And in the wake of the Christian Nationalist movement’s hijacking of our 250th anniversary celebrations this year, we can’t sit idly by while one of the highest ranking members of the Senate gives them more ammunition by repeating a false story.
For more than two decades, Senator Chuck Schumer has told Americans that the Founders called our nation “God’s noble experiment.” He said it at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. He’s said it multiple times on the Senate floor, including right after Sen. John Barrasso attacked American Atheists by name for our involvement in the No Kings protests.
He said it again this Independence Day.
There’s just one problem: no Founder has ever said it. Not one.
The sad truth is that Christian Nationalist mythology and falsehoods are a bipartisan problem. And whether they’re being spouted by Pete Hegseth or Speaker Mike Johnson or the Senate’s top Democrat, we have to call out these lies.
That’s why we launched a petition and sent a letter to Sen. Schumer’s office demanding a retraction and apology. I need your name on that petition.
We’ve seen how Christian Nationalist myths can be weaponized against us — how this well-funded, well-organized movement can capitalize on the lies of people like David Barton in an attempt to justify their discrimination and exclusion of non-Christians.
And in the wake of the Christian Nationalist movement’s hijacking of our 250th anniversary celebrations this year, we can’t sit idly by while one of the highest ranking members of the Senate gives them more ammunition by repeating a false story.
This isn’t a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It’s a truth problem. I’d like to think that the truth still matters. And the truth here is that no Founder ever uttered the words Chuck Schumer put in their mouths.
Yale historian Joanne Freeman, responding to Sen. Schumer’s post, put it best: “In the well-over 100,000 documents written by founders […] no one uses the phrase ‘God’s noble experiment.’ No one.”
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that it does him “no injury” whether his neighbor believes in “twenty gods or no god.” He certainly didn’t dress up that commitment to pluralism in scripture, and neither should Sen. Schumer.
The truth is that America is an experiment in secular self-government, not an ordained theocracy. That was the bold innovation of the Founders. Pretending that our national commitment to secularism is anything other than revolutionary does a profound disservice to our past — and to our future.
Please sign the petition today. Senator Schumer needs to know that he got it wrong.
In solidarity,
Nick Fish
President
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”
White Christian Nationalists aren’t honoring our past. They’re trapping us in old prejudices and power structures.
We oppose the outsourcing of public responsibilities to religious groups that believe some families are more worthy than others — like mine.
