{"id":1191,"date":"2026-01-23T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2026\/01\/23\/2026-01-23-throckmorton-book-debuts\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T23:09:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T23:09:22","slug":"2026-01-23-throckmorton-book-debuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/2026\/01\/23\/2026-01-23-throckmorton-book-debuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Throckmorton book\u00a0debuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Madelyn Braho<\/a> · Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u2014 THROCKMORTON<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Former Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton debunks common myths about America’s founding in his new book “The Christian Past That Wasn’t.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throckmorton, previously of the Grove City College Department of Psychology, has been a historical fact checker for over a decade now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Getting Jefferson Right,” now in its third edition, written with current college professor Michael Coulter, focuses on the claims David Barton, a political activist and figure in Christian homeschooling circles, made about Thomas Jefferson and the Christian founding of America. Throckmorton and Coulter\u2019s book was so influential that the publisher of Barton\u2019s book, \u201cTelling Jefferson Lies,\u201d pulled it for inaccuracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Christian Past that Wasn\u2019t\u201d expands on the fact-checking and myth-debunking of that previous work, taking on a wider range of Christian nationalist stories. The book has a series of seven myths following America chronologically, from the Puritans onward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI start with the idea that America was a covenant nation, that the Puritans were a kind of new Israel,\u201d Throckmorton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other stories investigated include Benjamin Franklin proposing prayer at the constitutional convention and Roger Williams\u2019s founding of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researching Rhode Island was particularly interesting for Throckmorton because his family made a feature in the colony\u2019s history. John Throckmorton converted to Quakerism, causing a disagreement with Roger Williams. Despite that, John Throckmorton was still elected to a government office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn civil things, there was complete freedom to follow your conscience,\u201d Throckmorton said. \u201cThat was exciting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But historical research is about more than just family genealogy; it\u2019s about the facts. Considering the landscape of falsified history that Barton is included in, getting to the truth was important, but also not difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was so easy a psychologist could do it … It wasn\u2019t that much of a stretch from how I taught psychology,\u201d Throckmorton said. \u201cUltimately, I think as Christian scholars, we\u2019re not looking to produce an outcome in the sense of making sure someone was on \u2018team Christian,\u2019 but we should seek the truth about things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dedication to the facts is key to \u201cThe Christian Past that Wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors like Barton may have \u201cgrabbed facts out of context or made up facts and used them for a present political purpose,\u201d Coulter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrarily, for Throckmorton, getting the facts right is crucial. When asked how readers should approach the book, he said to \u201cread it with an open mind … check the primary sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the facts aren\u2019t always kind. A key thread of the book follows the treatment of Native Americans and Africans and questions why that is ignored in the making of a Christian America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a Christian past that wasn\u2019t; those are the myths, but there\u2019s the Christian past that was, that\u2019s where Christianity was used in vain,\u201d Throckmorton said. \u201cGod\u2019s name was taken in vain to do some very bad things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the book doesn\u2019t dismiss America\u2019s Christian past as entirely myth either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m very open in the book that of course the founders believed in God, of course they had Christian leanings,\u201d Throckmorton said. Throckmorton doesn\u2019t want readers to forget the limits of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAmerica\u2019s sins aren\u2019t justified by America\u2019s virtues, and the virtues are real too,\u201d Throckmorton said. \u201cThe Christian Past that Wasn\u2019t\u201d will be available for purchase on May 19th, and Throckmorton can also be found at the Throckmorton Initiative on Substack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton debunks common myths about America’s founding in his new book “The Christian Past That Wasn’t.” Throckmorton, previously of the Grove City College Department of Psychology,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[14,41,66],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","tag-front-page","tag-issue-2026-01-23","tag-madelyn-braho"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",312,449,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",104,150,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",208,300,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",312,449,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",312,449,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",312,449,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2026-01-23-02-throckmorton-book-debuts-1.jpg",312,449,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Former Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton debunks common myths about America's founding in his new book \"The Christian Past That Wasn't.\" Throckmorton, previously of the Grove City College Department of Psychology,","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1836,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}