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.

On January 3, 2025, Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson was re-elected to be Speaker of the House. In his acceptance speech, he quoted a prayer that he said Thomas Jefferson said every day during his presidency and every day of his life thereafter.

There is a problem with this story. The prayer was written 56 years after Jefferson died. Jefferson never said the prayer even one day of his life. Later, Johnson and the House chaplain refused to acknowledge they spread false witness to the whole country.

Before the prayer was associated with Jefferson, it was falsely tied to George Washington.

For many years, people who believe America was founded as a Christian nation have desperately wanted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to be on their team. In this episode, we will hear from Word and Way editor Brian Kaylor and Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar as they describe how a common prayer became an American myth.

To read the prayer, titled "For Our Country," go to the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, page 36. An online version is here: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1928Standard/bcp1928std.pdf

Telling Jefferson Lies is a product of Warren Throckmorton and today brought to you by the 3rd edition of Getting Jefferson Right: Fact-Checking Claims About Thomas Jefferson. For more information about the book or Warren Throckmorton's substack, go to gettingjeffersonright.com.

The next episode will be out within two weeks and I will announce the schedule for the season at that point.

Music for the segment was provided by Roman Candle, Earl's Taco Shack, Jonathan Swaim, Jonus Fair, Robo Surgeon Fish, and Dustin Blatnik.

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Thanks for listening.

In 2024, a video featuring Charlie Kirk defending America as a Christian nation was viewed over 10 millions times on social media. Many of the claims were false or misleading. This season of Telling Jefferson Lies will examine this video and other Christian nation claims by Christian nationalists in addition to Kirk.

The first full episode is planned for April.

There are lies, there are Jefferson Lies, and then there are Christian nationalists' stories.

Music by Warren Throckmorton and Jonus Fair.

Host: Warren Throckmorton; guest Matthew Boedy.

Art: Sarah Eshelman