The Christian Past That Wasn't: Formerly Telling Jefferson Lies Charlie Kirk's Christian America
In 2024, Charlie Kirk distributed a five-minute video defense of the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. It has been played at least 20 million times on various social media platforms and is full of faulty history. This segment serves to correct the false claims and defend the proposition that America's founders set out to found a secular government with provision for religious pluralism. Unfortunately, this only applied to white males at first.
Kirk and his fellow Christian nationalists use a variety of false stories to prop up a vision of a Christian American founding. They want to go back to that mythical time. In this segment, historians Aaron Cowan, Randall Balmer, and George Marsden, English professor Matthew Boedy, and co-host Michael Coulter join me to debunk Kirk's false claims and advocate for good history and religious pluralism.
For primary sources referred to in this segment, see this link: https://warrenthrockmorton.substack.com/p/charlie-kirks-christian-america
Written and produced by Warren Throckmorton. Music provided by Earl's Taco Shack and Jonus Fair.