‘The Christian Past That Wasn’t’ by Warren Throckmorton – A Review by Lex Lata (Guest Post)

Warren Throckmorton. The Christian Past That Wasn’t: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History. Broadleaf Books, 2026. Hardcover. $32.99. Pp. ix + 319. ISBN 979-8-8898-3582-0.

Introduction

In The Christian Past That Wasn’t, retired psychology professor and avid armchair historian Warren Throckmorton gives us a blow-by-blow survey and dismantling of key pseudohistorical arguments advanced by contemporary Christian nationalists.  Riveting, accessible, and topical, this book is a gotta-read for anyone interested in the church-state front of the culture wars generally, and the rightwing evangelical distortion and weaponization of U.S. history in particular.

First, an introductory word about Throckmorton for those new to his work.  He is no Hitchens-stanning secular progressive.  Quite the contrary.  Until his retirement a few years ago, he was a professor of psychology at Grove City College, a conservative Christian school in small-town Pennsylvania.  He is a steadfast evangelical (quite apparent in The Christian Past That Wasn’t) who simply and doggedly values truth over tribal fealty (even more apparent).  On matters of faith, Throckmorton surely disagrees with the militant agnosticism of this humble heathen reviewer, but there is no disputing his respect for sound historiography, intellectual integrity, and getting even uncomfortable facts right.  His character has compelled him to write The Christian Past That Wasn’t as a corrective to Christian nationalist abuses of history:

In this Christian past that was, the state used religion for justification of atrocities and evil, and the church complied to maintain political power.  At times, the established church persecuted dissenters who named the same Savior as Lord in order to keep their earthly power.  In the Christian present, Christian nationalists want a similar kind of political dominance.  I write this book to frustrate those desires.¹

Motives and mountebanks

The first two chapters establish the modern context for the discussions of history that follow.  As a psychologist, Throckmorton naturally excels at thinking about thinking, and his first chapter explores the mindset, motivated reasoning, and myth-making of contemporary Christian nationalists.  Necessarily condensed but insightful summaries of several sociological studies illuminate the utterly human urges that drive some individuals to practice and perpetuate revisionist history.  Throckmorton considers three different, interdependent psychological factors in particular: identity (tribalism and the comfort of conformity/consistency), fear (of the Other, of insignificance, even of death), and power (to buttress the identity/tribe and diminish or dominate the Other).  

Chapter Two consists of tales of adventure involving the Christian nationalist pseudohistorical enterprise, narrated by a hands-on critic who lived most of the events described and who brings, as the kids say, the receipts.  Throckmorton recounts his and others’ efforts to debunk the work of influential flapdoodler David Barton, urge the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family to correct Barton-spawned disinformation in their media, and otherwise clean up the more egregious messes in conservative evangelism’s historiographical house.  One remarkable anecdote (among several) shows Focus on the Family declining in writing to remove or fix factually inaccurate content authored by Barton simply because “it continues to be beneficial”—truth apparently being a subordinate consideration.²  While the first chapter is a sobering study in the psychology of groupthink, the second teaches a grungy, lurid lesson on culture-war politics and money. 

Myths and misinformation

The remaining chapters set up and knock down seven favored myths peddled by Christian nationalist advocates and politicians.

1. The U.S. is a covenant homeland (for Protestants in particular).  There’s insufficient evidence for that, writes Throckmorton, cherry-picked quotes from a few Puritan colonists and charters notwithstanding.  Significantly, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution—the documents that legally created the United States of America—refers to any sort of divine covenant.  And just as it takes two to tango, it takes a couple to covenant.  Throckmorton correctly remarks that we have no report of the Almighty consenting to a covenant since the New Testament authors put pen to papyrus almost two millennia ago.

• The colonies and early states had established Christian churches, making the U.S. a Christian nation.  Throckmorton shakes his head in disagreement.  While official, established churches were common during the colonial period and to some extent into the early 19^th century, not all colonies or states had them, and the trend over time was distinctly and deliberately disestablishmentarian.  Moreover, the federal Constitution specifically prohibits the establishment of a national religion or church in the first clause of the First Amendment, so there’s no excuse for missing it.

• The Founders were dyed-in-the-wool Christians.  It’s not that simple, cautions Throckmorton.  Yes, many were orthodox Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, or suchlike, but others were Unitarians, Universalists, or, if not necessarily self-proclaimed Deists, all too happy to flirt with deism during happy hour at the City Tavern.  “Theistic rationalists” is Throckmorton’s preferred characterization of this motley crew, borrowed explicitly from Gregg Frazer’s The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution (University Press of Kansas, 2014).

• The Founders created a Christian federal government, by Christians and for Christians.  No, Throckmorton sighs.  The Constitution itself prohibits not only any sort of religious establishment, but also—in a remarkable break with historical practice—even the use of a religious test for government office.  In fact, several early, traditionally-inclined Christian critics of the Constitution complained that it was obviously and scandalously too godless. 

• The texts of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are based on the Bible and Christianity; the Constitution even “quotes” and “cites” the Bible.  Throckmorton throws a toaster across the room.  The Declaration and Constitution were products far more of Enlightenment education than of evangelical exegesis.  Biblical references and concepts are exceedingly elusive in The Federalist Papers, the notes from the Constitutional Convention, and myriad other records of the Founders’ thoughts on political theory and practice.  To be sure, religious belief was generally felt to be an indispensable element of the personal virtue necessary for a representative democracy derived from the consent of the governed, but when the time came to construct a functional, durable national Constitution for the gritty business of governing human affairs, Throckmorton documents that the craftsmen looked primarily to European history and philosophy.  And for the lessons of antiquity, they expressly drew more insights from Athens and Rome than from Jerusalem and Nazareth.  (Understandably, Throckmorton does not digress to explore this particular aspect of the Founders’ political studies in exhaustive detail, but there’s a reason words such as politics, democracy, republic, legislative, executive, judicial, congress, senate, president, and veto all have Greek or Latin etymologies.³)

• National virtues justify national sins.  Let’s not whitewash our country’s morally complicated history in search of a Christian nationalist ideal that never was, warns Throckmorton.  Having a predominantly Christian population as a demographic matter did not prevent the U.S. from perpetuating race-based chattel slavery, maintaining racially segregationist laws and practices, conquering native populations, or pursing a campaign of cultural suffocation and trauma by means of government-mandated, church-run boarding schools for indigenous children.

• Public education should incorporate and promote Christianity.  Christianity has been a source more of conflict than of character in American public schools, Throckmorton warns.  Elevating Christianity in government-run institutions necessarily, unfairly, and unconstitutionally excludes and demeans the students who are non-believers or believers of non-conforming faiths.  (In fact, Throckmorton reminds us, some of the earliest and more violent disputes about religion in U.S. schools were between Protestants and Catholics.)  And efforts to tie the removal of prayer and Bible readings from public classrooms to an increase in violent crime and other social ills are reductive and mistaken at best, or outright dishonest at worst.

Conclusion

The Christian Past That Wasn’t is an ideal read for the July 4^th holiday.  It’s chockablock with discussions of early U.S. history and personalities, useful quotes, detailed endnotes, and important primary source materials curated in an appendix.  But this is not a fusty, academic treatise.  Throckmorton’s tone is conversational—sometimes wry, sometimes polemical, always earnest—and he shifts frequently into the first person, addressing the reader as though sharing stories and ideas in a seminar or study.  (Unfortunately, this free-flowing vibe causes the text to drift onto the editorial shoulder on occasion.  For example, a section titled “The O’Connor Question” contained no reference to or quote from O’Connor [Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, I inferred], leaving me puzzled and wondering what I was missing.  To my relief and mild annoyance, the actual question finally appeared several pages later in a different section.⁴)

This is less a history book than a book about history—about its meaning, value, uses, and misuses.  Throckmorton intends to do more than just educate readers about the past for our idle edification.  He wants to arm us with the truth (good, bad, and ugly) about the country we love, so we can defend it with informed, intellectual rigor against the disingenuous reactionaries scheming to privilege (their version of) Christianity in our laws and institutions.

May we be up to that task.

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1. The Christian Past That Wasn’t, 15. ↩︎
2. Id at 57. ↩︎
3. For further reading, see David J. Bederman, The Classical Foundations of the American Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Carl J. Richard, Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008); and Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 1994). ↩︎
4. “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question.  Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844, 882 (2005) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). ↩︎