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