took his title from the Douay-Rheims translation of Gen. 38 for the story of Onan.

  9 Neely, “Mason Locke Weems,” 107.

  10 Ibid., citing William Alfred Bryan, George Washington in American Literature, 1775–1865 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1952), 96, noting that Weems was “by far the most popular book on Washington ever written, running to forty editions by the time of Weems’s death in 1825 and to eighty by 1932.”

  11 Edward G. Lengel, Inventing George Washington: America’s Founder in Myth and Memory (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), 13, 22–23, 76–86.

  12 Ibid., 22–23.

  13 Mason Locke Weems, The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen (1800; repr. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 1858), 198.

  14 François Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2006), 123.

  15 William Holmes McGuffey, “Duties of Parents and Teachers,” Transactions of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Western Literary Institute (Cincinnati: Western Literary Inst. Exec. Comm., 1836), 129–52, at 138.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Lengel, Inventing George Washington, 24.

  18 Lorett Treese, Valley Forge: The Making and Remaking of a National Symbol (Univ. Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1995), 81.

  19 Lengel, Inventing George Washington, 83.

  20 Ibid., 22.

  21 Ibid., 13.

  22 Brooke Allen, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 31; Lengel, Inventing George Washington, 13; Chernow, Washington, 131; Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).

  23 Bishop William White to Colonel Mercer, August 15, 1835, in Bird Wilson, Memoir of the Life of the Right Rev. William White… (Philadelphia: James Kay, Jun. & Brother, 1839), 197–98.

  24 Ibid., letter of December 21, 1832, 193–96. See also Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (Charlottesville, VA: Univ. of Virginia Press, 2006), 246.

  25 Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington, 269.

  26 See, e.g., Gordon Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 129–30 (“in all his voluminous papers he never mentions Jesus Christ”). There is one possible exception: During the Revolution a group of Delaware chiefs approached Washington to complain about issues they should have addressed to the Continental Congress. They told him that many in their tribe “have embraced Christianity under the Instruction of the Reverend and worthy Mr David Ziesberger whose honest zealous Labours & good Examples have Induced many of them to listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been a means of introducing considerable order, Regularity and love of Peace into the Minds of the whole Nation.” See Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, ed. Milo M. Quaife, vol. 23 (Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1916), 320, 322–23.

  27 Chernow, Washington, 131–32.

  28 W. W. Abbot, “An Uncommon Awareness of Self: The Papers of George Washington,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives (Spring 1989), 6–19.

  29 Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, January 28, 1800, FO-NA.

  30 Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father, 123.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Chernow, Washington, 813.

  33 Leading up to the birth of Christian nationalism, some of those involved in the war include: Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers: A Comprehensive Study of America’s Christian Foundations (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1994), 15 (arguing the need to “wrest control of this nation from the hands of the secularizers and place it back into the hands of those who founded this nation, citizens who had a personal and abiding faith in the God of the Bible”); Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006), 18–19, 217–19 (explaining but not making the argument); Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003), 4–8 (explaining but not making the claim); John Hutson, The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005), xi–x (also explaining but not arguing); Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (arguing that the faith of the founders shows a relationship between Christianity and the Constitution); Christian Smith, Christian America?: What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002), 21–60 (explaining a survey of evangelicals and their beliefs); Michael Novak, “The Influence of Judaism and Christianity on the American Founding,” in Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Founding o
f America, ed. James Hutson (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 159–86; Gary T. Amos, Defending the Declaration: How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the Writing of the Declaration of Independence (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 1989); David Barton, Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution & Religion (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 2008); Gary DeMar, America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (Powder Springs, GA: American Visions, 1995); Benjamin Hart, Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty (Dallas: Lewis and Stanley, 1988); Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1982); John W. Whitehead, The Second American Revolution (Tyler, MN: TRI Press, 1982).

  34 See Chapter 6 and the Donald S. Lutz study cited therein.

  35 Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Assoc., January 1, 1802, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 36, December 1, 1801, to March 3, 1802 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2009), 258. https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/danbury-baptist-association-0.

  36 US Const. amend. I.

  37 US Const. art VI.

  38 Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no. 69.

  39 US Const. art. I.

  40 Some mistakenly believe that “Year of our Lord” appears in the US Constitution. I’ve refuted that elsewhere. Andrew L. Seidel, “Dating God: What Is ‘Year of Our Lord’ Doing in the U.S. Constitution?” Constitutional Studies 3 (2018): 129–51.

  41 Robert G. Ingersoll, Lecture titled “Individuality,” in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, vol. 1 (New York: C. P. Farrell, 1901), 201.

  42 Seth Lipsky, The Citizen’s Constitution; An Annotated Guide, n. 251 (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 205.

  43 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, vol. 3, § 1841 (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1833) 705. On the other hand, Story also thought that Christianity was part of the common law. Jefferson, who revised and rewrote colonial Virginia’s laws and supported his argument with extensive history, refuted this claim in “Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law,” (1764) in The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Ed., vol. 1, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–5), 453–64. Link to all 12 volumes at: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jefferson-the-works-of-thomas-jefferson-12-vols.