Bill Federer

And so Providence, Rhode Island was founded by the first congregational church, Hartford, Connecticut.

rather was founded by the First Congregational Church and Providence by the First Baptist Church and Maryland by Catholics.

And so everybody's involved in church and everybody's involved in politics because it's the church founding the city.

It wasn't until the 1700s with the Great Awakening revival that this movement came along that if you're really spiritual, you'll withdraw from worldly things, including government.

And so it was the early 1700s, you get this idea, I'm more spiritual than you are because I'm not involved in politics.

It's like, that wasn't the 1600s.

1600s, everybody's involved in politics.

The word polis means city.

Politics is the business of the city, and it's the church founding the city, so they're all involved.

But in the 70s, they realized that

We need to, you know, in reading American history, you have multiple decades where Protestants and Catholics were hitting each other in loggerheads, right?

And it was not good.

But in the 70s, we realized, wait, this has gone deep.

Now, when they first took prayer out of schools, it was Protestants and Catholics arguing over it.

And they said, let's just not have it at all.

And they left a vacuum.

And within just a short time, that vacuum was filled by all the sexual promiscuity and the atheism.

And so we're coming back, trying to regain ground.

We used to have, saying, look, we need to make up...

I was reading Washington when he was there, you know, Dorchester Heights in Boston and in the Harvard Yard had some soldiers from Connecticut, and they were going to do the annual burning of the pope in effigy.