James Talarico

I think probably in a deliberate attempt to be less sectarian and more open.

I mean, a lot of our founders, if we're being honest, some of them weren't religious at all.

You know, Thomas Paine.

And then a lot of them weren't really what we would consider Christians today.

A lot of them were deists where they saw God as this impersonal clockmaker who created the universe and stepped away.

Clockmaker.

And I'm not— That's an interesting way of describing it.

Well, and I'm not casting aspersion that.

I think this is how Deus would describe it.

Yeah.

And it's because they were enlightenment thinkers, so they were enthralled by physics and the natural scientists.

And they saw that the universe fit together.

in this perfect way, almost like a clock or a watch.

And so they assume that God was this watchmaker, this clockmaker, and then kind of stepped away from God's creation.

That is a very different view.

It's not an invalid view.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on that view, but it's very different than a lot of Christians today who have a personal relationship with God and feel God's intervention in our lives and in our world.

And so those are very different kinds of religious.

And so for Christian nationalists today to say, you know, that our founders were these evangelical Protestant Christians is just not quite historically accurate.

These were Enlightenment thinkers.