As Right Wing Watch has noted multiple times in the past, one of the defining characteristics of Christian nationalists is their willingness to misrepresent history, as time after time they spread blatant falsehoods in defense of their right-wing ideology. Often, this is rooted in their own ignorance about the Founding Era and the creation of the Constitution, and that tendency was on full display during a recent episode of the "Reformation Red Pill" podcast.
The "Reformation Red Pill" podcast is hosted by right-wing pastors Brooks Potteiger and Joshua Haymes of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a far-right church located outside of Nashville, TN, that is aligned with Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson and counts Pete Hegseth as a member.
On the latest episode, Potteiger and Haymes interviewed fellow far-right pastor George Grant for a program entitled, "America WAS A Christian Nation! And It Will Be Christian AGAIN."
Predictably, the "evidence" Grant used to prove that the United States was founded as a Christian nation was entirely bogus.
"John Witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence and helped shape the language," Grant claimed. "He's the one who went to [Thomas] Jefferson and told him to change 'life, liberty and property' to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' because he believed that actually answered the question raised by, 'the Devil comes to kill and steal and destroy.'"
"The line in the Declaration of Independence is a direct gospel declaration," Grant declared.
Nonsense.
For what it is worth, the phrase from John 10 is "the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy" and it is a reference to false teachers, not the Devil. More importantly, Grant's claim doesn't even make sense and has nothing to do with the Declaration's usage of the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Witherspoon was not even among the delegates assigned to the committee tasked with drafting the Declaration and much of the Declaration's opening phrasing was largely based on Virginia's Declaration of Rights, which was written before Thomas Jefferson was tasked with drafting the language for the Declaration.
Virginia's document opens with language that is remarkably similar to what Jefferson later wrote:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Given that Jefferson was deeply involved and invested in the declaration of rights produced by his home state, naturally the very first draft that he produced mirrored Virginia's declaration:
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.
Undaunted, Grant continued.
"Often times, our Founding Fathers would wrestle with a policy," Grant claimed. "You see this in the constitutional debates. Often times as they were wrestling with policy, they'd be looking at legal precedent, look at [the works of William] Blackstone, they would try and figure out from a lawyer's perspective what was right or wrong. Invariably, someone would interject and say, 'Yes, but what saith the scriptures?' and they would not resolve the discussion until they knew what the scriptures said."
Once again, that claim is nonsense and there is nothing in the notes or records of the Constitutional Convention that support it.
Over the years, we have listened to countless presentations and read multiple books from professional Christian nationalist activists intent on "proving" that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, but never have we heard either of the claims made by Grant. Needless to say, if there was even a shred of evidence to support his claims, we are confident that we would likely have read or hear them somewhere prior to Grant's appearance on this podcast.
