Heather Cox Richardson:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman. Today’s topic is prompted by some semi-recent matter in the news, but as you’ll hear, it’s going to be a few familiar topics that we’re going to approach in perhaps a less familiar way. And the topic is religion in America. But we’re not going to explicitly be talking about the separation of church and state, we’re going to be talking about this in a deeper kind of a manner.

And to give you a sense of what I’m talking about, very recently, Representative Lauren Boebert called Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of the Jihad Squad. I’m not going to go into great depth on that, I’m not going to actually repeat the entire diatribe there, but obviously, for a bunch of reasons that attracted a lot of attention, drew a lot of commentary, and still hasn’t really fully been resolved, a matter that happened back in November that raised my eyebrows certainly involved former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, who gave a speech, which then appeared in various places online, basically calling for one religion in the United States. He was talking at a “ReAwaken America Tour” event at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. He said…

Michael Flynn (archival):

So if we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God, right? All of us together, working together. I don’t care what your ecumenical service is or what you are, we have to believe that this is a moment in time where this is good versus evil.

Joanne Freeman:

Now as a person who would not be part of that one religion, that certainly raised my eyebrows. That is not a thing that I expect to hear from someone with former political power and I suppose potentially future political power. That feels dangerous to me. And that raises some of the issues that you and I, Heather, want to address today.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. And I want to just point out that one of the things that Flynn talks about in that speech, which was captured on video, was he says that this is important to talk about, and foundations of this country are talking about, because as he says…

Michael Flynn (archival):

This is the shining city on the hill, this is the city on the hill. The city on the hill. The city on the hill was mentioned in Matthew, okay? Was mentioned in Matthew. And then a guy by the name of Winthrop mentioned it again in 1630. In 1630, okay? Before the country was formed. And he also coined the term New England. We’re going to go to this New England, this new world he was talking about. And he talked to the people there about this thing called the city on the hill. And then Ronald Reagan a couple hundred years later, again, talked about it as the shining city on the hill.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And they’re talking about the United States of America. I always perk up when I see this quotation attributed to America as an example of God’s favored land. Because in fact, when John Winthrop gave that sermon, which was called the Model of Christian Charity, in 1630, he was not saying that America was going to be the example to the rest of the world because it was a shining city on a hill, he was saying to the Puritans, “Don’t mess this up, because you will be as if you are exposed to the world with a light shining on you on the top of a hill. And everybody is going to see what happens if you screw up.”

This was a warning that the people settling from Europe in North America should be very careful of what they did, because people would be watching as opposed to saying, “Hey, God’s on your team and you’re going to get this all right.” And so when people misquote that to that degree, it always makes me very curious about what they’re really up to.

Joanne Freeman:

Right. And part of that also that’s worth noting is the assumption there that people will be watching what is happening in these colonies is indeed because aspects of what was happening, the colonization effort, and there are really different efforts and different motivations and different ways of organizing the different colonies in this period, but aspects of them did have a degree of the experimental in them. So people were partly watching what was going on in this period, really literally to see how things would work out, how people would fare, what would happen in these colonies. And then increasingly over time as the colonies came together, what was that going to result in?

Heather Cox Richardson:

And this is the part we’re talking about this material that I was saying to you I absolutely love, because of course, one of the things that Europeans are looking at is what happens when European settlers try and interface with Indigenous Americans? In terms of their culture, in terms of their economies, and obviously, according to their religions as well. But one of the things that I was saying I really wanted to emphasize this time around was to take a look at what was happening in the colonies religiously, because one of the things that always jumps out at me when we talk about colonial religions, and we just mentioned puritanism, and of course there are any number of different religions we could be talking about, is many Americans don’t know that in fact after 1619, there were a lot of Muslims in this country.

Joanne Freeman:

So, some scholars estimate that 20% of the enslaved men and women who were brought to the Americas were Muslims. And the lower sort of estimate along those lines suggest that Muslims made up at least 900,000 out of the 12.5 million Africans taken to the Americas. Other researchers suggested that up to 40% of those who were captured and enslaved in the Americas came from predominantly Muslim parts of West Africa. So that’s a lot of people and that’s a component that doesn’t often get talked about.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And I love it. I love it when people try and reclaim American history and say, “Look, we were always Protestant Christians or whatever they put in that slot,” and to be able to say, “Well, actually from the very beginning before your people came, America had a significant Muslim population.”

Joanne Freeman:

So one thing that I know there’s been discussion of semi recently and indeed there’s been a book published on it and public discussion of it is the simple fact that Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran. Now, Jefferson is someone with widespread interest. I said, Jefferson, and you didn’t wince, Heather. What’s wrong with you? No response.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It’s killing me over here.

Joanne Freeman:

Okay. Okay. Thank you. I needed that. I needed that reassurance. But he did own a copy of the Quran. In some ways, you could say that that’s not surprising, but what’s interesting about it is he bought a particular translation, he bought it in 1765, translated by someone named George Sale. And what Sale actually says in the introduction to the Quran is not really, “I’m translating this so that people will have a sense of what an interesting volume this is,” he basically says that, “What’s in here is dangerous, is bad, and people need to know what’s dangerous about it.”

So on the one hand, the Quran is there, people are reading it and they’re thinking about it. On the other hand, right alongside that from the beginning is someone pointing to it and saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know about that.” And that’s fascinating, because in a sense that’s a sort of double-sidedness, that’s there from the very beginning. And that this thing that personally I love the fact that Jefferson had that volume and he didn’t necessarily buy it thinking, “Excellent, I’ll read this, and this will show me how horrible this is,” but that was what inspired the translator.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So one of the things then that the founders have to do is figure out what to do about different religions, whether or not to establish a religion in the country. And that’s a really interesting moment in the development of our constitution and what we think are rights in this country.

Joanne Freeman:

There was a debate very early on and there’s certainly enough discussion of this and writing about this, about the place of religion in the United States and the separation of church and state. When you look at the founding period, when you look at the framing of the constitution and the creation of the United States, under that new constitution, the Americans knew that they were creating a republic. And a republic is a distinctive form of a polity that obviously is not a monarchy, but it’s distinctive in a few ways, one of which is it’s grounded to an extreme degree on public opinion and the American people.

So, it isn’t relying on royal families and hierarchies along those lines, republics are grounded on public opinion. And what that means is that the public needs to be, number one, educated and able to make decisions and able to understand their political system. Number two, they have to be moral enough to be able to be responsible in choosing leaders and basically upholding the republic. So, from the very beginning of the United States under the constitution, morality is seen as a vital political issue.

Heather Cox Richardson:

They decided to go ahead and make sure that there is not an established religion in the country. And that’s really quite a deliberate decision on the part of people like Jefferson and like Madison. By the 1770s, you have the rise of itinerant preachers who are being jailed for preaching at the wrong time or preaching in ways that is not acceptable to the established church. And Madison starts to play around with the idea of tolerating other ideas. And then he goes a step further and he says, “Wait a minute, tolerating something implies that there is one way that’s established and everything else is tolerated.” And he starts to argue for the unalienable right of conscience, that not only should the state not have an established religion, but that it should by definition let every man answer to his own God in his own way. And that’s a really astonishing jump, really, I think in this period. Is it not?

Joanne Freeman:

And it’s no mistake that these kinds of statements and controversies are happening in the era of the American Revolution, just before it and just after it. That’s a moment when people are talking about authority and government and sort of how that’s going to break down. So certainly that’s part of what Madison is doing here is thinking about that and thinking about setting precedents and what these kinds of precedents are going to do to shape whatever this new nation is going to be.

Along similar lines, this is a Madison statement, which is in some way sort of startlingly modern sounding, given some of what we grapple with these days. He says, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity and exclusion of all other religions may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects?” That same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever. So he’s worried about religion, but he’s worried about also authority, government authority linking with religion.

I can read a Jefferson quote that echoes that, which is a very famous one, but that gets at the similar idea. He notes this actually in Notes on the State of Virginia, which is his “book” that he wrote, the only one that he wrote. And he says in there, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Same idea there is what authority does the government have?

Heather Cox Richardson:

And repeatedly, the early presidents emphasized that America would not have an established religion, in part because by not having an established religion, you would go ahead and be able to make sure that the different sex and the different factions all balanced each other out and left everybody with that right of conscience. And they do so really quite deliberately with, for example, Washington and his reassurance to the Newport Jews.

Joanne Freeman:

Washington actually, when he first becomes president in 1789, not long after that he begins touring a little bit around the United States basically to make himself seen to sort of show that there’s a president and it’s a person and connect with particularly places in the north, given that he’s a southerner.

So, in August of 1790, he goes to Newport, Rhode Island, and he speaks to the congregants of Touro Synagogue, who welcome him and write a letter to him, the congregation leader of the Touro Synagogue writes to Washington in the spirit of, what’s going to happen now? And writes, “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now, with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events, behold a government, erected by the Majesty of the People, a government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance, but generously affording to all liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental machine.” Machine is a very favorite way of people referring to government in this time period.

So they’re saying, “This is something different.” This congregant is saying. And Washington agrees that toleration is important, actually adopts sort of pseudo biblical language to confirm… In his words, “May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” And yes, that is in the Hamilton musical, which I must say, because I know some people out there are saying, “That sounds familiar.”

But it’s in this context that Washington utters it, which is that, “Jews will be safe here.” That we are distinctly saying at the outset of this new country, that there’s a level of toleration and acceptance here that matters and that will shape the country itself.

Heather Cox Richardson:

They do the same thing with Muslims as well. When the US negotiates a treaty with Tripoli, which is a Muslim nation, in 1797, the treaty actually reads, “As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Muslims; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any…” they’re using an old word for Muslim, “nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the countries.” And then there’s also in your field, Joanne, the Danbury letter as well. Right?

Joanne Freeman:

Right. Again, we have Jefferson who becomes president in the election of 1800, is elected in 1801. And that in that election explicitly, because Jefferson has some very distinctive views about the Christian religion, Jefferson is the person who essentially creates his own Bible, he goes through the Bible and cuts out, eliminates the sort of miracle portions of it which he considers-

Heather Cox Richardson:

Of course, he figures he can write the Bible better than anyone else.

Joanne Freeman:

You have to realize, Heather, that whenever I mention him, I’m just watching your face.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I can tell.

Joanne Freeman:

I’m waiting to see when will you erupt? And it’s remarkable. There’s always… When I talk about this with my students and I say, “How many of you have heard of the Jefferson Bible?” And most of them have not, and it’s just the idea that he strips away the miracles and what he calls the priestcraft to pull the teachings that he feels are true to the Christian religion. But what that means, in part, because of his toleration and the fact that he pretty famously has, I suppose what you could have called even in that time period somewhat radical views about Christianity, that when he’s running for president, the Federalists who are very much bound up with what Jefferson would’ve called priestcraft, the New England clergy, they pull out all the stops and they claim that Jefferson’s coming for Christianity, Jefferson’s going to steal your Bibles, Jefferson is an infidel. Choosing Jefferson for president will be a crisis.

There’s a Dutch reform clergyman from New York who, just to give you a sense of the kind of language they were using, says, “Let the first magistrate be a professed infidel, and infidels will surround him. It is certain that infidelity leads to licentious manners and those again to the destruction of all social order and happiness.” And then he goes on to talk about how the voice of the nation calling it deist to the first office must be construed into no less a rebellion against God. So that’s the kind of ranting and raving and extreme emotion that’s attached to Jefferson becoming president because of religion.

So in that spirit, when he becomes president, the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut writes him a letter basically complaining about infringement on their religious liberty by their state legislature. And they basically write and say, “What religious privileges we enjoy as a minor part of the State of Connecticut we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights; and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgements as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen.” And Jefferson basically responds by promising there will be a wall of separation between church and state, or to quote him a little bit here, this is very Jefferson heavy episode, Heather, I’m so sorry, but occasionally it has to happen.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, I’ve teed it up because he is actually quite important, I think, for this.

Joanne Freeman:

He is. He is. Because of what he thinks and because of the way in which he’s very bluntly stating it in moments and on occasions and to people where it matters. And not everyone is willing to do that on the topic of religion in this time period. So he writes to the Danbury Baptist in January of 1802 and says, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

A really powerful, strong, direct statement issued as he first really is in the very beginning of his presidency to people who are wondering about how their rights are going to be affected by what becomes a real switch in the direction of government.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I have to let you tell what else happened on the day that he wrote the letter to the Danbury Baptist.

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things-

Heather Cox Richardson:

I knew it.

Joanne Freeman:

… I have to say, in… it is, in history. I just love it. On the same day, in 1802, that he writes his response to the Danbury Baptist, he receives what was known at the time as a Mammoth Cheese from the Baptist of Cheshire, Massachusetts. Now, the reason it’s called a Mammoth Cheese, and it’s initially called that to make fun of Jefferson, is because he famously believed that there were woolly mammoths probably wandering around in the North American in West, part of his continued belief that American animals are bigger than European animals and superior to European animals. And a great example of that would be these woolly mammoths wandering around.

So he’s kind of made fun of as the guy who believes in mammoths, he’s the mammoth president. And his supporters sort of brilliantly take that and say, “Yeah, he is the mammoth president.” And these Baptists create a mammoth cheese, which is about 1200 pounds huge round cheese, that they put in a cart. And cart from Massachusetts to, by this point, Washington. And it’s a huge event.

When you look at newspapers in the period, there’s great attention being paid to the progress of the mammoth cheese, there’s commentary being made on the fact that by the time it gets to Washington you could smell the cheese coming, it’s been traveling for quite some time. It’s meant to be a tribute to Jefferson. And it, again, it’s from these Baptists. And embossed on the cheese is a motto that is popular with Jefferson, that is “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

So the Baptists create this massive cheese, send it to Washington. Jefferson would have regular showings of the cheese, he was very proud of the cheese. When he had dinners in the White House, sometimes he would put a piece of the cheese on the table, “There’s my cheese. The American people love me, here’s my cheese.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Did they eat the cheese?

Joanne Freeman:

Indeed. And so this is the thing that I found when I was working on my first book, was a Congressman who has dinner at the White House in 1805, so recall that 1802 [crosstalk]-

Heather Cox Richardson:

Was three years old. It is now fine aged cheddar.

Joanne Freeman:

Three years old cheese. Way aged cheddar, that it’s apparently at the table and this New Hampshire Congressman says, “I think we were expected to eat it.” And so he did eat a piece of it, and this is a quote from him. “It was far from being very good.” So, what I love about this is it’s such an over the top, and yet in that spirit of the time, what tribute to Jefferson a cheese, a big cheese, and it was taken in that spirit and yet you just… There’s something so fundamentally ridiculous about the idea, even though the tribute itself meant something, because it’s Americans and in this case, Baptist Americans, paying tribute to the new president. That’s an important moment, but it is also a big cheese.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Okay. So that was totally a rabbit hole, but it was a cool rabbit hole. But what I was really hoping to get you to talk about was that we’ve really emphasized how there is a deliberate separation of church and state amongst the framers, for very obvious reasons. And they stand very strongly on that. But like you were saying before, they also believe that this country needs to be uniquely moral, which is weird. I mean, it’s weird to have the separation of church and state, so you can’t have religion in government and you can’t have government messing with religion, but at the same time, now let’s talk about morality, because morality is also at the backbone of America despite the separation of church and state.

Joanne Freeman:

Absolutely. The fact that Americans need to be very sort of aggressively moral for the American Republic, a democratic Republic, to survive is something that’s discussed a lot at the time. It’s one of the reasons why education becomes very important in that time period, because education is going to be part of what will create good Americans who will be moral Americans and who will be able to uphold what they need to uphold to keep the country going. It’s part of why actually motherhood takes on a great political importance, because mothers are seen as people who can instill the right morals in their children, again, to make them good American citizens that will uphold the American Republic. So morality is seen as a political bull work, as something that’s going to hold the nation together.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But what does it mean to be moral in 1790 or 1810?

Joanne Freeman:

Well, that’s a really good question. I mean, obviously it involves virtue, but when you probe it pretty deeply, you run into all kinds of barriers and all kinds of complications and all kinds of haziness, because how do you describe virtue or morality? Does it necessarily involve religion in some way? Well, it might, it doesn’t by definition.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So I’m guessing morality meant working hard.

Joanne Freeman:

That would’ve been part of it, would’ve been working hard, would’ve been being a person of good reputation and upholding your word.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The reason that I’m pushing on that is because in the 19th century, there is of course a wide range of reform movements. And one of the key pieces of that comes from the early evangelical movements, which is the idea of having a pure relationship with God. And the trick to having a pure relationship with God is making sure that there is nothing in the material world that stands between you and a pure relationship with God.

And so you get in the middle of the 19th century all of these moral reform movements that are based not in for example the idea of making your community work better or in the idea of helping your children grow up better, but rather in the idea of clearing the way for an individual to be pure and moral enough to have a good relationship with God. And the reason that I’m harping on that is because one of the major moral reform movements of the 19th century or most of them actually in the 1830s and the 1840s are designed to remove external conditions that are preventing individuals from having that kind of a maximum, if you will, relationship with God.

So, you have, of course, the Nutritional Movement that is designed to help make sure people aren’t poisoning their bodies with chemicals. And in those cases they don’t mean sort of artificial chemicals, but with wrong kinds of food. And there are all kinds of movements through that in the 19th century where people alter their diets to try and be pure, they try and clean up different aspects of the way they live, there’s a movement that is designed to try and release people from mental illness, because of course they don’t understand mental illness at the time, there’s the idea of making sure people are not bound by the laws in such a way that stunt their ability to have this pure life, if you will. And by pure I don’t mean necessarily moral so much as a way to not be stunted in your desire to become the best you can be to have this relationship with God. And the one that really jumps out of course is temperance, because when the framers are talking about morality, they’re drinking like fish.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s true. It’s very true. There’s a huge, huge amount of drinking, which also is bound up with politics, right? I mean, elections, you run for office by applying your constituents with vast amounts of alcohol. So, indeed there’s some hard drinking. And what’s distinctive or interesting about… or what links temperance with some of what… the other things you’ve just mentioned, Heather, just to give you an idea about what we’re talking about here when we’re talking about drinking, in 1820, an adult normally drank seven gallons of alcohol a year. Whiskey was a particularly popular spirit in part because it was cheap, cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or milk. People often preferred alcohol to water, because water wasn’t necessarily clean in this period, but alcohol was trustworthy.

It’s hard to exaggerate the degree to which there was hard drinking going on in this period in all levels of society. There’s very early on in the 19th century, you get the Congressional Temperance Union, right? So, even in Congress people were thinking… They’re drinking so much that they’re lying across their desks as they’re talking.

Heather Cox Richardson:

They’re sloshed in Congress. They’re very sloshed.

Joanne Freeman:

Very sloshed. It’s a huge issue. And it’s… Again, gets back to this idea of choice.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The rate at which American men were consuming alcohol in the Early Republic hits on the issue of morality. And by 1826, the nation has its first formal national temperance organization. And temperance in this period literally meant that, to temper the amount of alcohol you drank, not to abolish it all together. But the people who join the Temperance Movement are very concerned about the effects on society of the extraordinary amounts of alcohol men are working, because they’re not working and supporting their families or they’re getting injured because they’re drunk on the job, or they’re going home and abusing their wives and children.

So there is a sense that the personal morality of these men who are drinking like everybody else is in this period is destroying the community, is destroying the countryside. So, prominent people, clergymen and people in communities begin to call first for temperance and then for total abstinence from any kind of distilled liquor. And this idea springs up in the Early Republic.

So by 1829, there are 222 state and local anti-liquor groups spreading this message across the country. And by 1835, about 2 million Americans had pledged to abstain from hard liquor. And these are going to be primarily men, most women were not drinking the same sort of collegial way that men were.

And this bleeds into some of the other reform movements through people like Lyman Beecher, who’s part of that very famous Beecher family of ministers in the middle of the 19th century, that’s going to include Harriet Beecher Stowe, in which he advocates for temperance, and publishes a bunch of sermons on, as he says, the nature, the occasions, the signs, the evils, and the remedy of intemperance, and calls again for the idea of American ceasing to drink.

And I’m laughing because when I did my first research project, I was in a 19th century library and they were temperance people and there was an entire wall of these pamphlets about what drinking would do to you. And in most of them you could spontaneously combust, which I thought was really interesting, but my favorite was 10 Nights on a Bar Room Floor. And I will tell you, as we’re recording this, that I have a copy. I bought a copy the first time I saw it of 10 Nights in a Bar Room Floor, and it’s on the wall behind me here, because that whole genre of if they’re sort of Gothic, you’re destroying the country by drinking.

And this push for morality in the 19th century becomes a way for women to mobilize into the political system and to advocate their own power, like you were saying the mothers were before. And increasingly, people emphasize the idea of not being enslaved to alcohol. So by the 1840s, drinking dropped to half of what it had been in the 1820s. And in 1874, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the WCTU, is founded in Cleveland, Ohio, where women took to the streets and held pray-ins outside local saloons to demand that liquor no longer be sold.

And within three months they had driven liquor out of 250 communities. You’ve probably seen the images of women breaking into barrels of alcohol with axes. And in 1879, the WCTU elected Frances Willard to be its president. And she remains the president of the WCTU until 1898, and becomes incredibly influential in talking about the role of Christians in going ahead and cleaning up American society. So here you have this whole idea of morality and Christianity outside the established church going ahead and making America be a moral nation.

Joanne Freeman:

That’s a heady combination of things. That it’s reform, it’s patriotism, it’s morality, it’s religion, it’s Christianity, it’s the public good. It’s all of these things bound together. And as you just suggested, Heather, bound up with the fact that these reform movements are a way for women to be very openly and organizationally political. So it has that component built into.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and the reason that I set that up to the degree I did was because of course the Beechers and many of the other people involved in things like the Temperance Movement, were also advocating for the end of human enslavement, which is, again, a way to make sure individuals can have a relationship with God without external impediments to that.

The connection between, for example, temperance and abolition and government becomes really important after the Civil War, because having achieved at first before the war a reduction in drinking and having achieved the abolition of human enslavement, except as punishment for a crime and for which somebody has been duly convicted, a lot of religious people started to say, “Hey, we’re clearing the way. Look how moral we are. We’re clearing the way to make America a Christian nation.”

And that’s another moment in American history that a lot of people don’t know about, but in the 1860s, Presbyterian lawyer from Pennsylvania, a man named John Alexander, introduced an amendment to the constitution at a religious convention of a number of Protestant groups that were meeting in Ohio. And he wanted to acknowledge, as he said, the rulership of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the divine law in the US constitution.

Joanne Freeman:

I just have to say, think about that sentence, rulership of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the divine law in the US constitution. That’s quite a telling phrase.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And doesn’t it echo what Michael Flynn said or doesn’t he echo that? The idea of this being a Christian nation?

Joanne Freeman:

It’s true.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So they wanted to change the preamble of the constitution in which they said, “We, the people of the United States,” as it starts now, “humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government…” and then it goes back to, “and in order to form a more perfect union.” And then it goes on, “Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves and our posterity, and all the people.” And then go ahead, “And do ordain this constitution.”

And it at first got some attention and got some actually abolitionists to sign onto it, as well as some other people as well. And then in ’64, they organized as the National Reform Association. Once again reform there with the acronym, the NRA, which cracks me up. Anyway, they try and get Lincoln to sign onto the amendment and he expresses some reservations about that. Lincoln would, I think, never go along with something like this. And he stalls, he says, “I must ask time to deliberate,” but they go ahead and grow an influence in the 1870s after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution.

They claim to have 30 local chapters, their organization newspaper known as the Christian Statesman had 10,000 readers. And they really seized on the growth of religious minorities like the Catholics coming in from Southern and Eastern Europe, Jews, Seventh-day Adventists to say that these groups were challenging the America’s Christian heritage and that there needed to be an amendment to the constitution to go ahead and make sure America was itself established as a Christian nation.

In early 1874, they got a series of hearings before the House Judiciary Committee to plead their case. And the committee basically turned them down. They issued a blanket statement in February of 1874 saying, “Upon examination even of the meager debates by the founders of the Republic in the convention which framed the constitution, they…” that is the members of the committee, “find that the subject of this memorial was most fully and carefully considered.” And then in that convention decided after grave deliberation to which the subject was entitled that… Could they have had more clauses here?

Joanne Freeman:

I know.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That as this country, the foundation of whose government they were then laying, was to be the home of the oppressed of all nations of the earth, whether Christian or pagan. And in full realization of the dangers which the union between church and state had imposed upon so many nations of the old world, with great unanimity that it was inexpedient to put anything into the constitution or frame of government which might be construed to be a reference to any religious creed or doctrine.

Joanne Freeman:

Now, I have to say, all of those clauses, that is a very carefully phrased statement that’s bolstering itself with the founders and including lots of padding until that last phrase that just says outright what they’re declaring. So, they’re turning this down, but, boy, they’re showing you the seriousness with which they’re considering it, because it’s a charged issue.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And at the same time, they’re like, “No, not happening.”

Joanne Freeman:

Right.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Because they know very well exactly-

Joanne Freeman:

They’re saying that in such a polite way. Yes.

Heather Cox Richardson:

This public morality did in fact lead to people wanting to say in our foundational documents that America was a Christian country. And lawmakers looked at that and said, “Yeah, no, we’re not doing that.” And a similar thing happens after World War II, where Americans are trying to distinguish themselves from international communism, which they see as godless and immoral. So they start to write into our public spaces the idea of a sort of generic morality by focusing on God.

Joanne Freeman:

And precisely worth noting that they’re talking about God, but they’re not giving that God a name, they’re not using organized religion, they’re just invoking again and again the idea that Americans look to God, and that God looks to America.

Heather Cox Richardson:

As opposed as they would say to what it was doing with the USSR or with the Communist Party in China, which is what they’re really concerned about. And so, when we talk for example about the Pledge of Allegiance, the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, and with liberty and justice for all. And it always bothers me because when that was written in the late 19th century, it was one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, which was a reflection of reconstruction, “You can’t divide this country, and we’re actually going to have liberty and justice for black Americans as well as for white Americans.”

But in 1954, because Eisenhower was really trying to undercut the extreme anti-communists in the country, especially in his own Republican Party, he goes ahead and he tries to bow to them by adding “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and to a reconstruction story, and it always bugs me because you lose that phrase, “One nation under God, indivisible.” And it’s like, “No, no, no, it’s one nation indivisible, like at least put it after that,” but they didn’t.

Joanne Freeman:

But here’s what’s interesting about that too, though, is that, that in one way describes our Pledge of Allegiance as a blend between post-Civil War response to slavery and the abolition of slavery, and communism. Talk about an interesting combo of things to be part of our Pledge of Allegiance. And that way, it’s sort of weirdly peculiarly American. It binds together thoughts about slavery and communism by the United States.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, but it’s also an interesting blend as well in the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance is not part of our laws, it’s not part of anything, except it was a poem written in the 1890s. So the idea that he’s going to insert God into what sure sounds like it’s part of our government, but it’s really not, is very much an Eisenhower kind of sleight of hand. And they go a step further in 1957 when they begin to use the words, “In God we trust on paper money.”

Now, it had been on coins since the Civil War, because there was an attempt during that period to show how the union was invoking God’s will by defending the United States of America, but it had never appeared on paper. And it appears on paper in 1957 as part of this idea of America being particularly moral as opposed to the Communist governments, and yet it’s a step closer to making that part of established government policy, because of course our money is government money.

Joanne Freeman:

That’s an issue or a fear that in and of itself goes all the way back to the beginning of the nation when they worried a lot about what would appear on coins, what would appear on money, because they assumed whatever images or words appeared on money would sort of work their way into the American consciousness, and shape the nation. So that similar kind of a spirit is worming its way through this as well.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Just think about it, especially in the days before modern media, if you were carrying a bill that’s got a saying or a face on it before widespread television, for example, that’s one of the images you will see most in your life, is what’s on that piece of paper. It is literally an advertisement. So putting that, “In God we trust on the money,” is significant in 1957. But then there is the really interesting question of when presidents begin to explicitly claim God for America. So they’re all talking religiously, and we’ve danced around this question before, but in sort of a generic way. So, who is the first president to say, “God bless America,” at the end of a speech?

Joanne Freeman:

And I just don’t think people would guess this.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Really?

Joanne Freeman:

I think people would assume this is older than it is. The first president to say, “God bless America,” at the end of a speech is Richard Nixon. And it comes during an Oval Office address that’s focused on the Watergate scandal, and he announces the resignation of three administration officials. And at the end of the speech, he says…

Richard Nixon (archival):

I looked at my own calendar this morning up at Camp David as I was working on this speech. It showed exactly 1,361 days remaining in my term. I want these to be the best days in America’s history, because I love America. I deeply believe that America is the hope of the world. Tonight, I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my presidency to be worthy of their hopes and of yours. God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And then I love the fact that Gerald Ford doesn’t do it, because he’s probably appalled by the whole thing. But Jimmy Carter also avoids the phrase. And Jimmy Carter is himself a devout Christian, and he refuses to mix church and state, Carter does. And of course, Ronald Reagan constantly used it.

To me it’s funny you say that people would be surprised that it was Nixon who began using that phrase. And I was actually like, “Of course, it was Nixon.” Because Nixon by 1973 is so embattled and he recognizes that he has lost so many of his more moderate supporters that he is doubling down on religious voters. It’s actually in right before the election of 1972 that he begins to turn against abortion, until then he has been doing the Republican line on abortion, which is that it’s a medical issue. And he starts really to double down on this idea of trying to pick up, especially, disaffected Democratic Catholic voters by hitting on God again and again and again. And Reagan does the exact same thing.

And you can really see it in the fact that from the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, which a lot of people say is the beginning of the modern presidency, until the end of Carter’s term in January of 1981, there were 229 major presidential addresses. And the only time anybody said, “God bless America,” was the thing you just said from Nixon. But from Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, through the six-year mark of the Bush administration, there were 129 major presidential speeches and they said, “God bless America,” or, “God bless the United States,” 49 times. Like there’s this injection of this idea that America’s going to be this moral anti-communist nation. And here it is walking in its little feet, right? Into our executive branch, and pretty soon into voting and into the legislative branch as well.

Joanne Freeman:

So now we swing back, we’re sort of merging together morality and religion. So now we shift to 1979, and a phrase certainly that will be familiar to many and an organization that will be familiar to many, and that is the Moral Majority.

Now, the Moral Majority is founded in 1979 by Jerry Falwell, who’s a Baptist minister and a religious broadcaster from Lynchburg, Virginia. And he founds it as an explicitly political organization dedicated to advancing “A pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality, and pro-American agenda.” Membership in that organization surges in the summer of 1980, it opens offices in Washington, D.C. And in just one year gains 83,000 new addresses for its mailing list.

Now, Falwell himself had been sort of merging religion and politics for a while. He launched an evangelistic campaign with a kind of a political edge during the Bicentennial era, he had what he called “I love America” rallies with patriotic music and choirs. By the end of the 1970s, his TV program had expanded, was on 373 stations, more than Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show appeared on. And membership at his Thomas Road Baptist Church also was soaring in this time period.

He found the name for his organization from his Lieutenant Paul Weyrich, who basically uttered this phrase during a really early planning session. He said, “Out there, there is a moral majority, but it has been separated by denominational and historical differences.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

What’s interesting about the timing of this is he is picking up the anti-communism, of course, but one of the things he’s also picking up is those Americans who feel that the modern world has left them behind. And in 1970, Time Magazine had lionized these people as middle Americans. And the way they represent themselves is that they are frustrated by the taxes that they are paying, that they see going to grasping minorities and feminist women and people who want to have, as they would say, abortions-on-demand.

And so, while this idea of morality is really an idea of going back in the past to times before the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s, for example, and the idea of women working outside the home, he’s tying together all these different ideas of traditional America and traditional religion and anti-communism, and all of those wrapped up in this bow of morality. But then there is this really important moment, and that’s that in many periods and certainly before this period in the 20th century, there had been a move among church people not to vote, with the idea that voting was separate than church. That if you got involved in politics, it was going to corrupt your morality.

But what the Moral Majority is, is it says, “No, no, no, no, no. We need to harness that morality and move it into politics.” And this is the moment when that evangelical motion of the late 1960s and the early 1970s becomes an explicitly political motion that’s going to move that morality back into the idea of politics and back into the idea of having the church actively involved in the States.

Joanne Freeman:

And in a really explicitly political way to the point that this is what Falwell says lately about what he wants the Moral Majority to do. “We have to lead the nation back to the moral stance that made America great, we need to wield influence on those who govern us.” That’s a new way of putting this. That’s a very explicitly political agenda.

He goes on at more length along those lines in a 1980 publication that he wrote called Listen, America! in which he says, “We must reverse the trend America finds herself in today. Young people between the ages of 25 and 40 have been born and reared in a different world than Americans of years past. The television set has been their primary babysitter. From the television set they have learned situation ethics and immorality, they have learned a loss of respect for human life, they have learned to disrespect the family as God has established it.”

So there are the goals, that’s the sort of political merging of religion and politics as an explicit political agenda with an organization that is going to work to fuel this agenda very aggressively in a way that certainly caught on.

Heather Cox Richardson:

In October, 1980, the evangelical President Jimmy Carter, had this to say about the Moral Majority. “There’s been a high degree of publicity given in recent months to the so-called Moral Majority. As a matter of fact, Reverend Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, habitually and weekly, even more often during the 1976 campaign, castigated me severely, and was one of my most difficult opponents or critics. He hasn’t changed. There are some issues on which I disagree strongly with his basic philosophy or approach to government or religion. I don’t think there ought to be any religious test for political acceptability and I don’t think there ought to be any political test for religious fellowship. I believe that the people will make a sound judgment recognizing the necessity for the separation of church and state.” How’d that go?

Joanne Freeman:

Well, yes, that separation of church and state thing, maybe didn’t swim in quite the way he might have wanted it to. But what’s interesting here about this evolving conversation that we’re having, Heather, is the way in which government, authority, religion, morality, and patriotism are being sort of bounced around and pulled together and pushed apart in a lot of different ways, in part because there’s flexibility because things aren’t established, because there’s room for this kind of manipulation by people who can see and advance different agendas, taking advantage of that flexibility.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So from that point on, the Republican Party increasingly relied on the movement of religious voters, especially evangelical voters, into the party to go ahead and shore that party up, until we got to the point whereby the election of 2020, 81% of evangelicals vote for Donald Trump, who’s a Republican, and who on paper sure doesn’t look like a terribly moral human being.

I mean, he is famous for his untoward business deals, he’s on record talking about sexually assaulting women. I mean, there’s just a list of things in which you could say he probably is not at least Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of a moral American, certainly not Harriet Beecher Stowe’s version of a moral American. And yet, the evangelicals have lined up behind him in a way, as our producer was saying very effectively, in a way taking morality and saying, “Morality doesn’t matter anymore so long as we can inject it back into the state and get rid of the idea of the separation of church and state.”

So, this whole idea of the separation of church and state from the discussion of morality, once again seems to have bled together in this modern moment, where now you have people like Michael Flynn once again talking not only about reestablishing the idea of one God and one nation, but also how that is explicitly tied to taking over the government with that kind of establishment of religion within it.

So, once again this whole idea of the separation of church and state on the one hand, which is what the framers designed this country to be based on, is under assault from the other part of what they had talked about so much, which was morality. And the weaving together of those two different concepts throughout our history has often brought us to a place where we have to once again battle for the idea of the separation of church and state.