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What Happens When Courts Test Freedom By Tradition
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A “historical” series can look authentic and still sell you a false story, and that matters because stories shape what we think America is. We respond to a listener question about the History Channel’s Sons of Liberty and explain why accuracy is more than dates and costumes. We talk about the telltale signs of a modern, cynical lens that spotlights grime, vice, and cheap drama while flattening the founding era’s strongest motivations: faith, duty, courage, and a fierce sense of justice rooted in something bigger than politics.
From there, we zoom out into a bigger question that sits right at the intersection of faith and culture: after Dobbs and the Supreme Court’s renewed emphasis on “history and tradition,” could a state establish a religion or require a statement of faith for public officials the way some early states once did? We walk through the legal framework that complicates that idea, especially selective incorporation and how the Fourteenth Amendment has been used to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, shifting enormous authority to federal courts over time.
We also dig into religious tests for office and why Torcaso v. Watkins (1961) is still a key case for understanding church and state, the First Amendment, and why so many public expressions of religion were pushed out of schools and civic life in the 1960s. If you care about constitutional history, the American Revolution, and how to measure pop culture against primary sources, this conversation gives you tools you can use immediately. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with your take: should “history and tradition” be the standard that guides the courts?
Foundations Setup And Support
Rick GreenIt's Foundations of Freedom Thursday on the intersection of Faith and Culture WallBuilder Show. You can find out more about us at wallbuilders.show. That's where you can catch some of the latest radio programs. And then also wallbuilders.com, our main website for everything else, including making that one-time or monthly contribution. We appreciate all of you that have already done that. Encourage the rest of you to do that as well. It's a great way to give up your life, your fortune, your sacred honor, your time. Takes a few minutes to get on the website, click on there your fortune, make that donation. And then, of course, your sacred honor. Well, that's your reputation, folks. That's how you share to other people they need to make a donation as well and be a part of our wall builders family. So do all that today. Life, Fortune, Sacred Honor, great way to come alongside us. And of course, on Foundations of Freedom Thursday, you get to even ask the questions. So send those in. Radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wallbuilders.com. Regreen here with David Barton and Tim Barton.
Is Sons Of Liberty Accurate
Rick GreenAnd uh guys, first question up for our foundation questions is about the Sons of Liberty. Kimberly said it's a show on prime video. If possible, can anyone tell me if the movie is somewhat accurate? And how do we find out if a movie such as this is valid? Because wall builders offer that info or another organization. Thanks for your time and assistance. All right. So um I the general question first, guys, because I know we often do commentary on whatever's coming out. You know, A Great Awakening was a historical movie this summer that we talked about. Of course, the Young Washington, which wow, David, you wrote the book on that. Literally wrote the book on that about three decades ago. Um in this case, it's uh I think if she's referring to the it's not a movie, I think it's a series. If it is, I remember seeing a couple of episodes of this, uh, but toss it to you guys first, and then I'll try to remember if it's the one I'll look up and see if it's the one I'm thinking of.
SPEAKER_01Rick, I'm not sure either, but just for context, Sons of Liberty, we're we're back to about 1765, 1770, that period leading up to the American War for Independence, and we're talking about leaders like Sam Adams and John Adams and John Hancock and Paul Revere and James Otis and and all these great, iconic kind of Massachusetts founding father leaders. So I recall the series, what is it, HBO series? You remember, Rick? Was it was it HBO?
Rick GreenI the John Adams episode or the John Adams series years ago was uh Sons of Liberty. I don't remember who actually produced it.
SPEAKER_02Well, when I went looking for it, guys, I I was curious what this was. Uh, and so I went on Amazon Prime and there's a 2014 or 2015 series. It's like six episodes or something. So it if they were hoping during multiple seasons it didn't get picked up, or maybe they were just doing like the HBO John Adams series and just in a series of so many episodes or telling the full story. I have not watched all of them. Uh and knowing it came out of 2014, 2015, kind of that time frame, uh, it definitely could have been trying to play off of uh some of the uh still legacy and momentum of the HBO John Adams series. So I have not seen it. Um, Rick, I know that you watched it, but it's been more than a decade ago now. Um, so I am always very cautious knowing that unless it is a faith-based organization usually that does this, um more times than not, they're leaving out some significant components of the narrative because if there is some kind of Christian idea behind it, they they kind of overlooked that. So, for example, the Sons of Liberty, uh, when they start the committees of correspondence, Sam Adams is the very first one in 1772. It's known as a Boston Pamphlet. There were three components of the Boston Pamphlet. It was the rights of the citizens as men, the rights of the citizens as Christians, and the rights of the citizen as British subjects. And if you if you read this pamphlet, which you can find it online and go back and read it, but especially that second section, the rights of the colonists as Christians, same Adams is making the appeal really in all three categories, that the king has violated their rights on very basic levels, that he's violated the rights that that they have just as natural-born men, like the laws of nature, that he's he's he's not respecting us as men. But then he's he's not respecting our rights as Christians. And then lastly, even as British subjects, which you can go into the idea that some of the the British Bill of Rights had been suspended for some of the uh American colonists that were still the British colonists in America, so it's still British people, but the Bill of Rights was suspended. All that to say is if you read that second section, the rights of the colonists as Christians, it's very, very clear that part of what Sam Adams is appealing to is not just a secular argument, it is a faith-driven argument. Sam Adams was the great great-grandson of a Puritan that came to America with John Winthrop. He has a deep faith and Christian connection. He was described, maybe it was John Adams, that said he was the most pious Christian of all of them. And so I say all of this to say that oftentimes when you have a big studio that's gonna do a series, they will often uh exclude things that they think uh are religious or don't fit the narrative of where they're going. And the reality is the Sons of Liberty, to some extent, were a little bit of rebel rousers, and there was some craziness. There was definitely some destruction uh and uh maybe not the most genteel individuals that were all part of the Sons of Liberty, but it's because it was a very wide scent, and yet in the midst of it, there were some very outspoken Christians who were leaders. Um, some of the big influences of the Sons of Liberties were in fact pastors. Again, all that to say is I haven't seen the series, but generally speaking, unless it's coming from a director, a producer, or a studio that we are familiar with, I always take it with a big grain of salt. So that's me not having seen it, just already having a little skepticism. But Rick, I don't know if you can remember a decade ago when you saw it.
Rick GreenI can't,
Faith And Founders Left On Cutting Room
Rick Greenbut guess what? Uh as you were talking, Tim, I I searched my email and I found an email uh from about two years ago that I sent to one of my boys because he had asked about this, one of my sons. And so I'm just gonna read this to you guys. This is actually what I wrote to him. I said, a lot of the imagery, the sets, the costumes, the tone, the energy are very similar to what I would love to see in a series about the Founding Fathers. However, I now remember why I never watched the series. This is what I wrote to my son two years ago. I gave up 10 minutes into it. The worldview is the problem. They wrote and produced this from a negative view of America and our founders. Very much a deconstructive mindset of tear down the founders so that we feel better about ourselves. It drips with it. The streets are dirty and people are sullen and rude and everything is dark. The heroes are certainly sinners, not saints, and the bad characteristics are emphasized instead of the good ones. The whole smuggling operation, the beta male Hancock, the drunken Sam Adams, the jerk John Adams. While we want to humanize them and even show their rough sides, this series is typical Hollywood glorifying the wrong things because they have the wrong worldview going into it. I do like the depiction of Dr. Warren, uh, at least a little bit uh of the Paul uh Paul Revere, but the tavern sets are dark and drunken and debauched. And so, you know, I basically said to him, it'd be great if somebody would do something like this, but dial back to a more reasonable depiction instead of the viewer coming away thinking the founders were just as bad as New York City and Detroit today, they were essentially a mafia of selfish thugs. We should want them coming away thinking so Boston inherited the grit and determination and perseverance and tenacity and fierce sense of justice from the pilgrims based in a sense of duty, honor, faith, and liberty. They were scrappy, but they weren't Hunter Biden. So that's that's what I wrote to my son. That is great. I hope that it gives us a little context.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I would say that probably there are many people listening who have seen the series, and and I would love to know if if you have watched it, if there are redemptive elements later where you're like, guys, I know it starts crazy, but like episode three, episode four, it turns around. So I I would be very open to having somebody tell me, hey, actually, guys, uh, it's the exact opposite of what you got the vibe of in the first 10 minutes. Or if you've seen it, say, actually, guys, uh, you're spot on. That's exactly what they did. Because fortunately, we are uh able to do a ton of research with original documents, and we are able to travel all over the nation and talk with groups and have meetings, and we have this show we do, and we have podcasts, there's so much we are doing. And I say fortunately, because God has blessed us to be able to do this. However, that does mean that we don't always have time to go watch a bunch of series just for the review of them. Uh, and so if it's something that we enjoy, if it's something that's kind of more in line with uh the entertainment we're looking for, I'm totally gonna watch it. But I have not watched this yet. So if somebody has watched it, I would love to know your assessment of it. Obviously, I can uh get a get online and get reviews and get a grok breakdown and et cetera, et cetera. But at this point, guys, for me, uh I probably won't go back and watch it. If it was coming out right now and it was trending, you know, in the top 10 on Amazon or on one of these streaming platforms, I would watch it just so we could comment on something that's really relevant right now. But given that it's more than a decade old and it probably uh is not gonna trend again real soon, I probably won't go watch it, but I'm wide open to hearing from people that have seen it, what you guys think about it.
SPEAKER_01The other thing I'd throw out is this was done in 2014, 15, uh thereabouts. They were producing it and putting it together in 2014, ran with apparently three episodes, and came out with six final episodes, and they shipped it to Australia, everywhere else. And and so coming out in 2014-2015, if you remember that era, that was an era when America was really under attack by its leaders. So President Obama, you know, was not the least of which about how bad America was in so many areas. And so that is before Trump comes in in 2017 and starts saying, hey, America's a great nation. Let's go back and remember who we were, remember how great we are. It's time we start acting like the great nation we are. And that that whole climate has so changed now that what we see as mainstream advertisements, what we see in so many places now, is so radically different from where it was 10 years ago or actually 12 years ago when this stuff started coming out. So I don't doubt at all that that, Rick, what what you remember and wrote that it was negative and it was really hostile toward the Founding Fathers because that was a time in America, particularly among the elite progressive leadership, where the Founding Fathers were hated, despised, and demeaned.
Rick GreenYeah, well, great question, by the way, you know, and and and to the audience, um, we love getting questions like this. Like Tim's saying, we we want to know what's popular in the culture right now and being consumed by people, because we can go research that. And with the Wall Boulders Museum and Library, there's so many good resources there to actually have the the true pump plumb line. That you have if you have the plumb line of truth, you can measure these cultural phenomons against it and at least give some commentary uh about it. So, yeah, please send more questions like that.
Break And How To Listen
Rick GreenThat's a great one. Uh, let's take a quick break. We've got a lot more questions to get to, but now's a good time for a break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. Hey friends, Rick Green from the WallBuilders Show. Encouraging you to share the program with friends and family and listen to it on the podcasts that are out there. There's so many options out there for you to listen to in the car or from home or while you're working out. You've got Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Castbox. I mean, there's so many options, and we just want to make sure you know we've worked hard to get it out there and make it available for you on all those different apps. Everybody's got their favorite app, so choose your particular app. And if it's not on there yet, email us, radio at wallbuilders.com, and let us know about your favorite podcast app, and we'll make sure WallBuilders Radio is listed there. But you can listen and most importantly, share it with your friends and family. That's how the program grows. That's how we get more truth in the hands of as many people as possible. And then, of course, wallbuilders.show, super easy place uh to find all of those podcast apps and to just download right there from that website as well as be able to share it with your friends and family. So check it out today, wallbuilders.show, or just go directly to your favorite podcast app, listen to the WallBuilder Show, and share it with as many people as you possibly can. Welcome back to the WallBuilders
Dobbs And The Tradition Standard
Rick GreenShow. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question comes from Kaylee. And guys, she's asking about the Dobbs decision. She said, in light of the Dobbs decisions, emphasis on historical practices and traditions, could a state legally establish a religion or mandate a statement of faith for public officials today, similar to the practices of the original 13 states. And just to give a little context, I think what she's talking about, and and I would even throw in the Bruin decision, the Second Amendment decision in this time frame that year, what was that guy? Twenty-two, twenty three, twenty-three, I can't remember. But there were three or four two. Yeah. Twenty-two. Okay. So there were three or four big decisions. And the and it was a recurring theme in these decisions, especially from Alito and Thomas and Gorsuch about basically saying, you know, if something has a rich tradition all throughout America's history, then it it yeah, that's good evidence that it was always constitutional to do that thing. And if it doesn't, if it's come around more recently and it wasn't allowed before that, it probably wasn't constitutional. And so that cut both ways for the Second Amendment. It was, you know, hey, we have a rich tradition in America of allowing people to keep and bear arms, and so they were upholding that. And then with abortion, it was, hey, we didn't have a tradition of abortion in this country. So anyway, just to give you context of what she means by, I think, what she means by the emphasis on historical practices and traditions, and then to repeat her question for you guys, um, could you do something with regard to an establishment of religion or a mandate on a statement of faith for public officials, like what they did with the original uh 13 constitutions?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and this is where it's going to be kind of fun for a minute here, because she's talking really, as you point out, Rick, the history and tradition test. We've talked about it several times, that if something's historical and traditional, they're going to make the assumption that it's probably constitutional. And so that changes the whole balance of thought on religious uh expression at schools and public places instead of assuming them to be unconstitutional, we now assume them to be constitutional. So as you go through that, all right, while we're talking about that, why couldn't a state just say, hey, history and tradition was the the states back then, the the 13 colonies before then, they established state denominations that they wanted to. Uh you had Pennsylvania that was Quaker, and you had Virginia that was Anglican, and you had the congregationalists kind of the quasi-Presbyans up in Massachusetts, and you have all these different ones, Baptists in Rhode Island. So why couldn't a state do that? And this is where it becomes somewhat fun with within that framework. Uh, this is known as Selective Incorporation's Bill of Rights. This is something that started in the early 1900s, and it goes back to the racism that was particularly perpetrated among the Democrat Party officially and among many Americans individually. And as you had the racism that led to slavery and all the slavery was there in the Civil War that resulted, because even after the Civil War was over and all slaves were freed, the Democrat Southern states, particularly the 11 in the former Confederacy, said, well, blacks may be free, but they don't get any rights. They don't have the right to have a gun. They don't have the right to get married. They don't have a right to own land. And so they may be free, but they've got no rights. And so what happened was eventually Congress in 1868 passed a constitutional amendment, the 14th Amendment, that said, look, every citizen gets the right of all the states, gets all the rights in the states in which they live. And so now blacks can hold land after 1868. Now blacks can get married. Now blacks can do all the other things that they were not allowed to do in those southern states before. And so what's happened over time, there's been challenges on religious activities. For example, uh part of what happened in taking prayer out of schools back in 62-63, the court called it the selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Although the the Fourteenth Amendment was there to stop this racial bigotry, we think that you can apply to all the other rights in the Bill of Rights. So we're going to take the First Amendment right on expression of religion, and we're going to say that states no longer have that right. We, the federal government, will tell them what that right is. And so over a process of 40 to 50 years through what they call the selective incorporation, they took clause after clause after clause in the Bill of Rights and said this applies to the states. Originally it only applied to the federal government, but now we're going to make it apply to the because the Bill of Rights did not limit any of the states. The Bill of Rights only limited the federal government. That's the way the founding fathers wrote it. All the states had the individual rights. They didn't want the federal government messing with
Selective Incorporation Changes Everything
SPEAKER_01them and taking them away. Then the court completely reversed that. What you get to is, okay, now we're back to the history and tradition test. So it would seem that now the the court's not going to go back to history and tradition until they dismantle that selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights through the 14th Amendment. They're going to have to deal with that at some point. That's what's caused the federal government to grow out of just out of sight and range. So much it used to belong to the states through selective incorporation, they said, well, now the federal government's in charge of that. And so that's where, beginning with the progressive in the 1920s, you saw that selective incorporation, it went through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, up into 2000s. So about 80 years, the court has grown its power to tell the nation what to do through selective incorporation. But even if you threw that out and said, well, let's go back to history and tradition, it's interesting that a lot of the states got rid of their state-established denominations somewhat early. And it's been literally more than 200 years for some of those states. So New Hampshire, they, 1817, said no more state establishment of religion here. Connecticut, 1818, Massachusetts, 1833, other states before that. I think of the original 13 at the time of the Bill of Rights, I think only nine of the 13 had a state religion. Four didn't. Now, granted, they probably could have had if they wanted to, but they didn't want to. So while it's tricky because of the Selective Incorporation Bill of Rights, it's also a little tricky because, yeah, they did it for a few years, but it's been 200 years since they've done it. So it might be even hard to show history and tradition on that. But what you can show history and tradition on is that the federal government was not allowed to stop religious activity in the states, whether that was school prayer or Bible or anything else. And that would be the part that you could really, I think, return to fairly easily.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I want to add one part to this, but I want to start with the caveat that during the break, I started looking up some reviews on the Sons of Liberty TV show. So when Rick asked the question and I knew you were answering it, I was like, all right, let me finish reading these reviews. So I didn't hear all of your answer. I'm going to caveat that right now. So if I start saying something and you're like, Tim, I said that, I'm going to be like, oh, great, you already covered it. Wonderful. But I do think I didn't hear you say it. So I do think one other thing you can factor in is not just some of the state religions. It's a fact that when you look at the early state constitutions, they also had religious requirements that you had to have religious professions and acknowledgement to hold office. And I know it's different than a state religion, but this was something that actually there were still state constitutions that had religious requirements for holding office up until 1961, when the U.S. Supreme Court, the same U.S. Supreme Court that in 1962 said we could not have Bible, or excuse me, we couldn't have prayer in schools. In 1963, they said we couldn't have Bible in schools. It's that same Supreme Court in 1961, they said that no state can have any religious requirement for holding office because it violates the First Amendment. But all of that to say is those are other factors that when you start looking broader at history and tradition, not only state religion, but religious requirements from the Christian religion, because some of those early state constitutions required that you had to be a Protestant or you had to be Trinitarian, et cetera, or you couldn't hold office.
SPEAKER_01Tim, that is such a good point. That case, I forgot about it, is Torcaso versus Watkins. And it was a simple requirement that you have to have a belief in God to hold office. And that is the lightest and the smallest of any of the requirements that were out there. Hey, Dad, now specifically, you're talking about that where the U.S.
SPEAKER_02Supreme Court overturned, and ultimately they said that no state can have any state requirement in 1961. But the state religious requirement, was it Delaware, Rhode Island? It was, it was some small state around there. And literally it said you can't hold office if you don't have a belief in God, which is not a crazy thought to imagine. But this is when you're saying it was the least of the religious requirements, when you look back at some of the things the founding fathers required in their state constitutions, there was some depth of theology at times that you had to hold and acknowledge. Before you could hold office. But by the 1960s, there weren't a lot of these left still in state constitutions, but there was some. But when the Supreme Court looked at this specific one you're referring to, where it you had to have an acknowledgement of a belief in God to hold office, and the Supreme Court said, Yeah, you can't do that. It violates the First Amendment, which there's always levels of irony when the Supreme Court is going to say things the founding fathers wrote in their state constitutions violated the U.S. Constitution, even though some of the things they wrote in their state constitutions they wrote in after the U.S. Constitution. So that didn't make any sense at all. But that's the case that in 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court said, not only are we striking down this state's profession of faith to hold public office, we're going to say that no state can have any in their Constitution ever again. So again, they're overreaching to remove the Christian influence that was explicitly written in some of these state constitutions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that was a state of Maryland
Religious Tests And Torcaso v Watkins
SPEAKER_01that did that. And what's interesting is Maryland used to have much more stringent requirements. And by that case in the 60s, it was much, much less. And they had reduced it only to having a belief in God because the oath of office officially says so help me God. So how can you say so help me God if you don't believe in God and keep your oath? And so that was the logic. We'll reduce it to the bare minimum. And the Supreme Court said, no, you can't even do that. You can keep so help me God in your oath, but nobody really believes that, so you can't require a belief in God. And it was just so stupid how they went because Maryland had already reduced it to the smallest component and still kept it legal. And that is that you have to declare by oath, by law, a belief, so help me God. And it was and it was that they got struck down. So that's where the craziness really went in, that you can't have any even acknowledgement of God. And that's where we saw atheism start moving through the courts and getting preferential treatment to religion. And that's where atheism became the de facto position of the court, because if it's religious, we're going to strike it down. If it's not religious, we're going to uphold it. And no longer was there any kind of balance. But you're exactly right, Tim. It was Maryland, and it's after decades of them kind of loosening up and doing things so different because they had been a Catholic state back in the founding, and they loosened that up as as time went along. And now we're just down to have a belief in God, because you take a note that says, So help me God. And the court said even that was unconstitutional.
Rick GreenExcellent discussion, guys. And of course, so much of that is why we've ended up in the mess we've ended up in the culture and the morality of the culture by getting rid of all those things. So, Tim, you were saying, you were saying you were ignoring your Dad. No, I'm sorry. You were saying you were doing research, um, really important research, and listening to your Dad. What did you find about Sons of Liberty?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I just trusted my Dad enough to know he has this one. He's got it. I'm gonna I'm gonna do some research. So uh just real quick, there's lots of articles, but one of them, um, there's there was criticism focused on the Sons of Liberty, the TV series. And by the way, it was done by the History Channel in 2015. Uh, so the History Channel, not known for being the most historically accurate, which is ironic given their name, but the criticism focused on heavy liberties with history, condensing timelines, ages, and personalities altered, such as Sam Adams was portrayed as a young athletic bachelor rather than a middle-aged, Harvard-educated, deeply religious family man. Also were included uh romantic intrigue, including a largely unsupported affair involving Joseph Warren and Margaret Gage, on and on it goes. The conclusion of this little review was if you treat it as entertainment and not reliable history, you can enjoy the series. Now, when you're doing a history series and the review is hey, don't think of this as history, just have entertainment
Entertainment Versus Real History
SPEAKER_02right. Because and then the review is much longer, but everything we were talking about is what some of the criticisms were. Not that they were necessarily bashing, trying to make the founding fathers look bad, but they were they were normalizing them in our modern culture instead of recognizing the values of that culture and who they were and what they did by including a love affair with Dr. Joseph Warren, et cetera. Just crazy things they included. So only entertainment, not actual history.
Rick GreenOnly entertainment, not actual history from the history channel. Too funny. You can't make this stuff up, folks. All right, we're out of time for today. You can uh still send your questions in, though. Radio at wallbuilders.com. We'll get some of those next Thursday. You don't want to miss tomorrow because that's good news Friday. We got a lot of good news coming your way. You've been listening to the WallBulder Show.
