The U.S. was NEVER a Christian Nation

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And boy, are we gonna do some combating today.

Dan Beecher We are. We're gonna take issue- Yes ... uh, today. And, uh, the issue that we're taking is with a, a claim that has been spread far and wide, uh, most recently by, uh... You'll, you'll all remember that we talked about the America Reads the Bible event, which, uh, no one watched any of- ... because that just sounds painfully boring- Yes ... and nobody wanted to be a part of, except maybe, uh, like me, you watched the, uh, the, the Trump clip 'cause, uh, 'cause who doesn't wanna see Trump butcher his way through a Bible passage?

Dan McClellan Yeah. It was a train wreck situation.

Dan Beecher It was. That's why people watched that. You, you can't look away. Yes. Uh, however, uh, what, what it was that they said was that, uh, you know, the Bible is the most, was, was the most quoted document, uh, of, by our founding fathers here in these United States. And so, uh, we're, we're gonna take issue with that. So let's dive in, uh, with taking issue. Was the Bible- ... the most quoted document by, uh, by the, the luminaries of the early moments of the, our country?

Dan McClellan Um, yes. No, it was not. I mean, it was- There's- ... very highly quoted. Uh- Yes ... I, I think. And, and highly quotable. Um-

Dan Beecher Well, I mean, it was such a big part of culture, of, you know, European and therefore American culture- Yeah ... for so long. I, I don't see how it could avoid being quoted. I don't... You know, it was, it was a cultural-

Dan McClellan Yes ... touchpoint, uh, for everybody. Yeah. Um- And it, it was not trying to avoid being quoted, but, but yes. The, the claim here though, and, and David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders- Oh, yeah ... which just sounds like a love-your-neighbor kind of organization Right ... um, right off the start. But they, um... And here's, here's the... I, I guess this is their mission statement. Hmm. "American liberty is being eroded."

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan "And our biblical foundation is under constant attack. Here at WallBuilders, we provide education, training, and resources to equip people to know and defend the truth to protect our freedom." And obviously by our freedom, it does not mean the freedom to walk the streets without being attacked by ICE agents- Right ... or the freedom to, uh, do all kinds of things, um, that traditionally have been associated with freedom. Uh, no, the, it obviously means the freedom to, um, amass hordes of, of wealth and to, um, oppress people with-

Dan Beecher And to, and, and to exert Christian control over- Yes ... non-Christians in this country. I feel like- Oh, what was- I feel like he doesn't have the Satanic Temple in mind when he says- ... "our freedom."

Dan McClellan No, no, obviously, because he, he will have defended the, the, uh, dude who went and, uh, vandalized- Right ... the, uh, the display f- of the Satanic Temple, because freedom for me, not for thee- Yeah ... is, is the, the real idea here. And, uh, as part of the, uh, America Reads the Bible, um, uh, puppet show, I guess we can call it- ... um, he said the Bible was the most cited source of our founders. And, and this, this goes back to a claim I've, I've responded to many times on social media. I mean, Charlie Kirk has said it. Uh, we have heard, uh, this said by, uh, a number of oth- Glenn Beck has said it. The House Speaker Mike Johnson has said it. Kirk Cameron, for some reason is- ... is in the public and is saying it. Um, Dinesh D'Souza has said it. Dan Patrick has said it. Newt Gingrich has said it. We've got a lot of people who are sharing this idea that the Bible was the most, uh, cited text- ... by the founders. And it's- Yeah ... all coming from one paper. Hmm. And it's a paper that they obviously never read. Yeah. And, and it's a paper written by, um, a scholar named Donald S. Lutz. And, um, if, if you are unable to understand through the, the slight lisp b- because of my dental trays, that's L-U-T-Z, Lutz. And, uh, the paper is called The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thoughts, and this was published in, uh, 1984 in the journal, The American Political Science Review. And there's a, there's a table that, uh, appears on, like, the fourth page of the paper. And, and, and what Lutz did for this paper was he tried to gather all of the, the texts he could that were labeled political- Hmm ... from the year 1760 to 1805.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And he gathered somewhere in the neighborhood of almost 1,000 documents, and then i- this was just a comprehensive kind of review of every citation. And there's a table that says, "Distribution of citations by decade," and percent of total number of citations, the Bible, uh, comes in at a muscular 34% of all citations. Oh. The en- enlightenment-era authors come in at 22%.

Dan Beecher Okay. So like a John Locke sort of thing or? Yeah,

Dan McClellan yeah, uh, Montesquieu, Locke- Yeah ... Hume. Um, the Whig literature comes in at 18%.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Common law comes in at 11%. classical literature comes at nine, comes in at 9%. Peers, so other people writing in the same time period, that comes in at 4%, and then other is 2%. So right off the bat, look at that. By 11% more than second place, the Bible is the most quoted text of this period. 1760 to 1805. Boom, proved. Yeah. QED.

Dan Beecher Proved. We, we, we need to shut up now then.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But there's, there's an important qualification here, and this is... I'm reading directly from page 192, uh, of this paper.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "Anyone familiar with the literature will know that most of these citations," specifically the Bible, and Deuteronomy, by the way, is the most quoted text from these citations, "most of these citations come from sermons reprinted- ... as pamphlets."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "Hundreds of sermons were reprinted during the area- era, amounting to at least 10% of all pamphlets published." And, and pamphlets-

Dan Beecher Oh, wow, 10%. That's- Yeah,

Dan McClellan yeah. Pamphlets were a huge way of... That was the social media of- Yeah ... of this time period.

Dan Beecher That's-

Dan McClellan You, if you had something to say, one, you took on a nom de plume, something clever-

Dan Beecher Right, right ...

Dan McClellan and then two, you published a pamphlet.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, 10% of all pamphlets published, reprinted sermons. These reprinted sermons accounted for almost three-fourths of the biblical citations, making this non-sermon source of biblical citations roughly as important as the classical or common law category. In other words, uh, the 34%, if you take out all of these sermons reprinted as pamphlets, which by the way, are not coming from your Madison or your Jefferson- Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah, yeah. This, th- yeah, this isn't, this isn't George Washington.

Dan McClellan Right. These are-

Dan Beecher Doing this ...

Dan McClellan preachers- Yeah ... who are, are giving sermons and then reprinting the sermons of pamphlet- as pamphlets. You take that away, you're left with about 10%. So you're actually coming in somewhere between third and fifth place on this list.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan Um, so, uh, a- and then he goes on to say, "It is relevant nonetheless to note the prominence of biblical sources for American political thought since it was highly influential in our political tradition and is not always given the attention it deserves." And then, uh, Lutz actually cites his own paper from a few years earlier called From Covenant to Constitution in American Political Thought, where he talks about the Bible and the notion of the American people as kind of like the glue that holds us together as a compact, which is- Yeah ... which is, like, closer to a covenant than it is to a contract. So it's kind of a, a merging of Locke and something, um, akin to the people of God. You know, we are an American people because we come together under this compact, and this is, establishes our identity, and it's kind of inspired by drawing from biblical principles.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, and, and he talks about how that heavily influenced the drafting of state constitutions and, and state constitutions are, are hugely influential on the U.S. Constitution, and a lot of them had religious tests for office. Um, s- you know, that, that could just be, you know, you, you confess belief in a, in a god or something- Right ... like that, or the Almighty- Yeah ... or a- all the way up to a specific denomination of, of Christian. But the... When we, when we actually take out the sermons reprinted as pamphlets, uh, the wind comes significantly out of the sails- ... of this argument, and it no longer becomes the most cited thing. The most cited thing outside the Bible, or once you take the reprinted sermons out, the top three, Montesquieu, Blackstone, and Locke.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, and, and obviously if, if you know about the influence of, of common law and Enlightenment era, um, you know, rational literature, that's not a surprise. And, and that makes the best sense of how the, the Constitution come toge- came together.

Dan Beecher Well, and, and when you look at America in that timeframe, in the sort of founder timeframe, you've got two things happening. You've got the Enlightenment era stuff that, you know, that started almost a century beforehand but, uh, but continues through that, and you've got the, uh, the Great Awakening stuff that's happening in the U.S. And that's explicitly Christian- Yeah ... but it's also, like, very, very American view of Christianity.

Dan McClellan Very, very evangelical. Yeah. Yeah. But, but and the interesting thing is the period of the, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, that's right in between the First and Second Great Awakening.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's actually the period of the lowest church attendance in the history of the United States of America. So th- this is what... Who, oh, who's the... Oh, gosh. I forgot the guy's name, uh, but he, he's a, a real fast talker. He's kind of like Charlie Kirk, but he's Jewish, and, um-

Dan Beecher Oh, uh, Ben Shapiro?

Dan McClellan Ben Shapiro, yeah. He was, he was saying something. He's like... Somebody was like, "What do you do to heal a nation that is, you know, broken like ours?" And he goes, "Go to church." And I say that as a Jew. You know, I want you to go to the temple, but go to church. This was founded as an American nation. You gotta go to church. And it was like, well, it was founded in the period when the fewest Americans were going to church.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So if, if that was this grand revelation, it occurred in spite of- Yeah ... uh, the, the low, um, going to churchiness, uh, in America. But, and, and then Lutz goes on, though, and, and I think this is what kind of drives the nail in the coffin of this claim that, you know, our nation was founded as a Christian nation based on the fact that the Bible's most cited by the, the founders. Um, because if, if it means anything to say the, we're a Christian nation, it, it means we are politically somehow- ... founded upon something Christian.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But Lutz goes on to say, "We're gonna look just at political, uh, writings between 1787 and 1788," and that is the drafting and the ratification, uh, of the Constitution. And when we look at that, you get a, a s- you get small percentage of quotations from the Bible. But if you break it down, the Federalists quoted the Bible 0%.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah.

Dan McClellan The, the-

Dan Beecher That's not their thing.

Dan McClellan Yes. 9% of Anti-Federalist citations are of the Bible. So when it comes to the nuts and bolts of actually creating the federal government, uh, the Federalists, the folks who wrote the Constitution, said, "Now we're good."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and did not bring up the Bible. You, you have a couple... When you look at the, the accounts of the Constitutional Convention, you have a couple references to, um, to providence and, and God and this kind of stuff, but, but the, these are offhand and, and unrelated things to the actual composition of the US Constitution. And you just do not see the Bible coming up in the actual formation of the federal government and the US Constitution. It just doesn't happen.

Dan Beecher Well, and it's so interesting. You know, one of the things I, uh, I, you know, I look at, uh, David Barton's WallBuilders, you know, website.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And one of, you know... Um, in one place, he has an article that's like, "The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible." And first of all, the opening paragraph, the, the introductory paragraph of that part of his website is astonishing. And I should say, David Barton is, is hailed as a, a, as a luminary historian. This is... This man is a, a garbage historian.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah.

Dan Beecher He, he, like-

Dan McClellan He's got a BA in religious education from Oral Roberts. Yeah. Like, that's it.

Dan Beecher So no one-

Dan McClellan That's basically a correspondence degree.

Dan Beecher Right. No, no one in, uh, in the world of histor- history, uh, respects this man. Uh, but he is, he is hailed as a, as a major historian by those who want to use his work as cover for creating, for, you know, for creating laws that sort of go against, go directly against the church-state separation that was-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... intended in, in the US Constitution, et cetera.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, I love the, the opening l- the opening lines of, of this, uh, of, of this page on his website say, "For decades, accusations against the Founding Fathers have abounded. One of the common criticisms is that the Founding Fathers were a collective of, a collective group of atheists, agnostics, and/or deists," which you and I were laughing about because that's a hell of a group. Like

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Atheists, agnostics, or not atheists or slash-

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher ... agnostics. Like, deists are... Yeah. Anyway, "who wanted a strict separation of church and state, resulting in a secular government and a public square." He's framing that as an accusation against the... No, that's explicitly what they said they were doing.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. Quite, quite clear. And, and a lot of the discussion that is intended to muddy the waters will, uh... Like, I've, I've, I've been looking at, at folks trying to defend this claim, and they, they immediately get into state constitutions.

Dan Beecher Oh, yes.

Dan McClellan It's like, "Okay, what are you... Why did they come together for the Constitutional Convention and create a government that superseded the state con- the states and their constitutions?" And they explicitly said that, "We will have zero religious tests for office," 'cause a bunch of state constitutions had religious tests for, for office.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so when, when they come together to say, "Well, we are going to reject this feature of the lower level governance," you can't say that feature of the lower level governance, governance is in the, the federal, um-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... you know, it's not baked in when they explicitly said, "Ooh, I'm leaving you out."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, so tha- that is, that is a ridiculous fallacy. But it... But, you know, I think that's par for the course for somebody who, um, who's not phenomenally well-educated when it comes to history and has, has really just been making, uh, a fairly comfortable living, uh, spreading misinformation and engaging in, in identity politics and, and-

Dan Beecher Well, and it's, it's the-

Dan McClellan ... trying to keep people angry

Dan Beecher ... it's the problem that we run up against whenever we see apologists, whenever we see... Like, the problem is when you have to start from a conclusion and then backfill everything-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah

Dan Beecher ... uh, all of your premises to, to hit the target of the conclusion that you cannot allow not to be true-

Dan McClellan Yeah ... you're not going to do good work. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, uh, that, it's the opposite of, of what we say we're trying to do, which is-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... they're doing dogma over data, and, uh, and we're trying to come at it from the other direction.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So I-

Dan McClellan And-

Dan Beecher I, and I, and I don't think... And it's funny because the, you know, the, the Web- WallBuilders page that I was p- talking about then follows, uh, follows up with a whole bunch of quotations from different, uh, founders-

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm

Dan Beecher ... that d- d- declare their Christianity. And it's like, okay, nothing to do with the point.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, yeah, plenty of them believed it. I mean-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... you know, let's not talk about the fact that, that, uh, uh, Jefferson literally physically cut things out of his Bi- cut all of the sort of miracles out of his Bible because he liked Jesus as a philosopher and did not like the, you know, was not into the whole- ... miracle thing. Uh, they- Yeah ... that, that, that's a little inconvenient for them, but.

Dan McClellan Well, and, and Jefferson was the one who wrote, uh, about the creator and nature's God-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... and providence in the Declaration of Independence, and they're like, "See? It mentioned God there." Jefferson was the most deist-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... of, of the founders and was... And, and people try to make the point, "Well, oh, he, he identified as a Christian." He said, "I'm a Christian to the degree that it is Christian to do this" and, um, yeah, these, these folks, and even Madison, probably the most, the most pious of the main Founding Fathers, he was one of the most, uh, ardent about maintaining a strict separation between church and state. And it was not because, uh, you know, I've heard people argue now, "Oh, the, the, the church and state division was actually to protect Christianity-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... and make sure that it was at the foundation of everything." Uh, no, it was because they saw what happened when church got involved with the governments, and they'd wanted to avoid that. They have explicitly... You- We've got letters, we've got all kinds of stuff from founders explicitly saying, "We're trying to avoid all of the problems that arrives when state power gets entangled with church power."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so, yeah, it was, it was very clearly an attempt to create, uh, a government that would not be under the thumb of any kind of religious authority. Um, and, and, you know, you've got people who were-

Dan Beecher And would, and wouldn't impose any kind of religion on the people. Like, not only un- not-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... not only did they want it not to be under the thumb of a religious authority, but they also didn't want the government to impose religion of any sort on or, uh, on their, uh, on their constituents.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and there are folks who appeal to, like, Adams saying that, you know, this, the, our nation is designed for a, for a religious people and for no other. And, and this is kind of an, an old Enlightenment-era notion that morality is, uh, is founded upon religion. And it, and it didn't mean Protestant Christianity, it just meant religion.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Religion is where you get morals from, and that this is a domain, a sociocultural domain that is the seedbed of, of morality, and that's just not true.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, but that, that is not saying that the government is Christian. It's just saying, "We want the people to exercise some kind of religion because morality is necessary for this experiment to succeed." And Adams, a while later in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed a, a treaty that says that the US is in no sense founded as a Christian nation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, so you, you're gonna find quotations back and forth, but when it comes down to it, for it to mean anything to, to the wall builders and these folks to s- today, to, to say that the US is a Christian nation, it must mean that structurally the government is Christian in orientation, and that's just demonstrably false.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it doesn't matter that, that these folks were all heavily influenced by a Protestant worldview. Duh. Obviously. That does not make the c- the US a Christian nation. I just, I'm baffled by- ... the juvenility, the, just how jejune the arguments for this idea are. It's just a dogma. It's just a straight-up dogma that people-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... are, are trying to defend because-

Dan Beecher Well, and even if, even if we were to say it i- you know, the Bible is the most heavily quoted, you know, d- certainly many of these guys made reference to the Bible in their writings. Okay. You know, i- if I were to d- to write a thing and I was to say, you know, "Dan, Dan McClellan is such a Hufflepuff" that doesn't mean- ... that what I'm saying-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... has anything to do... Like, the point that I'm making is that I am endorsing full-throated the, uh, you know, uh, Harry Potter world or whatever. I- it's just a cultural touchstone. It's a cultural reference that everyone would understand and that is imm- sort of immediately, uh, digestible.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. Yeah. It, it... Just because you speak the language of it and just because you've grown up in the world of it does not mean that therefore all output is appropriatable-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... by the thing. So yeah, we can... Yeah, it, it's a silly argument, but definitely Donald Lutz's work does not establish the claim in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. And, and when people say that, you know they heard something on the internet, and they liked it, and they repeated it, and they didn't bother to go check out whether or not it was true or what the actual source said at all.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So yeah, not true.

Dan Beecher There you go. Uh, y- know, know what you're talking about before you go s- spreading stuff out there. Uh- So that's great. If, if you would like to become a part of making our show happen and keeping this running, please consider becoming one of our patrons. Uh, you can go over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma where you can choose what level you would like to contribute to us. It, it, it... There's no ceiling. There's no top limit, so you can just shoot for the moon if you want to, but that's where you can help make us happen and help, uh... You know, you can gain access to an early and ad-free version of every episode as well as the, uh, the after party, which is bonus content that we do every single week where we answer a lot of our patrons' questions, and we just have a really fun time with it. Uh, so, so consider heading over there. Uh, and thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to JJ for being our producer, and thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.