Second in the series
You won’t be surprised that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know the history of Christianity in America — or, really, anything about either the Founding Fathers or Christianity. After all, this is the president who thought II Corinthians was said “Two Corinthians.”
But, amazingly, while Trump’s White Christian nationalist followers might know a bit more about the Bible, they know absolutely nothing about the history of Christianity in America, either.
Vivek Ramaswamy, onetime presidential candidate and Musk bro, now running for the governor of Ohio, was confronted by a White Christian nationalist at a Turning Point USA event at Montana State University, upset that Ramaswamy was a practicing Hindu:
Wow! That’s a lot of misinformation in one tidy package! Credit where credit is due! And this guy wasn’t alone. There were other White Christian nationalists there calling out Ramaswamy, and they were just as ignorant of history as the first guy, and probably not that savvy on matters of religion, either.
The idea that the Founding Fathers of what became the United States were Evangelical Christians is laughable. First of all, that brand of Christianity didn’t even exist until 1734, when fire-and-brimstone Congregationalist minister Jonathan Edwards — yes, that Jonathan Edwards — began his “Justification by Faith Alone” sermons.
Nearly none of the Founding Fathers were Evangelicals, which were concentrated in the Presbyterian and Dissenter (the Baptist, Congregationalist and Quaker) faiths. Most Founding Fathers were Anglicans (today called Episcopalians), such as John Jay, George Washington, and Edward Rutledge. You can find a list here, provided by — who else? — the Episcopal Church. (For centuries, the Episcopalian Church was the church for the elite and anyone aspiring to join their ranks.)
But the Founding Fathers who had the biggest effect in creating this new nation would not be considered Christians at all by modern White Christian nationalists. Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of Independence), Benjamin Franklin, James Madison (Bill of Rights) and Thomas Paine were Deists (well, eventually Paine became an atheist, but that’s a story for another day). The main writers of the U.S. Constitution were Madison and Gouverneur Morris (a Theist, sort of a semi-Deist). None of these people would past muster with today’s Evangelicals, obviously.
What’s even more appalling is that modern-day Evangelicals have no idea what early Evangelicals believed. One of their most important tenets was “Christian conscience,” pioneered by the British Evangelical movement, but widespread in the American colonies, as well. John Wesley, who went on to found the Methodist Church, English abolitionist William Wilberforce, and English abolitionist John Newton (the “Amazing Grace” author) all practiced “Christian conscience,” which is the idea that, in this wicked, wicked world, Christians need to be active in improving the plight of the less fortunate. Pretty woke, huh?
That meant ending slavery, teaching the poor to read (Sunday School began as an actual school for literacy, created by the Methodist Church), extending the vote to men without property, ending child labor, improving working conditions, establishing public schools for all, feeding and clothing the poor — all the kinds of things that today’s Evangelicals vehemently oppose.
If Evangelicals had stayed true to their faith instead of wandering off the strait and narrow, they’d support making voting easier, free college, fully funded public schools, raising the minimum wage, unions, worker safety, food stamps, government-run grocery stores, cracking down on polluters, and affordable housing. If early Evangelicals sound more like Socialist Zohran Mamdani than House Speaker and Pharisee Mike Johnson, that just shows how far Evangelicals have strayed from their roots.
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Ivonne is the research director for Save Our Schools Kentucky. She previously worked for The Miami Herald, the Miami News, and The Associated Press. (Read the rest on the Contributors page.)
