# Jefferson's Jesus

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 18 Mar 2025, 32 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/64795020/podcast793_jeffersonsjesus.mp3

On March 6th, 2025, SecularAZ invited Seth Andrews to speak in front of the Arizona State Capitol. His presentation about the Founding Fathers will surprise many in our "God & Country" culture. Watch the VIDEO Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking.
[0:30] Speaker 2: Feel so much more happiness. Truth Usian wisdom will come
[0:33] Speaker 2: to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: Before I play you the presentation that I just gave
[0:59] Speaker 3: in Poix, Arizona at Secular Day at the Capitol, I
[1:04] Speaker 3: had some thoughts related to this, specific to a guy
[1:08] Speaker 3: named Lee Greenwood. Now, if you don't know who Lee is,
[1:11] Speaker 3: he is a Grammy Award winning country artist. He's been
[1:15] Speaker 3: around for decades and he is best known for a
[1:18] Speaker 3: song called God Bless the USA. And this is exactly
[1:23] Speaker 3: the kind of song you would think it is. I
[1:26] Speaker 3: saw it performed by another artist in Tulsa. This was
[1:30] Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty nine maybe, and he was dressed like
[1:36] Speaker 3: Uncle Sam. I mean, he had the stars and the
[1:39] Speaker 3: stripes and the great big hat. There were actual cannons,
[1:43] Speaker 3: I mean not real cannons, but there were confetti cannons
[1:47] Speaker 3: that we must have been four or five feet tall
[1:49] Speaker 3: or long, blowing confetti out into the audience. And he's
[1:55] Speaker 3: singing a song, and everybody's got goosebumps. Well, I'm proud
[2:00] Speaker 3: to be an American where at least done. No, I'm free.
[2:06] Speaker 3: That's how the song goes. And I won't forget the
[2:11] Speaker 3: men who died who gave that right to me, And
[2:16] Speaker 3: I proudly stand up next to you and defender still today.
[2:25] Speaker 3: I'm just doing this so you got to get the vibe.
[2:27] Speaker 3: And there ain't no doubt. I love this land. God
[2:34] Speaker 3: bless the you.
[2:38] Speaker 1: S A.
[2:40] Speaker 3: This is the song. And I'm telling you, everywhere this
[2:44] Speaker 3: song gets performed, especially in the American heartland, people go crazy.
[2:49] Speaker 3: It just brings down the house. And for that reason,
[2:52] Speaker 3: Lee Greenwood has a very special place in the hearts
[2:55] Speaker 3: of American hashtag patriots. Well, Lee Greenwood just announced recently
[3:05] Speaker 3: that he was teaming up with Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction,
[3:10] Speaker 3: Christian nationalist and Pain in My Ass Ryan Walters to
[3:14] Speaker 3: put bibles in Oklahoma classrooms. Now, remember that the Lee
[3:20] Speaker 3: Greenwood Bible he teamed up with Trump for the God
[3:24] Speaker 3: Bless the USA Bible available on Lee Greenwood's website, easy
[3:31] Speaker 3: to read, large print, slim design. This Bible invites you
[3:35] Speaker 3: to explore God's word anywhere. It's a King James Bible,
[3:41] Speaker 3: and it will only set you back fifty nine dollars
[3:45] Speaker 3: and ninety nine cents?
[3:47] Speaker 2: Are you shitting me? Sixty bucks? I mean, how many?
[3:55] Speaker 2: Hang on?
[3:56] Speaker 3: Hang on? This say, is inexpensive bible the United States.
[4:02] Speaker 3: Let's just look online. It's you can get at Tyndallhouse
[4:07] Speaker 3: Publishers a Bible for thirteen ninety nine, and I know
[4:16] Speaker 3: that's probably high. You can probably get some other one's
[4:18] Speaker 3: pocket bibles for under ten dollars. And of course there's
[4:21] Speaker 3: a bunch of Bible websites, the entire Christian Bible right there,
[4:26] Speaker 3: including various translations and concordance material, reference material links, so
[4:33] Speaker 3: many resources totally free. But no, no, you want the
[4:37] Speaker 3: Lee Greenwood King James Bible fifty nine ninety nine. Oh yeah, anyway,
[4:44] Speaker 3: Lee Greenwood and his ILK are aligned with perceptions in
[4:49] Speaker 3: this country about what patriotism is and that we are
[4:53] Speaker 3: one nation under God and all of that kind of stuff.
[4:55] Speaker 3: And I remember when I was younger, I had that.
[5:01] Speaker 3: I felt that swell of pride, proud to be an
[5:05] Speaker 3: American where at least I know I'm free. As if
[5:10] Speaker 3: other nations in the world weren't just as free or
[5:13] Speaker 3: maybe even freer than we were. Well, there's something special
[5:16] Speaker 3: about our freedom. We have an asterisk connect to our
[5:20] Speaker 3: freedom because it's American freedom, and that's the best kind
[5:23] Speaker 3: of freedom. I had no idea what in the actual
[5:26] Speaker 3: hell I was talking about. And we know I saw
[5:30] Speaker 3: the flag, I would stand up hand over heart. I
[5:33] Speaker 3: felt a reverence about it all. And that has gone away,
[5:38] Speaker 3: and not just because of the political climate that we
[5:42] Speaker 3: are in. And I was talking to David Niosi, who
[5:46] Speaker 3: used to be with the American Humanist Association. We had
[5:49] Speaker 3: an interview I think twelve years ago, and I still
[5:53] Speaker 3: remember because I was asking him, how do you feel
[5:56] Speaker 3: about the pledge to pledge allegiance to a flag, to
[6:03] Speaker 3: say I am going to be allegiant or loyal to
[6:06] Speaker 3: the United States, and to teach children to do this
[6:10] Speaker 3: with a kind of road to recitation where we don't
[6:13] Speaker 3: teach them what allegiance means we don't define allegiance. Have
[6:17] Speaker 3: you ever seen somebody sit down with a young child
[6:20] Speaker 3: before they say the pledge and say, here's what you
[6:22] Speaker 3: are pledging. Allegiance is defined in this way and here
[6:26] Speaker 3: are the parameters, or you need to decide what those
[6:31] Speaker 3: parameters are and how far you would take an allegiance
[6:34] Speaker 3: if your country did this, this, this, or this right.
[6:37] Speaker 3: How many times throughout our history have people who were
[6:40] Speaker 3: great patriots criticized, harshly criticized, and stood against the governments
[6:46] Speaker 3: of their countries. I mean, we talk about the civil
[6:49] Speaker 3: rights movements and Vietnam War protesters, and women's equality movements
[6:55] Speaker 3: and so many other human rights endeavors. As people said,
[6:58] Speaker 3: this is bullshit, my country is totally in the wrong,
[7:01] Speaker 3: and for that they were called the betrayers of their country,
[7:05] Speaker 3: traitors to the United States. And I just came to
[7:09] Speaker 3: the point where I thought, I don't like the idea
[7:11] Speaker 3: of a blind rote recitation and affirmation of allegiance to
[7:18] Speaker 3: a country. My allegiance needs to be to goodness, humanity,
[7:25] Speaker 3: the truth, justice, kindness, my values, and if my country
[7:31] Speaker 3: is screwing up, I'm not going to be allegiant to
[7:35] Speaker 3: that right I totally lost the goosebump factor. I lost
[7:41] Speaker 3: that sense of exceptionalism, and you know, it opened up
[7:45] Speaker 3: my whole world because then I saw myself more as
[7:48] Speaker 3: a citizen of the world. And now when I'm in
[7:51] Speaker 3: a meeting, you know, I've been to council meetings. I'm
[7:54] Speaker 3: an activist who's gone to school board functions and done
[7:57] Speaker 3: other stuff, been to government meetings. All Like I pledge
[8:01] Speaker 3: allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
[8:06] Speaker 3: It all feels kind of culty. It feels like an
[8:10] Speaker 3: obedience verse out of the Bible. You know, line up, lockstep, salute,
[8:16] Speaker 3: handover hearts, do American things, say America things, or you're
[8:22] Speaker 3: a traitor to America. Feels really religious and culty in
[8:27] Speaker 3: that way. I differentiate between patriotism and nationalism as you
[8:33] Speaker 3: probably do. I love my country, I don't really love
[8:37] Speaker 3: it more than any other free nation in the world.
[8:40] Speaker 3: I'm not infatuated with the red, white, and blue. I
[8:44] Speaker 3: used to buy into that a lot more, but these days,
[8:46] Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm a citizen of the world. Borders were
[8:50] Speaker 3: drawn subjectively by people with their unique agendas, but they
[8:56] Speaker 3: were just people, and those are just lines. They are
[9:01] Speaker 3: often unnecessary lines. You know, we're occupants of the planet.
[9:08] Speaker 3: Imagine what we might accomplish if we just saw each
[9:12] Speaker 3: other as citizens of earth. I've totally changed. Does that
[9:17] Speaker 3: mean I've turned into a hippie liberal? Maybe that maybe
[9:22] Speaker 3: I don't have the hippie look, but me, I would
[9:24] Speaker 3: be called that by the handover heart saluting red, white,
[9:29] Speaker 3: and blue star spangled American. They would look at me and.
[9:32] Speaker 2: Go, what do you mean?
[9:33] Speaker 3: We're all equal on this world. America first right, and
[9:39] Speaker 3: often what they do to support or excuse that is
[9:44] Speaker 3: really a divine right. Their God made us number one.
[9:50] Speaker 3: Their God informed the founding. Their God practically wrote the
[9:55] Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, guiding the
[10:01] Speaker 3: hand of the signatories right there on that historic day.
[10:07] Speaker 3: God gave us all that is good. And anybody who
[10:10] Speaker 3: doesn't align with our God is now a trader. They're
[10:15] Speaker 3: not true Americans, their second class, they're pretenders, or they
[10:21] Speaker 3: are treasonous in our eyes. Well, I wanted to tackle
[10:26] Speaker 3: in kind of a consolidated way, the idea that Thomas Jefferson,
[10:31] Speaker 3: James Madison, John Adams, George Washington, etc. Intended a Christian nation.
[10:36] Speaker 3: So I've kind of put all this together. There is
[10:39] Speaker 3: a video version of this speech without my monologue here,
[10:44] Speaker 3: and so you can watch it and then you can
[10:46] Speaker 3: pass it on if there's somebody in your circle who
[10:50] Speaker 3: insists that we are one nation under God. I know
[10:53] Speaker 3: that you already know a lot of this information, but
[10:56] Speaker 3: it's difficult sometimes to find it consolidated down in a
[11:00] Speaker 3: short enough format where people can digest it quickly. And
[11:03] Speaker 3: that's the utility of this. It was an outdoor speech
[11:08] Speaker 3: in thirty mile an hour gusts. We had to hang
[11:12] Speaker 3: on to our hats, to our food. We had to
[11:14] Speaker 3: take the fabric off of the tops of the tents
[11:17] Speaker 3: and anchor the tent stakes down with concrete blocks. It
[11:22] Speaker 3: was crazy. So you're going to hear the wind even
[11:25] Speaker 3: through the windscreen of my microphone, which was doing the
[11:30] Speaker 3: best it could as I was pretty much shouting to
[11:34] Speaker 3: be heard over the gusts. But the content is still
[11:38] Speaker 3: solid and I think the speech will still hopefully serve
[11:41] Speaker 3: you in your discussions out there. Now, so I don't
[11:47] Speaker 3: have to take a break or interrupt the twenty five
[11:49] Speaker 3: minute presentation, I'll take my short break right here and
[11:53] Speaker 3: be right back to talk about Thomas Jefferson's Jesus.
[12:06] Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here.
[12:08] Speaker 3: This is a presentation that I gave outdoors in high
[12:12] Speaker 3: winds a few one hundred yards from the front of
[12:16] Speaker 3: the Arizona State Capital for Secular Day at the Capitol
[12:21] Speaker 3: sponsored by Secular a Z. The title of my presentation
[12:25] Speaker 3: Jefferson's Jesus. Huge thanks up to Secular a Z. And
[12:37] Speaker 3: thanks for welcoming me. Thanks for a great event we
[12:40] Speaker 3: had last night. Secular is one of those words we hear,
[12:43] Speaker 3: we use it all the time, we don't often define it,
[12:47] Speaker 3: and many might be surprised to discover that.
[12:50] Speaker 2: Throughout American history, from.
[12:53] Speaker 3: Our founding to the Civil War, to the civil rights
[12:57] Speaker 3: movement of the sixties to today, religious people and non
[13:02] Speaker 3: religious people have joined together to say that while religious
[13:05] Speaker 3: belief and non belief is a protected and personal right,
[13:11] Speaker 3: our government is not a church. Secular means we choose
[13:15] Speaker 3: science over the supernatural. Health care decisions should not be
[13:20] Speaker 3: constrained by religious assumption. Women have the right to make
[13:25] Speaker 3: decisions about their own bodies. Schools should be education first,
[13:30] Speaker 3: not ideology first.
[13:32] Speaker 2: The United States.
[13:33] Speaker 3: Cannot discriminate based on race, national origin, religion, or no religion.
[13:39] Speaker 2: Sexuality.
[13:41] Speaker 3: Tax exempt churches should have to stand by the same
[13:45] Speaker 3: rules and abide by the same regulations as all other nonprofits.
[13:50] Speaker 3: And that while the religious have every right to be religious,
[13:54] Speaker 3: they are not a party of power and they're not
[13:58] Speaker 3: better Americans. I am allies with people like Amanda Tyler
[14:03] Speaker 3: at the Baptist Joint Committee. She is founder of Christians
[14:08] Speaker 3: Against Christian Nationalism. She and I disagree on theology, but
[14:13] Speaker 3: we share values. I stand alongside Rachel Lazard of Americans
[14:19] Speaker 3: United for Separation of Church and State.
[14:22] Speaker 2: She is a practicing Jew.
[14:23] Speaker 3: We disagree on some theology, we share values. I like
[14:29] Speaker 3: the work of pastor John Pavlovitz. We disagree on theology,
[14:34] Speaker 3: we share values. The United States has a church and
[14:39] Speaker 3: a state. They are not the same thing. December eighteen
[14:44] Speaker 3: oh one, the United States had been freshly founded, the
[14:49] Speaker 3: American experiment extraordinary, unlike anything that had been attempted before.
[14:56] Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson was serving.
[14:58] Speaker 3: As the third President of the the United States of
[15:01] Speaker 3: this new nation when he got a letter, a letter
[15:04] Speaker 3: that would become part of our history.
[15:07] Speaker 2: Now.
[15:07] Speaker 3: I was raised in a very Christian nationalist culture. My
[15:11] Speaker 3: private Christian schools taught me that the founders were all Christians,
[15:16] Speaker 3: and they wanted a Christian nation with Christian laws supporting
[15:19] Speaker 3: Christian things Washington, Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, etc. And so when
[15:26] Speaker 3: they conceived of this American experiment, they were supposedly standing
[15:30] Speaker 3: on scripture inspired by God himself.
[15:33] Speaker 2: It made sense to me.
[15:35] Speaker 3: Everywhere I looked, I saw God on American stuff. In God,
[15:40] Speaker 3: we trust on the money under God, in the pledge
[15:43] Speaker 3: of allegiance, elected presidents taking their oath on a Bible.
[15:48] Speaker 3: Even in our courts of law, witnesses would be sworn
[15:51] Speaker 3: in with so help me God. And of course there
[15:54] Speaker 3: were the songs America, America, God shed His grace on
[15:59] Speaker 3: the I spent fourth grade in a tiny Christian school,
[16:03] Speaker 3: Temple Christian school that welded students' faith with our notions
[16:09] Speaker 3: of the country.
[16:10] Speaker 2: Our uniforms were red, white, and blue.
[16:14] Speaker 3: The boys wore little clip on neckties with American flags
[16:18] Speaker 3: plastered all over them. We looked like little patriotic paper
[16:22] Speaker 3: dolls walking the school hallways. And after we stood and
[16:27] Speaker 3: recited our pledge of allegiance, we immediately would segue into
[16:31] Speaker 3: a recitation of a pledge to the Christian flag and
[16:35] Speaker 3: to the Bible, and I can recite those perfectly today
[16:38] Speaker 3: because it's welded.
[16:40] Speaker 2: Into my brain.
[16:40] Speaker 3: At the age of ten, I was already being tooled
[16:43] Speaker 3: up to grow up and restore America's godly glory. I
[16:49] Speaker 3: remember whole classrooms of kids singing songs with militarized language.
[16:54] Speaker 3: Onward Christian Soldiers marching onto war. The song talked about
[16:59] Speaker 3: doing battle against our foes, the cross of Christ is
[17:03] Speaker 3: in front of us one in.
[17:05] Speaker 2: Hope and doctrine. There was just one problem.
[17:09] Speaker 3: Almost everything my Christian school taught me about the United States,
[17:14] Speaker 3: the founders the Constitution was wrong. Oh if only my
[17:20] Speaker 3: history teachers had been someone like Thomas Jefferson, which brings
[17:27] Speaker 3: me back to that letter from eighteen oh one. And
[17:29] Speaker 3: you're probably well ahead of me because this is an
[17:31] Speaker 3: educated group, But take the journey. I think it's appropriate
[17:35] Speaker 3: given the occasion. In the late eighteenth century state of Connecticut,
[17:41] Speaker 3: the Danbury Baptist Association was not happy. At the time,
[17:45] Speaker 3: Connecticut was different than many other states in that it
[17:49] Speaker 3: actually supported a state church, the Congregationalists. They were supported
[17:54] Speaker 3: in many ways by taxpayer money. Those who were not
[17:58] Speaker 3: Congregationalists were treated like religious minorities, and in the shadow
[18:04] Speaker 3: of this state theism favoring one faith.
[18:07] Speaker 2: In seventeen ninety, the Danbury.
[18:09] Speaker 3: Baptist Association was formed and they organized to voice their
[18:13] Speaker 3: dissent and push back on majority rule.
[18:17] Speaker 2: And it was an.
[18:18] Speaker 3: Official letter by the Danberry Baptist that reached the desk
[18:23] Speaker 3: of Thomas Jefferson in December of eighteen oh one. And
[18:27] Speaker 3: that letter included these words, our sentiments are uniformly on
[18:32] Speaker 3: the side of religious liberty, That religion is, at all
[18:35] Speaker 3: times and places a matter between God and individuals. That
[18:40] Speaker 3: no man ought to suffer in name, person or effects
[18:44] Speaker 3: on account of his religious opinions. And that the legitimate
[18:47] Speaker 3: power of civil government extends no further than to punish
[18:52] Speaker 3: the man who works ill to his neighbor.
[18:55] Speaker 2: And the letter went on.
[18:56] Speaker 3: To talk about how those who seek after power and
[18:59] Speaker 3: gain under the pretense of government and religion would actually
[19:04] Speaker 3: be the enemy of religion, law, and good order. So
[19:09] Speaker 3: the message they had for the president was pretty much threefold.
[19:12] Speaker 3: Congratulations on becoming president. Religion is a private thing, not
[19:16] Speaker 3: a public or a national thing. We are worried that
[19:20] Speaker 3: Connecticut will play favorites and make everybody who was not
[19:24] Speaker 3: a Congregationalist, unequal and less free.
[19:29] Speaker 2: We are a.
[19:29] Speaker 3: Church that knows Connecticut is not a church. That's what
[19:33] Speaker 3: the Danbury badtists were saying. January first, eighteen oh two.
[19:38] Speaker 3: This response was penned by President Thomas Jefferson, and he
[19:42] Speaker 3: is sured that dan Berry group. He took his responsibility seriously,
[19:48] Speaker 3: and he said, yes, religion is a personal and not
[19:50] Speaker 3: a national thing. Quote, believing with you that religion is
[19:55] Speaker 3: a matter which lies solely between man and his God,
[19:59] Speaker 3: that he owned those account to none other for his
[20:02] Speaker 3: faith or his worship. That the legislative powers of government
[20:07] Speaker 3: reach actions only in not opinions. I contemplate with sovereign
[20:11] Speaker 3: reverence that act of the whole American people which declared
[20:16] Speaker 3: that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment
[20:21] Speaker 3: of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building
[20:28] Speaker 3: a wall of separation between church and state. It's funny
[20:33] Speaker 3: my Christian school never mentioned that Tomas Jefferson, a guy
[20:38] Speaker 3: who did admire some aspects of Jesus's teaching as philosophy.
[20:43] Speaker 3: That same Jefferson also took a razor blade and he
[20:47] Speaker 3: made his own cut and paced Bible with all the
[20:50] Speaker 3: supernatural stuff cut out, moral lesson state miracles got the
[20:58] Speaker 3: acts because Jefferson believed the magic stuff was in the way,
[21:04] Speaker 3: and that Jefferson Bible is on display right now at
[21:07] Speaker 3: the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Back in seventeen seventy six,
[21:14] Speaker 3: a few months after the writing of the Declaration of Independence,
[21:18] Speaker 3: Jefferson borrowed from the English philosopher John Locke when he
[21:21] Speaker 3: wrote in his notes, neither Pagan, nor Muslim nor Jew
[21:25] Speaker 3: ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the
[21:28] Speaker 3: Commonwealth because of his religion. Some of Jefferson's contemporaries were
[21:34] Speaker 3: scandalized because he owned.
[21:37] Speaker 2: A copy of the Koran.
[21:40] Speaker 3: That little piece of information wasn't in my history books.
[21:44] Speaker 3: Historians like to argue about Jefferson's personal beliefs. Was he
[21:48] Speaker 3: a follower of Jesus in some way? Many biographers, like
[21:52] Speaker 3: Christopher Hitchins believe he was a deist not a theist.
[21:55] Speaker 3: But his personal faith or his lack of faith, made
[21:58] Speaker 3: no difference as to how the Constitution itself was written,
[22:02] Speaker 3: how laws were made, and how courts should rule, how
[22:07] Speaker 3: the United States should operate in the face of allies
[22:10] Speaker 3: and enemies, religion and government, two separate things. The establishment
[22:16] Speaker 3: clause of the Constitution of the First Amendment is not
[22:19] Speaker 3: hard to read.
[22:19] Speaker 2: It's not hard to understand.
[22:21] Speaker 3: Somehow, history revisionists, people like pseudo historian and Christian nationalists
[22:27] Speaker 3: David Barden, have made whole careers out of selling a
[22:32] Speaker 3: false Thomas Jefferson. To establish a state church, they need
[22:38] Speaker 3: the founders to agree with them. These Christian nationalists are
[22:42] Speaker 3: publishing and preaching bogus history. Now I mentioned Barton. David
[22:48] Speaker 3: Barton is a darling of the Christian Church, a Christian nationalist.
[22:51] Speaker 2: Really.
[22:52] Speaker 3: He was once named by Time magazine one of the
[22:55] Speaker 3: most influential evangelicals in the United States.
[23:00] Speaker 2: Churches in Christian.
[23:01] Speaker 3: Schools teach his stuff as history today, even though his
[23:04] Speaker 3: degree is from Oral Roberts University.
[23:08] Speaker 2: Anybody here know who Oral Roberts is.
[23:11] Speaker 3: A faith healer, televangelist, millionaire con artist. He's the guy
[23:15] Speaker 3: who once said he had a vision of a nine
[23:17] Speaker 3: hundred foot tall Jesus who told him to build a hospital,
[23:22] Speaker 3: completely oblivious to the irony of being a faith healer
[23:27] Speaker 3: who needed a hospital, and from this evangelical indoctrination center,
[23:35] Speaker 3: a non historian became fundamental Christianity's favorite historian, even though
[23:42] Speaker 3: what he writes is mostly fiction. He's so problematic a
[23:46] Speaker 3: whole lot of Christians want nothing to do with him.
[23:48] Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, David.
[23:50] Speaker 3: Bardon released a book titled The Jefferson Lies, exposing the
[23:54] Speaker 3: myths You've always believed about Thomas Jefferson. Ah, those separation
[24:02] Speaker 3: seculars haven't been teaching the real story about Jefferson. He
[24:06] Speaker 3: didn't want a secular government, he wanted a Christian nation.
[24:09] Speaker 2: The problem is.
[24:11] Speaker 3: David Barton's book was so wrong, so filled with nonsense,
[24:15] Speaker 3: that his own Christian publisher, Thomas Nelson Publishing, the second
[24:21] Speaker 3: biggest publisher of Bibles in this country, pulled his book
[24:26] Speaker 3: from the shelves. Their public statement said they had stopped
[24:30] Speaker 3: publishing it because it found quote, basic truths just were
[24:35] Speaker 3: not there.
[24:37] Speaker 2: We have a word for that, lies lies now.
[24:44] Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson was no saint. The founders were flawed men.
[24:47] Speaker 2: We know this.
[24:48] Speaker 3: Many of them owned slaves, They barred women from government,
[24:52] Speaker 3: very much a product of their time. They were humans,
[24:56] Speaker 3: not gods, and their histories, their stories are me But
[25:00] Speaker 3: the American.
[25:01] Speaker 2: Experiment was extraordinary.
[25:05] Speaker 3: They were building a nation with no king, no state church,
[25:09] Speaker 3: no national dogma, and a wall protecting the church from
[25:13] Speaker 3: the government and the government from the church. In his
[25:17] Speaker 3: book The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine said he believed
[25:21] Speaker 3: in God, but quote all national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian,
[25:27] Speaker 3: or Turkish, appear to me no other.
[25:30] Speaker 2: Than human inventions.
[25:31] Speaker 3: Set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power
[25:37] Speaker 3: and profit. George Washington's personal religious beliefs are still debated,
[25:43] Speaker 3: but even in his speech to a Hebrew congregation in
[25:46] Speaker 3: August of seventeen ninety, he said this all possess a
[25:51] Speaker 3: like liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. Benjamin Franklin
[25:58] Speaker 3: was a deist. The reason we know, he said so.
[26:02] Speaker 3: He had been raised strict Calvinist. He'd become skeptical of
[26:05] Speaker 3: the Church, but he would also invoke God or a
[26:09] Speaker 3: supreme being in his adult life in sometimes confusing ways. Still,
[26:14] Speaker 3: he saw ethical behavior beyond any single faith, once advising
[26:19] Speaker 3: that people should quote imitate Jesus and Socrates.
[26:26] Speaker 2: Seventeen ninety six, the US wanted to.
[26:28] Speaker 3: Secure commercial shipping rights and protect our ships on the
[26:31] Speaker 3: Mediterranean Sea connected to Tripoli modern day Libya, and those
[26:36] Speaker 3: waters had been plagued for three hundred years by privateers
[26:40] Speaker 3: and pirates operating out of North Africa. We wanted, we
[26:44] Speaker 3: needed guarantees of rights and protections on the seas as
[26:49] Speaker 3: a guarantee to that nation that we would not become
[26:54] Speaker 3: Christian colonizers in Muslim lands. The famous Treaty of Tripoli,
[26:59] Speaker 3: which was signed by John Adams, included these words quote
[27:04] Speaker 3: the government of the United States of America is not
[27:08] Speaker 3: in any sense founded on the Christian religion. John Adams
[27:15] Speaker 3: was a Unitarian. He didn't believe in the Trinity. He
[27:19] Speaker 3: liked a lot about Christianity, but in a seventeen ninety
[27:22] Speaker 3: nine letter to his wife, he admitted that his belief
[27:26] Speaker 3: quote excludes superstition. Imagine if this information was taught to
[27:32] Speaker 3: every American child and beyond, Imagine if those kids and
[27:37] Speaker 3: their parents understood our secular founding in the backstory behind
[27:41] Speaker 3: so many of the Christian nation defenses out there. The
[27:45] Speaker 3: original motto for the United States not in God we trust,
[27:50] Speaker 3: but e cloribus unum the Latin out of many one
[27:55] Speaker 3: in God we Trust wasn't on our coins until the
[27:58] Speaker 3: time of the Civil War of a century after the founding.
[28:02] Speaker 3: It was added to paper money after a vote of
[28:05] Speaker 3: Congress during the Red Scare of the mid twentieth century.
[28:09] Speaker 3: Under God was not part of Francis Bellamy's original pledge
[28:13] Speaker 3: of Allegiance, which was first written not for the government
[28:16] Speaker 3: but for a local youth magazine in eighteen ninety two.
[28:20] Speaker 3: The words under God added by Congress more than six
[28:24] Speaker 3: decades later. And by the way, Francis Bellamy, the Christian,
[28:29] Speaker 3: was also a socialist. Bellamy didn't think Jesus would be
[28:35] Speaker 3: okay with class systems. He believed Jesus would have everybody
[28:40] Speaker 3: equal in a socialist model.
[28:45] Speaker 2: Teach that at.
[28:45] Speaker 3: Local schools for Christian supremacists, and see how that goes over.
[28:50] Speaker 2: Teach it.
[28:50] Speaker 3: Teach it to the young, to their parents, to our families,
[28:53] Speaker 3: to friends' neighbors, to our elected representatives, to anybody who
[28:57] Speaker 3: will listen. Founders support the right to a personal religion,
[29:04] Speaker 3: but they understood the dangers.
[29:06] Speaker 2: Of a national one.
[29:07] Speaker 3: I imagine if Thomas Jefferson was here today standing in
[29:11] Speaker 3: front of the Arizona State Capitol, if he was watching
[29:14] Speaker 3: yet another shade of the Congregationalists were trying to wield
[29:19] Speaker 3: power and discriminate against other people. If he watched Donald
[29:23] Speaker 3: Trump on the day Trump suggested in December of twenty
[29:27] Speaker 3: twenty two that we might terminate the Constitution. If the
[29:32] Speaker 3: man who rebelled against the King of England was shown
[29:35] Speaker 3: the February nineteenth, twenty twenty five image posted on the
[29:39] Speaker 3: official White House account showing a crowned King Trump with
[29:44] Speaker 3: the caption long Live the King, if he read the
[29:48] Speaker 3: nine hundred pages of Project twenty twenty five, a detailed
[29:53] Speaker 3: roadmap to stripping away the rights of the many and
[29:57] Speaker 3: turning us into Gilead, if he was witnessing the absolute
[30:02] Speaker 3: horror on the face of free citizens, including many who
[30:06] Speaker 3: are devoutly religious, and yet understand, along with the rest
[30:10] Speaker 3: of it is that a personal God wouldn't need or
[30:14] Speaker 3: want a national church. Jefferson's Jesus often preached a philosophy
[30:21] Speaker 3: of humanity, charity, kindness, and that Jesus.
[30:25] Speaker 2: Drove the money changers out of the temple.
[30:29] Speaker 3: Jeffersons Jesus told rich men to sell their stuff give
[30:33] Speaker 3: it to the poor. That Jesus taught compassion to the
[30:37] Speaker 3: least of these. I wonder how both Jefferson and his
[30:42] Speaker 3: secular christ would have seen Donald Trump, be Lon Musk,
[30:45] Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos, etc. The Christian nationalist narrative is exclusive by nature,
[30:54] Speaker 3: one group ruling the rest on equal unconstitutional, un American.
[31:02] Speaker 3: When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. At this historical moment,
[31:15] Speaker 3: the few are trying to steal from the many, to
[31:19] Speaker 3: rewrite yesterday, today, and tomorrow in their favor, to betray
[31:24] Speaker 3: the founders, and to betray we the people.
[31:28] Speaker 2: And in this moment.
[31:30] Speaker 3: We the people are standing up, speaking out, and pushing
[31:34] Speaker 3: back because resistance is our duty. Thank you so very
[31:39] Speaker 3: much for having me today.
[31:49] Speaker 1: Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[31:52] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like muggs and
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[32:03] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com

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