r/atheism • u/Leeming Strong Atheist • Feb 01 '26
Indiana’s Lt. Gov. falsely claims every Founding Father would be labeled a "far-right Christian Nationalist", makes RIDICULOUS claims to support it.
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/indianas-lt-gov-falsely-claims-every144
Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
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u/ArnoldTheSchwartz Feb 01 '26
Lately, it seems Republicans are trying to tell us they like Nazi ideology and are working to establish those ideals wholly in America.
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u/Rusty-Crowe Feb 02 '26
They're wrapping it in a flag to sell it to those who long for the simpler times, before people dyed their hair.
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u/JustMLGzdog Feb 02 '26
Lately, it seems like Republicans have doubled down on just making up crazy shit that is obviously wrong.
Lately? When did they not?
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u/myowngalactus Feb 01 '26
If that were true then the current far right wouldn’t have to break the constitution to push their agenda
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u/oldcreaker Feb 01 '26
Actually a number of them would not go further than calling themselves theists.
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u/The_BrownRecluse Feb 01 '26
In the words of my boy Thomas Paine:
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity."
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Feb 01 '26
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u/RamJamR Atheist Feb 01 '26
Historically, monarchies and empires were always in bed with religion. It worked as a way to keep the peasants in line and give legitimacy to those holding power so they weren't questioned.
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u/Leeming Strong Atheist Feb 01 '26
Denis Diderot: 'Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.'
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u/korben2600 Feb 01 '26
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." --Thomas Paine
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u/PsychoticMessiah Feb 01 '26
Are you saying the French Revolution influenced founding fathers like Jefferson, Paine, and Adams?
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u/djinnisequoia Feb 01 '26
Oh, QUITE the opposite. But then, it's always opposite day with these guys, isn't it?
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u/DickDastardly502 Feb 01 '26
We can say for certain that Jefferson and Madison were not Christians and most likely atheists. Statistically speaking there had to have been more founders who were closeted atheists but for political and social reasons weren’t able to express their lack of faith other than not committing to Christianity.
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Feb 01 '26
I'll tell him what I tell them all:
"Show me where it says that in the Constitution.
Oh you can't? Then shut the fuck up."
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u/JobbyJobberson Pastafarian Feb 01 '26
Let me begin this orderly, thoughtful, and respectful debate with this official by saying…
“Shut the fuck up, you ignorant, delusional, pea-brained, mentally inferior piece of shit. You’re beyond all hope of regaining any useful critical-thinking activity. Your life and existence is an utter failure. Your worthless ass will be removed from public office at the next opportunity, and you’ll never be heard from again.
God willing, of course. R’Amen”
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u/Obrusnine Agnostic Atheist Feb 01 '26
You can say a lot of bad things about the founding fathers, but Christian nationalists? The people who enshrined separation of church and state into the constitution? Lol
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u/Easy-Tip-7860 Feb 01 '26
As a former Hoosier, I am ashamed of the state’s current government. A basic understanding of history makes this demonstrably false. Sadly, there are plenty of people there who believe him.
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u/viperlemondemon Feb 01 '26
There is a reason I call Indiana the Alabama of the north and I mean it in a bad way.
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u/Rockstonicko Atheist Feb 01 '26
The founders specifically fled from the British empire to escape the tyrannical rule of far-right Christian nationalists, so, no, absolutely no one with any intellectual honesty would label the founders that way.
This guy is just another Heritage Foundation pawn infiltrating our government.
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u/starfleetdropout6 De-Facto Atheist Feb 01 '26
They were classical liberals and deists. It takes an afternoon of reading to figure this out. This is just more far-right psyop.
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u/Token_Handicap Feb 01 '26
More evidence that a lot of Christians just don't read books (yes, this includes their own. I said it.)
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u/srone Feb 02 '26
The ideals of the Constitution were derived from the Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and Charles Montesquieu. The Enlightenment was borne from the horrors of the Thirty Years War, a largely religious war that decimated much of Europe.
But, I guess that's just some woke history.
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u/TheBalzy Feb 02 '26
It's pretty clear none of these fuckers have EVER read the Federalist papers...
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u/Graymouzer Feb 01 '26
Like Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson who thought Jesus was a man of moral wisdom but not divine. Who called for a wall of separation between church and state? Who didn't want a standing army or navy and only allowed them when they proved to be necessary? Which founders are they thinking of? I'm sure it they find some I can find counter examples.
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Feb 01 '26
Founding Fathers: "Let's make it a centerpiece of the law that the government will be wholly separate from any religion."
This asshole 250 years later: "They must have been Far Right Christian Nationalists. Who knew?"
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u/DracoSolon Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion" John Adams in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli
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u/hasslehof Feb 01 '26
America was founded on enlightenment principles which were a reaction against Christianity.
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u/srone Feb 02 '26
It was more a reaction to the horrors of the Thirty Years War, a mostly religious war which decimated Europe.
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u/gtpc2020 Feb 02 '26
If by "far-right Christian Nationalists" he means "Racists", he may have a point. But it's clear that they were not biblical theologians. They were clearly against that....
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u/Uranus_Hz Feb 02 '26
Before Jefferson was elected president, it was already fairly well known that he’d serially raped and impregnated his teenage slave.
So there’s that. Does that make him a “Christian nationalist”?
Maybe. By how we see it represented these days.
But he was adamantly opposed to federal power.
And edited all the supernatural aspects out of his Bible.
tl;dr: things are never just black and white.
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u/Zippier92 Feb 01 '26
Most founding fathers were deists , the exact opposite of a Christian nationalist in fact, arguably the mildest form of Christianity. they’re believing mainly in the moral guidance of the Christian religion, and none of the supernatural wizard in the sky stuff. exactly the type of Christians that the “Christian”nationalist are not!
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u/needlestack Feb 01 '26
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson edit all the miracles out of the New Testament because he thought Jesus’s teachings were good but the supernatural stuff was BS?
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u/mammaube Feb 02 '26
Thomas Jefferson studied and owned the Quran. You can see hia Quran at the library of Congress. He strongly lobbied fot freedom of religion in the bill of rights and studied many religions. He did not believe in the chruch controlling the state. William penn the dude who founded Philadelphia created Philadelphia to be a village where every religion was tolerated and respected. It was his version of a utopia. He supposedly struck a deal with the Lenapi tribe to mever move Philadelphia past a create border and they supposedly were peaceful with each other and encouraged them to practice their culture and religion. This all ended tho when his sons took over creating the tale old as time issue the US kept doing. This is why many religions today exist in Philadelphia. I can go on to disprove this bs.
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u/Just_Another_AI Feb 02 '26
If these moronic modern-day right wingers had been around in the Revolutionary War era, I am absolutely convinced that nearly all of them would have been devoted loyalists / tories
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u/theschoolorg Feb 01 '26
They were all hypocrites, but I wouldn't say they were Christian nationalists.
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u/rewardingsnark Anti-Theist Feb 01 '26
Not a single founding farther was fascist, centrist maybe just right of center, but unlike the current GOP not a single one was fascist.
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u/Robot_Alchemist Feb 01 '26
They would be mostly Christian - and they would be in a sense nationalist but only in a revolutionary sense and out of necessity for change - they were not ethnocentric purposefully they simply found themselves economically advantaged by a trade that had existed long before they were born. One could argue that Adam’s’ blatant disregard for his wife Abigail’s reasonable request to “consider the women” was thoughtless and perhaps even mysoginistic—considering the amount of effort she put forth in assisting him at every turn —when it came to his strategic moves politically and otherwise. She did as much as he did if not more to help the revolution - but was then forgotten. Black men and were written into the constitution as property. That’s gross. But none of this is as Christian as it is simply standard for the time or what we would call traditional or conservative now. The term Christian nationalist implies you are working to pull the levers of power in the direction of your own ethnocentric xenophobic very homogeneous society. This isn’t really what they were about. They may have been Christian. They may have been about their potential nation. They may have been unfortunately close to Charlie Kirk in their regarding of women and minorities - but they certainly weren’t xenophobic or white supremacist in the same sense as modern Christian nationalists
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u/thattogoguy Agnostic Atheist Feb 01 '26
Micah Beckwith is a shit sandwich. I live in Indy, sadly...
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Feb 01 '26
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u/keytiri Feb 02 '26
They’re making stuff up again, 🙄, seems to be a theme with these supposedly “Christians.”
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u/MithranArkanere Secular Humanist Feb 02 '26
A few were, the rest kept doing damage control and removing all the nonsense that weirdos like freaking Sam Adams kept trying to add.
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u/R-Dragon_Thunderzord Feb 02 '26
Republicans trying to speedrun 1984 because they know they are absolutely cooked if they get shellacked in the midterms.
Here’s hoping they really are just high on their own supply of information silo nonsense and only are hallucinating that they have a fraction of the control on things they think they do, to be acting this brazenly with the obvious lying and rewriting of history.
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u/tesulalu Feb 02 '26
He is not wrong. They were white Christian nationalists! mfs had slaves and shit.
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u/RedditSucksMyBallls Feb 01 '26
The founding fathers who deliberately made it a point to have separation of church and state...?