Pastor Robert Jeffress said the Founding Fathers would 'gladly embrace' Christian nationalism. The historical record says the opposite.

Review

On May 17, 2026, at the Trump administration’s “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” event on the National Mall, Pastor Robert Jeffress told the crowd that the Founding Fathers “would be called Christian nationalists today” and that it is “a title they would have gladly embraced.”

The claim was made during the America 250 celebrations, as Christian activists and authors redoubled claims that the U.S. had a Christian founding. The claim is not new. It is, however, contradicted by the historical record.

What the Founders actually did

The term “Christian nationalism” as used today does not simply mean that a leader loves Jesus and loves America. It describes a political ideology that treats Christian identity as foundational to American national identity — that America is, by definition, a Christian nation, and that government should reflect and enforce that identity.

The most influential Founders — Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Adams — spent their careers fighting against the very thing Christian nationalism describes: the fusion of government authority with a particular Christian identity.

• Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Anglican Church in Virginia and guaranteed religious freedom to people of all faiths and none. The statute explicitly rejected the idea that government should support or enforce any religious doctrine.

• James Madison wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, laying out fifteen reasons why government should never support any religion. Madison’s argument was not that Christianity was unimportant to him personally, but that government support corrupts both religion and government.

• The Constitution makes no reference to any specific religion beyond the date — “in the year of our Lord” 1787, a standard dating convention. It forbids religious tests for officeholders. The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom and forbids “establishment” of a national religion.

• The Federalist Papers, which advocated for the Constitution, do not cite the Bible as a source for any governing principle. The documented proceedings of the Constitutional Convention do not cite it either. The founders drew on Enlightenment thinking — Locke, Montesquieu, Hume — not scripture.

What the historians say

Mark David Hall, a historian who argues Christianity did strongly impact the founding, acknowledges that core founders did not hold traditional Christian beliefs. Several key founders either rejected core Christian doctrines or were vague enough to keep historians debating. Jefferson edited his own Bible to remove the miracles. Franklin was a deist who described God as a clockmaker. Adams rejected the Trinity.

“Most — nearly all — serious historians agree that America was not founded as a Christian nation in any meaningful legal, philosophical, or constitutional sense,” says Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The group decries efforts “to redefine America according to the Christian Nationalist disinformation and then reshape our law accordingly.”

The propaganda function

Jeffress’s claim functions as propaganda because it uses the authority of the Founders — the men who wrote the Constitution — to argue for the opposite of what they wrote. The Founders wrote a Constitution that forbade religious tests and established religious freedom. Jeffress claims they would have wanted the government to enforce Christian identity. The Founders wrote a document that drew on Enlightenment philosophy, not scripture. Jeffress claims they were Christian nationalists. The Founders spent their careers preventing the fusion of church and state. Jeffress claims they would have embraced it.

This is not a debate about history. It is a debate about power. The claim that America was founded as a Christian nation is used to justify policies that privilege Christianity in law — from school prayer to abortion bans to anti-LGBTQ legislation. The historical record does not support the claim. The claim does not need the historical record. It needs only to be repeated loudly enough, by people with enough authority, to enough people who will not check.

Verdict: False. The Founders wrote a Constitution that forbade religious tests and established religious freedom. They fought against the fusion of church and state. They would not have embraced Christian nationalism. They built the system specifically to prevent it.