The Founding Myth Quotes

“There is no freedom of religion without a government that is free from religion.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“If you live in Denver or Austin, or near another Ten Commandments monument on public land, go and examine it. See if the full text of each commandment is carved into the stone. See if slavery is recognized, if women are considered chattel, and if the supposed pinnacle of morality punishes innocent children to the third and fourth generations. If the Ten Commandments were truly moral, there would be no need to edit these displays to fit today’s standards. Morality evolves. These edited monuments undercut the very claim they were set up to make. They are monuments to a lie.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“[In] colonial history...we find true Christian nations—the colonies—founded on Christian principles. Those Christian governments were so tyrannical that they became examples for the founders of how not to build a nation.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The freedom of religion cannot exist without a government that is free from religion (nor can the freedom of religion exist without the freedom to choose no religion at all). True religious freedom depends on a secular government.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Christian nationalism’s hold on political power in America rests on the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Without historical support, many of their policy justifications crumble. Without their common well of myths, the Christian nationalist identity will wither and fade. Their entire political and ideological reality is incredibly weak and vulnerable because it is based on historical distortions and lies. In this right-wing religious culture, the lies are so commonplace, so uncritically accepted, that these vulnerabilities are not recognized.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The term “Judeo-Christian” is difficult to pin down because it is something of a fabrication.8 From a scholarly standpoint, as noted in a 1992 Newsweek article, “the idea of a single ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ is a made-in-America myth.”9 One Jewish theologian stated the problem plainly: “Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism.”10 “Judeo-Christian” is slippery because it is more a political invention than a scholarly description.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Trump's dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated. Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they'd been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her "Emperor God".”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The religious mind is primed to accept lies. Presented with an extraordinary claim, it does not demand extraordinary evidence, but instead engages faith to overcome skepticism. Their religion has taught evangelicals to accept, rather than to question. Trump’s constant waterfall of outright lies landed on amenable minds. His support was greater among regular churchgoers than among lukewarm believers.20 The greater the faith, the more subordinate healthy skepticism becomes. So the biblical fetish for totalitarians may have helped America elect its first.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Judeo-” is a sop, a fig leaf, tossed about to avoid controversy and complaint. It is simply a morsel of inclusion offered to soften the edge of an exclusionary, Christian movement.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” — Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 19882”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The idea that all people are created equal is not a religious idea; the idea that some people are special or chosen is one that various religious groups have embraced throughout history. The entire Hebrew Bible is about the chosen people. Religion promotes elitism, not equality.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“History had proven to the framers of the US Constitution that religion is divisive. They separated religion from government to avoid the mistakes of past regimes.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“not prove that religion causes immoral behavior, but it confirms that religion is not required for people to behave morally.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Criticizing the system that claims to punish you for your thoughts is the first step against totalitarianism.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The words “so help me God” never appear and were not first used to alter the words of the constitutional oath by a president until nearly 100 years later. The first”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship, or not to worship; that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality and liberty of all, to prevent the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.41”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“A MORE INSIDIOUS RATIONALE underlies the Christian nationalist claim about the founders: the myth that only Christians are moral. The argument is that the United States was created by Christians for Christians because only they are moral,24 that Christianity is required for a moral society. There are two falsehoods tangled up in this claim. The first conflates religion with morality, and the second assumes that the founders did the same.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Any religion would do; Judeo-Christianity was not special. Montesquieu, the political theorist the founders may have relied on more than any other, perhaps said it best: “even a false religion is the best security we can have of the probity of men.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Though religion would check the masses, Adams did not believe “in the total and universal depravity of human nature, I believe there is no individual totally depraved….”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Representative King of Iowa, known for his racism and xenophobia, proclaimed that our nation “was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which means we need less law enforcement than anybody else in the world”63—a fallacy we’ll explore later on.”
― Andrew L Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“you worship my god? Only my god? Do you curse my god or do you respect him? Do you worship and rest when my god says to? Do you obey your parents and priest who tell you to worship my god? If so, you’re my neighbor and it’s important that I not kill you.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Author Michael Gaddis relates a story that answers Franklin's fearful question about the wickedness of a human race without religion. In fifth-century Egypt, a Christian monk named Shenoute denounced a local pagan magnate, ransacked his house, and smashed his idols. The pagan accused Shenoute of banditry and he responded, 'There is no crime for those who have Christ.'
People who believe they are acting in accord with a higher law are giving themselves a license to do anything. That is, as the physicist Steven Weinberg observed, the real danger of religion: 'With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“...these Enlightenment thinkers and the founders they influenced shared an important constant: they did not view religion as valuable because of its truth claims or as a sense of morality, but simply as a means of producing good behavior without a reasoned moral analysis.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“A MORE INSIDIOUS RATIONALE underlies the Christian nationalist claim about the founders: the myth that only Christians are moral. The argument is that the United States was created by Christians for Christians because only they are moral, that Christianity is required for a moral society...
Religion gets its morality from us, not the other way around. Even today, many people mistakenly believe that morality cannot exist outside of religion.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Texas representative Louie Gohmert declared in a December 2017 floor speech, 'The Supreme Court looked at all of the evidence and declared in an opinion that the United States was founded as, and is, a Christian nation.' He added to this gross misstatement by insisting that 'the only way any people can truly have freedom of religion is if they have a constitution that is founded on Judeo-Christian principles.' The opposite is true.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The Christian bible stands directly opposed to the Declaration’s central ideas, including that it is “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [their government], and to institute a new Government.” Paul’s letter to the Romans demonstrates this opposition: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Social science now unequivocally shows that the less religious a society is, the better off it is. We now know that religion is not necessary for a society to succeed.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Madison is not only the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights, but also perhaps the greatest advocate for the separation of state and church.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“Michelle Goldberg in her 2006 book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American