Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us today on The WallBuilders Show. We've got a great program for you today. Mark David Hall is gonna be joining us. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. You can learn more about us at our website, wallbuilders.com. And then also if you've missed any radio programs over the last few weeks and months, check that out at wallbuilder.show. And in both cases, please share, share, share as one of the best ways for people to learn truth is that you become a force multiplier and get that truth in front of them. We're putting a lot of great information out. Teaching, training, equipping, inspiring. There's so much good news to share with people right now and of course the foundational principles of our country are good news in and of themselves. So when you share the program, you're getting that good information in front of people. So be sure to do that today. Wallbuilders.com and wallbuilders dot show. Alright guys, Mark David Hall will be with us later. We had a question actually from the audience so we'd normally do this on a Thursday but we sent it over to Mark David Hall and we'll ask him about this Madison question of, was Madison anti-religion? You know, was he, ome of the things he said in writings and things. Does that mean that he didn't support religion or want religion to have any impact on the culture? So it's gonna be a really interesting question today. 

Tim Barton [00:01:15] Yeah, and especially in the contemplations that for the anti-Founding Father being Christian crowd, right? Those that would advocate that, no, the Founding Fathers were deists or they were people that rejected faith and rejected Christianity. Whatever kind of accusations we hear, and we've heard them all, usually there's only a couple of things that people will point to. They'll point to Thomas Paine. They'll point to maybe like the Treaty of Tripoli from John Adams, and James Madison is another one they will point to now. Oftentimes they'll also point to the Jefferson Bible. And there's really logical answers and good defenses for virtually all of the things that people point to that is very easy to show that it's a misrepresentation for the oversimplification of where they've arrived to say, well then, you know, clearly these guys weren't religious, and it's also worth noting that when people accuse the Founding Fathers of not being religious, it's as if James Madison or Thomas Jefferson, the quote-unquote Jefferson Bible, those are reflective of every single other Founding Father where you have to discount guys like Benjamin Rush or John Witherspoon, right? Or like go down the list, Francis Hopkinson, people that were very involved with ministry, that were involved with faith and theology. And because we don't know so many of the other founding fathers, it's easy for the other side to frame it and say, well, let me tell you three or four people that were really anti-religious. And even though they weren't, they'll take things from them. They will often distort them to make it seem anti- religious because we don't more founding fathers. We don't realize how inaccurate those statements are that this is not reflective of all the founding fathers and at times not even reflective of those individuals themselves sothat this is a really great topic and Mark David Hall has written about the faith in America and the founding fathers for so long. He's been a great friend, for a lot of years. So I'm excited to get into this, but this is definitely an important topic to spend some time diving into given the misrepresentation has been going on for so many decades now about the faith of the founding fathers. 

David Barton [00:03:32] Yeah, one of the things that comes out and the question that we've got from the listener deals with what's called the memorial and remonstrance. And we've talked about how that the court has shifted so much toward religious liberty over the last five to six years, going back to 2019. They really started moving away from where they had been. And the period before that, they were a hardcore secularist court. And we talked to have a lemon decision. That you have more than 7,000 times that the court has used Lemon Case to remove religion from public square. So in that period of really that 40 to 50 years where that they were forcing secularism into America, that was never what the founders intended. And so a book that we did some years back is called Original Intent. It's used as a book in law schools and universities and other places. And it goes through kind of where America was originally with religious library. How it changed, when it changed and now we're coming back. And so let me back up to the change time. From the time of the First Amendment all the way through written in 1789, ratified, you're going through, it's not until 1947 that you have a Supreme Court that says, hey, we think the public square should be secular. We don't think we need religious activities in the public Square. And that's where in that case in 47. They for the first time used Jefferson's letter, but only extract eight words from it, a wall of separation between church and state. So instead of giving the 233-word letter, only three paragraphs long, and the previous courts used all of Jefferson's letters to keep religion in the public square. They come up with an eight-word phrase and said this is what Thomas Jefferson wanted. He did not want any vestige of religion in public whatsoever. So they start citing that, And we've documented that in these First Amendment cases. They are more likely to cite Jefferson's separation letter than they are the First Amendment when dealing with the First amendment. The other one that they started using at the same time was Madison's memorial and remonstrance. They said, look, James Madison called the father of the Constitution. He absolutely wanted a secular public square where the memorial remonstrants proves that. And so you'll find that over that period of time from about 1947 up until about probably 2010, 2015, those are the two historical documents that are used in court after court after court after, court after. It's like that's the only two historical documents the founding fathers wrote. And both of them are such complete perversions of what those guys intended when they did that. What Madison was doing was not creating a secular public square. I mean, he was responding to something that Patrick Henry had done. Patrick Henry, bless his heart, had a He was trying to make things better because you've had an Anglican state in Virginia that's, you know, coercing your religious belief. And Henry says, hey, we need to have religion in the state, but let's let everybody choose where they want their taxes to go. They can choose the church of their choice. It doesn't have to go to the Anglicans church. You can choose your own church. And Madison stepped in and said, no, no, that's not a good idea. That's not what you want done. And that was not a secular argument that was going on whatsoever. You know, Patrick Henry's trying to... Take a middle step into something better than what Virginia had. And then you've got Madison said, no, the principle is this. And so that, that whole concept, those,  two documents are need to be re recaptured. So when you look at Mark David Hall and all the writing he does back in that era, probably nobody better to help recapture the tone of what was intended by that. And I think we've kind of recapture the separation church and state document. More in the last 10 years than we had done in previous 40. But that memorial and remonstrance document is one that needs to be recaptured, needs to re-understood, because it's the other major weapon the secularists use to keep religion out of the public square, and that was never its intent. 

Rick Green [00:07:35] Mark David Hall from Regent University. Our special guest when we return, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:08:45] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Mark David Hall back with us, hey man. Good to have you back, sir. 

Mark David Hall [00:08:50] Good to be back. 

Rick Green [00:08:51] You know, so many times we get listener questions and the first response from me or David or Tim is, we gotta get Mark David hall on to answer that, man. Hey, by the way, catch us up. You're at your Regent now and and things going well there. Tell us what's going on 

Mark David Hall [00:09:06] Yeah, so Regent began a PhD program about two years ago and they brought me in to help mentor graduate students. So yeah, I'm there loving it. It's a great place to be. Anyone interested in pursuing a doctoral degree or an MA should contact me. 

Rick Green [00:09:20] I, you know, it's it's interesting. Michelle Bachman and I've been talking now for about two years about me getting my doctorate with you guys. So, and at some point I'm hoping to be studying with you, brother. I really do want to do it. Just no time, right now, but man, you guys have such a good program and we're just so thankful for the people that you're training. I've had quite a few Patriot Academy grads go through there and, just phenomenal experiences. So thrilled to have you there, brother,. 

Mark David Hall [00:09:45] Well, we'd love to have you there as well. 

Rick Green [00:09:47] Well, here's the today's question that we got. This came from a listener who said, hey, could you please explain the memorial and remonstrance against religious assessments by James Madison, June 20th, 1785, written in response to a proposed tax in Virginia? The listener said, I'm 10 pages in and even though it's written in English, I don't understand what he's saying. I can't even announce the name of it, Mark. So this listener's at least trying to read through the whole thing. Is he for or against it? What was the tax? I don't get it. Thanks for what you do. So with as it is with a lot of these founders writings It's sometimes hard to it's I call it hard slogging and David Barton always reminds me, you know Rick most of this stuff was written for the average upstate New York farmer. So you're way behind but Anyway, Mark, what do you think man? 

Mark David Hall [00:10:33] Yeah, sure. So to take a step back, the Anglican Church, so it's the Church of England, had been the established Church of Virginia, and among other things, that meant that everyone was taxed to support the Church Of England in Virginia. So Baptists were taxed, Presbyterians were tax, Methodists were taxes. Now during the war for American Independence, the government of Virginia was busy doing a lot of other things and so they ceased taxing everyone to support the Church of England. You had a lot of Baptists and Presbyterians who really did not like paying taxes to support the Church of England, and so there were practical reasons for not attempting to tax them. And so basically, the government got out of the business of taxing people to support an established church. Now, this really was worrisome to Patrick Henry, and so after the war for American independence, he said, look, guys, religion is really important. And by religion, he meant Christianity, of course. Christianity is very, very important, and so we need to come up with a scheme to tax people to support ministers. Otherwise, the best and brightest young men will become attorneys, or merchants, or doctors. They won't go into the ministry. And so he proposed a general assessment bill which basically would tax people to support the church they chose to attend. So if you think about it, that's not actually all that impressive. If you're a Baptist, you're taxed the Baptist Church. Presbyterian Church and Anglican, you're taxed to support the Anglicans Church. And so this was not an unreasonable plan, however, there were people opposed to it, and James Madison was one of them. And so he wrote the memorial and remonstrance against this plan, and basically his argument was that any government control of or support of the church is bad for the church. And so, we ought to reject this general assessment plan. And just get the government out of the business of religion altogether. And so his remonstrance was against Patrick Henry's plan. Now sometimes secular historians treat this as an objection to supporting religion, but it was not. Madison's argument was that government's support of or control of religion, by which he meant Christianity, is actually bad for Christianity. We need to get the Government out of the business of Christianity and leave that to the church. And ultimately Madison won the day. Patrick Henry's general assessment bill was lost and the government got out of the business of supporting religion in Virginia, that is supporting religion through tax dollars. Madison late in life reflected on this. It was something like 1820s in there. He wrote a letter saying that basically this getting the government out of the business of religion was excellent for Christianity. Christianity was flourishing in Virginia in a way it never had done before in the 1820s, 1830s. So, yeah, so ultimately, Madison was against Patrick Henry's general assessment bill, but he was against it because he understood it to be bad for Christianity. More important than Madison's memorial remonstrance was an evangelical petition written in the same context. And basically, this petition argued that Christianity was far more pure before Constantine established it as the official faith of the Roman Empire, and that Jesus Christ Himself did not require government support. We need to get the government out of the business of religion, and then Christianity will flourish. And so, basically, Madison, these evangelicals, and most right-thinking Virginians, I think, were against government control of and support of religion. And by support, I mean tax support of religions. So, the remonstrance was against government taxation to support Christianity, but I think the reasoning was exactly correct. 

Rick Green [00:14:20] Yeah, so it's such an important take home message there that like you said, a lot of times people will try to say this means he was, you know, against religion itself or against,  you know, faith having an important role in our, in our public and private lives. And, and, really it was an argument over, you know, what, what's the, what the right way to support. And, I did not realize, that, that the early tax was literally taking money. You were literally taxing people of other denominations to support particular denomination. So I could totally understand why their knee-jerk reaction certainly would be if we get government involved then whoever controls the power strings is going to direct the money to the sect of their choice and it should be that the individuals get to direct that money where they want it to go, which is essentially what we have today. 

Mark David Hall [00:15:06] Yeah, that's exactly right. So let me tell you a fun piece of trivia. So it's often assumed that when Patrick Henry's bill was defeated and Thomas Jefferson's bill to establish religious liberty was passed in 1786, that that is a formal end of religious establishment in Virginia, but it's not. In 1784, Virginia passed a law telling the Anglican Church in Virginia how it would govern itself. Now think about that. The government of Texas passing a law to tell the Southern Baptist Church and in Texas, how to govern itself, right? There's not really greater intrusion. This bill was not repealed, this law was not it repealed until 1787. And so I would say that is when the Anglican Church was formally disestablished in Virginia. And again, I wanna highlight, some governments are better than others. I much prefer your government in Texas to mine in Oregon, but in any government, I do not want any government controlling my church. I think the church is far better off when the government keeps its hand off of it. 

Rick Green [00:16:08] And, you know, that's, I think when most people hear, you know, even though even the phrase separation church and state, when they hear that kind of stuff, I think that's what they're thinking is that's what they are for is, to say, we don't want the government controlling our church or telling our church when it can open or what it has to believe or how it governs itself or what its membership is going to look like or what it spends its money on or how it builds its buildings or, or any of those things that makes sense. That's the separation that we want. Unfortunately, a lot of the times the people that are that are pushing that narrative, they actually want the other way. They want the church people to not be involved in the state at all. And so having that distinction and explaining this history is so important for a right understanding of the proper role in the proper spheres of jurisdiction here. 

Mark David Hall [00:16:56] You know, I think that's exactly right. And I've come really to dislike that phrase, separation of church and state, because you're exactly right, there's a proper understanding of it. The church and the state are separate institutions, and the State ought not to control the church, and church ought not control the state. But I prefer to focus on the words of the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. And now by extension, the states, Texas, Oregon, shall make no law respect the establishment religion. The reason I like those words is it's crystal clear, that's a one-way barrier. It's a restriction on the state, on civic rulers. It is not a restriction of the people of God. Religious people have every right to be involved in matters of state, to be lobbying, to end slavery, to end Jim Crow legislation, to end abortion and that sort of thing. In no way, shape or form can the Establishment Clause be understood as a restriction on the people God. Whereas a phrase separation of church and state can be misconstrued in that way. 

Rick Green [00:17:54] That's so good, Mark. And that's in, of course, the second half, the free exercise clause right there with it, nor prohibiting the free exercises thereof. When you take them together, you really do understand these are restrictions on the state, not on the church or on individuals or on people of faith. So important, man, to be on a fly on the wall and to have been able to hear some of the debates between Henry and Madison, whether it was, you know, at the ratification convention for the Constitution or here later on these kind of issues would have been oh, it would have been so cool. I wish we had a time machine. If you, if you run across one, would you, would you invite me and we can go back and watch some of those. 

Mark David Hall [00:18:28] Yeah, that would be great. I agree with you a hundred percent. 

Rick Green [00:18:31] Hey, thanks for, uh thanks for bringing this to life for us. God bless you, brother. Thanks for coming on WallBuilders today. 

Mark David Hall [00:18:36] Hey, thanks so much. Good talking to you again. 

Rick Green [00:18:39] Stay with us, folks, we'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:19:48] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Mark David Hall for joining us as well. And man, that was a major turn from what the left is saying. I mean, they're literally saying the opposite of what Mark David Hall is saying, and it definitely gives you, you know, I'm probably the, I would say, of course, David, you probably read more of The Founding Fathers than anybody alive today, but what Mark just said, it would have been the predominant view, not just Madison's view. But as whoever that historian was that said Christianity was the atmosphere they were breathing, I mean, it just doesn't fit to think that Madison would have been anti-religion. 

Rick Green [00:20:27] No, you can't make Madison anti-religion. I mean, that's just not it. And you're right, that phrase by Stephen Colwell, that Christianity was the atmosphere they were breathing. That's why when you look at even that 1892 Supreme Court case, Church of the Holy Trinity, there's more than 80 precedents there showing why the founding fathers, item after item after item, and not just the founders, going all the way back to the beginning of America. They had no intent to purge Christianity from the public square. They had no intend to secularize the public Square. None of that whatsoever. And so when you go back and understand the atmosphere they were breathing, it is ridiculous to suggest that they wanted Christianity to be removed from that atmosphere. Cause that is the atmosphere that provided their civil liberty. That's the atmosphere that provided their business liberty. Even their business model, what we might call the free market systems, the biblical system. We talked about that. You look at federal practice procedure all of our due process rights come from the Bible back to Geneva Bible, you know, we just look at so many things in our government that come from that and you're suggesting that they didn't want that to be part of our public sphere. Of course they did. That's why they put it in where they get it from well, we know it came from the bible. So that's a document that that really I haven't heard used much recently the memorial remonstrance, but I think that as religion is starting to come back into the public sphere and we're seeing like 10 commandments bills passed in Arkansas where Governor Sanders just signed that 10 commandments bill and we've seen in Texas where they passed a bill here in Texas through the House to restore prayer and Bible reading into public schools at the start of the day and we are seeing that kind of stuff across the nation. I think they're gonna go back to the abuse of the separation phrase as well as the abuse of memorial remonstrance. And cat on the fact that we haven't been teaching history in fifty years and hope that that will give them the precedent they need to convince the legislators and the public that we should have a secular public square which was never the intent with any of those documents 

Tim Barton [00:22:29] Well, and some of the additional irony in the midst of this, James Madison, the guy known as the father of the constitution, he was obviously one of the individuals very involved at the constitution convention. He's a member of the first Congress when they're coming up with a bill of rights. He's the one that has so many proposals and suggestions. Fisher Ames is the guy who ultimately does the wording for what became known as The First Amendment, but James Madison is there for all of it. In the midst, of this the speaker of the house is the Reverend. Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, there's other pastors that are members of the First Congress. They have chaplains in the First Congress. They actually approve to have church in the Capitol building. I mean, you just go down the list of all of the religious activities that they are actively doing and participating in as members of Congress, as the founding fathers themselves, and then this notion that in the midst of all their religious activity, that somehow they're secular, somehow James Madison is anti-religious, you have to discount the majority of his life and his activity in political life to come to the conclusion that this guy was anti- religious and this is one of those things that people at times will point to to say, see, he didn't want religion in government and as Mark David Hall pointed out so well, that that's not what he was doing. He and Patrick Henry were having a discussion. And he wasn't suggesting we shouldn't have faith in government, rather that it's not good for faith when government is the funder of faith. And this is a fundamental distinction and a very large difference from what is argued today. 

David Barton [00:24:14] And you know, Tim, going back to what you were just saying in the same way, you look back to the fact that you have Thomas Jefferson, who literally in 1803, uses federal funds to pay for Catholic priests to go to the Cuscusi Indians. Where's that secular square they wanted? Or you go to the fact, that the the history of Colombian education in Washington DC, Jefferson is the author of the plan of education, and the Bible is the primary reading text in Washington DC schools under Jefferson's plan of education. That doesn't line up with any of the other stuff we hear. 

Tim Barton [00:24:44] No, and then let's also point out that, I mean, there's many more things you can say from Jefferson. I don't mean to derail you on this, but it's worth noting this is the guy that they say gave us the quote-unquote separation of church and state. And the guy that gave us separation church and state is the one that is vice president under John Adams approves church service to be held in the Capitol building. He's the one, that as you mentioned, is helping fund what we would know as missionaries to the Indians helping fund the construction of these religious buildings, institutions. I mean, you go down the list of what the founding fathers themselves actually did. And the fact today that we look at a guy like Jefferson and say, separation church today, that's what he's known for, or even James Madison, whether it's his detached memoranda, whatever it is people wanna kind of stick on him. And they're saying, well, see, this is what they did. Again, you have to divorce their entire life in the context from them. To look at one little thing and say, well, this is what it must mean. That, that is a very, very poor way to study history. But when your goal is to promote an agenda, a philosophy or ideology, then you might not want to use all of history because it might not support your position. And that's been the reality we've been dealing with in the modern era. They're having to ignore history to make their argument, not using history to support their argument. 

David Barton [00:26:05] So important when we've been talking about, guys, this is going back to that rebuilding liberty concept that we've been talking, about and that we're going to do for the next year or so. You have to have the right bricks. You have the have the the right mortar. And to get rid of the faith that are to try to reframe the founders, to not be people of faith that they didn't build with bricks and mortar that was, in fact, faith-based totally changes the America. That's the goal of the left is to change what America really is. So we need to know the truth about these things. And that's why what Wall Builders is doing is so important. Folks, be sure to share the program, wallbuilders.show for the radio program and wallbuilder.com for all of our other tools and resources. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.