presbyterian in new jersey. and he writes a brief vindication of the purchasers, the people who bought the land against the proprietors in a christian manner in 1746. and this is what he tells the proprietors. the strictly just thought i'd join the land and think not by self discharge for the duty of righteous as for the neighbor by an extraordinary measure of pretended zeal and piety towards god coveted the beginning of this misrule and mistake that happened among us. it is plain cause to augment that it was coveted spot in these proprietors as you call them into the plantations of these poor people. so jenkins reason was as if you had to have a reason to improve your land and make more money, but on the face of it, the obvious logical, patriotic, wonderful thing to do. in fact, he says to the proprietors, if there was not some desirable entertainment through the flesh, you would never seek these improvements. so the notion that there is a morally correct amount of ambition that the small farmers tend to a not, which is what they call a competency, meaning enough for you and your household and maybe set up your kids the same way. and then there is that unacceptable amount of ambition. and that is often called unbounded avarice. so that's a particularly evangelical host, but you can find secular voices seem very similar things. even among mike benjamin ragland come a self-made go get them kind of guy will talk about the men who have unbounded avarice and how different that is from wanting a competency. the final quote leads to the resolution and this is the quotation from an almanac written for the year 1767. it is just the beginning of the dispute that has the sugar, the stamp act and other income and nathaniel ames writes an almanac is describing what the movement is about. he says the patriot game is quote, to prevent the execution, but that detestable maxim of european policy amongst us. here is a detestable european idea. but the common people who are three quarters of the world must be kept in ignorance that they may be slaves to the other quarter who live in magnificence. and that's a very powerful and lovely quotation and it helps us remember that the way many ordinary men saw the conflict with great 10, what was the sugar act? it was a law passed to favor the british sugar planters, this wealthy group of men who live in london and have not ever surprisingly appeared its an active pass taxes from the rich to the poor, which you always are when you're about to be taxed. but the poor middling columnist. similarly, the t. x. what is it? gives favoritism on behalf of by parliament for the shareholders of the east indian company. so there is the government being a passive, the parliament. i think it is important to understand what the revolution was about for many ordinary peachtree as was this effort to set up governments that they are all, their problem was they are government lack the power to protect people and promote prosperity and to understand the movement solely as antigovernment is to understand it really halfway entirely from the point of view of the most well-to-do who are always the ones who can do with that less government and not from the point of view of the many people who actually made the revolution have been. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, barbara clark smith. our next author is john ragosta. >> i thank you all for coming. i got started on this project several years back with president culpepper county, about an hour north of here. and culpepper i became interested in the culpepper minutemen. there is some of barbara's ordinary people. these are the classic woman farmers who read about in high school to shoulder their guns, march 200 miles and win the battle of great bridge, the first significant battle in virginia during the war. they looked at the culpepper minutemen, i found william mcclanahan. william mcclanahan is an interesting guy. he's a baptist minister. we still haven't established the church of england. he's a baptist minister, captain of one of one of the battalions of the culpepper minutemen and he was put in jail in 1773 for preaching at the hospital. we have a curious problem here. my research got turned to why he is mcclanahan willing to pick up his gun and march to norfolk? i discovered three things in that process. the first thing i discovered was in fact the persecution of dissenters in colonial virginia was a lot worse than historians have led us to believe. we all know perhaps from college or high school that we still had taxes to pay anglican ministers. if you're a baptist or presbyterian, you pay for the work administered. that wasn't half of it. starting in the 1760s, we started as the baptists and presbyterians were growing, they eventually are almost a third of a population by the time the revolution. there's an effort effort to put an ad through physical persecution. what i mean? throwing rocks at ministers, or something ministers, dragging them from the pulpit by their hair or their legs. they really like to -- the baptists really abided things. they take a baptist minister out, taken to the closest body of water and he wants to be baptized. they don't commend the water and hold an underwater can pull them out, do you believe? and then they hold them under water till they almost drowned. there's this one meeting on the nature of hornets nest. another case they are a snake into a meeting of dissenters. i speculate in my book it was a copperhead. this is teapot, virginia. these are farmers. he threw a black snake can and they are not going to notice. he was a copperhead. they are mean. it is the kind of things he torn baptists. [laughter] it again, the persecution got worse and i 1768, and they are jailing ministers. as i mentioned, william mcclanahan got jailed. over 50 people had been jailed for preaching or disturbing the peace, which was the same thing if you are not in anglican. and the conditions were quite poor to give you some sense of that, james ireland is jailed and culpepper. where he is jailed in an 18th century became a baptist church. sort of interesting. but the baptist ministers realize this is part of a witness. they could be in jail and preach and get more congress. james ireland goes to his jail cell to preach to the crowd and someone in his face. john weatherford is preaching from his jail and chester bird county. he reaches out his arms. he is praying that the signs the windows. men's come with nice and cut designs. any number of cases, people would gather to hear preaching and anglicans presumably on horseback would write to the crowd. if you've ever had a horse cannot you with a horse whip, this is dangerous, frightening and they would particularly beat the living daylights out of the blacks in the crowd. free or slave. so this is the kind of things going on. this heightens the question. why is william mcclanahan willing to go fight for these people? well, that leads to my second discovery, which was really fairly simple. the dissenters made it clear to the establishment leaders and the people leading the resolution. you want us to fight can you give us religious freedom. and it was conditional. they said that is going to be the deal. over the course of the revolution, there is a back and forth between the speed will and the new state, patrick henry and edmund pendleton kerry and they eventually get religious freedom. i won't talk about it too much. it's in the book. i want to talk about the third thing. i'm sure many of your interested in the third discovery, which is if you're going to deal for religious freedom come if they will fight come to pick up our guns and march to north slope. we want religious freedom. what are you getting for this deal? how do you do find that freedom? what i discovered was that these evangelicals, 18th century evangelical baptists and presbyterians, sons luther in common method is really coming on the scene in virginia. what they got was a very robust, we might even say almost modern religious freedom in their mind. i'll give you two examples. i'm a christian nation issue, is this a christian nation we are fighting for. the evangelical said absolutely not. if the government has the power to make this a christian nation, they have the power to make it a presbyterian missionary baptist or methodist or god forbid a catholic nation or anglican nation. they said the government does not have this power. government has no power to regulate religion in that manner. and so their petitions to the government would say things like we are fighting religious liberty for, mohammed dantz and christians of every denomination. other tax about infidels and goes on and on. i do they're not not a lot of turks in 18th century virginia. but these people understood we are creating a nation for the long-term and these people have every right to religious freedom in the same we do. they also thought and especially john leland, one of the great leaders, one of the most popular preachers in virginia at the time thought it was an oxymoron to talk about a christian nation or maybe an abomination. he then said is vacating tolleson, or even protection because i'm a christian, it is a species of idolatry. i worship god because i worship god. if i get anything from the government for worshiping god, his ideology. so we went about their preaching. jesus said is pushing us is not of this world. the gates of will not prevail. keep government out. now, john fea is going to talk more about this. exchange in the 19th century. for these 18th century evangelicals in virginia who were at the core of the first amendment, no christian nation. the second aspect of religious freedom, separation of church and state. they make it clear we want the government out. maybe this is different. thomas jefferson once the church out of the government. these people want the government out of the church, but they come together in their views. presbyterians write no law should pass to connect the church and state in the future. a baptist and a very famous preachers is the unlawful cohabitation between church and state, which i so often been looked upon his holy wedlock must now suffer a separation and be forever put asunder. the notion we hear today from the right wing that secularism is invented in the 20th century, separation of church and state is something made out of. these are 18th century evangelicals say we will have separation of church and state if you want us to fight for the government. i'll conclude. i will just read a short comment from the very end of the book. during the american revolution, virginia's religious dissenters demanded religious freedom in return for their full support for mobilization. the resulting negotiations change virginia's quality such that after the war, efforts to reinvigorate the establishment failed and defenders ushered into the jefferson aerobic statute for establishing religious freedom. yet it is clear the current legal and historic literature and judicial decisions failed to adequately listen to the voice of the virginia dissenters and they must be heard. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, john ragosta. and now john fea. >> thank you. was america was founded as a christian nation? john just talked a little bit about this. i speak a lot on this topic and usually when the talk is advertised with this title, most people come to the top already with their minds made up. yes or no. and they expect me to sort of confirm their belief. one of the first questions i get asked about the title of my book as well, is the answer yes or no? was america founded as a christian nation? no people look for ammunition i think will be disappointed. i approach this question as an historian. one of the things that bothers me is the way this question is politicized. the founding era has been politicized a think by the right, but also by the last. cherry-picking from the past to try to find something suit their own needs than their own president agenda. i like the quote from the famous historian, bernard yuen, who said all this politicization of history is like indoctrination by historical example. and so often with this question, was america founded as a christian nation, this is what happens. as an historian and look at this question. to say i'm completely objective would probably be a myth are probably not be true. i don't think any historian can be. but i am trying to cut through some of the politicization of this idea. so in the end, was america founded as a christian nation? i'm going to a typical academic or professor here, but i think the answer is that depends how you define the question or what the meaning of is is. so what is a christian nation? have you define creation in this? had used a nation? thank you for founded? there's many on the right and the christian nationalist who argue america was founded in 1620 when the pilgrims came over and as a result they try to establish a christian civilization and there does come at a christian nation. we have john's evidence here that suggests in virginia there was clearly no emphasis at least from jefferson, madison and all the evangelical but those who supported them that they are trying to create a christian nation. so let me just for the sake of time here, let me throw out four or five very quick conclusions that i have drawn about the role of religion in the american founding, the religion of the founding fathers and so forth. the book is divided into three parts. the first thing i do is try to trace the history of the idea that america was founded as a christian nation or america is a christian nation. i traced this from 1800 other way to the president and the first four chapters. the fourth chapter deals with what i call the christian nationalists. some of you may be familiar with these people. insight david argus, peter marshall and david manual and so forth. i try to, as an historian, give them the benefit of the doubt wherever possible, but i try to lay out their views. of course that document of the 19th century, americans have always understood that those as being part of a christian nation. that doesn't necessarily mean they believe the constitution is done with established america as a christian nation, but they often saw themselves as part of a christian nation and this is not even a contested issue. people assume of course are part of a christian nation. for the first point i want to make really if americans have always understood themselves, especially in the 19th century and early portions of the 20th century, the dominant position, whether they're right or wrong for their position represented the views of the founders or not, they clearly believed they were part of a christian nation, especially the early 19th century. second and coming back to the revolution for a second. ministers regularly appeal to the bible's. both the loyalist ministers and the evangelical preacher addict ministers use the bible to justify positions for revolution what's really interesting about the pro-petri at ministers of the day as they often had fun playing around with the bible. things like slavery, which throughout the history of the christian church has always been understood as sort of slavery to send for slavery to our sin natures. suddenly slavery takes on political meanings when they interpret verses like this. or things like liberty, which had always been understood in the new testament is liberty or freedom from sin, freedom from the dabblers the quickly becomes liberty and freedom from george the third. so there is a lot if i don't want to call up manipulating because i don't want to get into a debate about how to interpret the bible here because it's out of my pay grade a little bit, but clearly the ways in which they interpret the bible code many of the patriots, often do not conform with the ways in which the christian church for millennia before have interpreted these passages. of course anglicans are biblical literalist. romans 13 says we should submit ourselves to government because government comes from god. he says we should pay or attribute or pay our taxes. we should submit to the authority. so there is this huge debate over the meaning of the bible and these passages and his ministers in many ways they are clearly duking it out over the right interpretation of the bible. third point i want to make rna can about. the constitution clearly is a godless document. i said this on a radio interview a couple weeks ago with a conservative talk radio host and he fired back and of your further further 1787. so it does mention god. last night fair enough. actually he made an interesting comment about which i think more about. the fact they use the name of the lord when they said that they like it does say something about the culture of the day. nevertheless, nothing about god there. sixth amendment, the religious establishment. freedom of religion. so there's not a lot of things. john mccain in the 2008 elections as it definitely establishes america is a christian nation. you are hard-pressed to make that argument based on the text. however, if you look at 12 of the 13 state constitutions, virginia is the big exception to this because they are the ones as john pointed out the established religious freedom, separation of church and state and so forth. if you look at the state constitutions and i don't have a political ax to grind on this, but as an historian it fascinates me almost all of them have very, very specific religious christian is not protestant qualifications for holding office. three of pennsylvania, for example, the most radical democratic constitution of them all. in order to serve the government of pennsylvania, you have to uphold divine inspiration of the old and new testament. you have to believe in a god. vermont is the one i love. as an historian at least. 1776 constitution of the independent state of vermont. today this bashing of secular liberalism upholds the idea that all people serving in government must believe in the inspiration of the divine inspiration of the old and new testament. okay this database and be a protestant. so unbelievers forget about it. they have religious freedom to worship the way they want, but they can't serve in government. it's often referred to as a federalist argument. did the constitution lays religion not because that was what the states were supposed to deal with. real quick, just to conclude here, all the founding fathers didn't believe in religious liberty. you could have an established church like you do and doing it or connecticut and allow people to work the way they want without the persecution john was talking about in virginia. here's one that gets into trouble sometimes, especially with those on the left. the founding fathers were not these. as is often heard. i'll be happy to answer questions on the. i'll drop a bomb in the late day we can debate that during the q&a. finally all the founding fathers i would argue believe that religion can't even christianity in some cases was important to producing a virtuous republic in making moral citizens, benevolent citizens of go for it. they clearly were not the briefing that they were -- did not relation to play any role in the government. or at least they should stay in the culture. so i'll stop there. [applause] >> i'd like to thank the authors for doing a mag that does the job, allowing much time for questions. a few administrative point. as i too think one of the sponsors. emma reback & co. out of regina and secondly to remind you that the book festival, most events are free and i like to keep it that way. please consider providing a donation. as envelopes in the back or you can donate online. there will be questions and because this will be broadcasted, there are microphones going around. i will point to a question and please wait for the microphone before you an