Footnotes by Jemar Tisby

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After 250 Years, Christians Owe America the Truth

The White House is selling sanitized history. It's time to tell the truth instead.

Jemar Tisby, PhD
Jun 09, 2026

NEXT DOOR TO the West Wing, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, you’ll find portraits of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Visitors to the exhibit—part of the White House’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—scan QR codes to watch AI-generated videos of these figures come to life.

But the history this gallery presents is carefully curated and conveniently cleansed.

Take Thomas Jefferson.

His talking portrait makes no mention of the hundreds of people he enslaved, including Sally Hemmings, whom he forced to bear multiple of his children.

Instead, the animated Jefferson praises the “empire of liberty” created by the Louisiana Purchase—ignoring the First Nations already living there and the forced removals that followed.

Photo Credit: Founders Museum | PragerU

John Adams repeats the anachronistic quip much beloved by today’s Far Right: “Facts do not care about our feelings.” Benjamin Franklin fails to mention that he had once been an enslaver but by the 1780s had become a vocal abolitionist.

None of the signers mention that they cut a section where Jefferson lambasted King George for “captivating and carrying [Africans] into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”

History weeps.

The exhibit is part of a White House partnership with Prager University. Despite the word “university” in its name, PragerU is “proudly not an accredited university.”

Instead, it’s a nonprofit media group whose mission is “Pro-American, Pro-Capitalism, and Pro-Family Values.”

Its extensive content typically promotes a conservative, often Christian nationalist worldview, including videos such as “Healthcare Is Not a Right,” “Free Enterprise Will Set You Free,” and “Why You Can’t Trust Mainstream Media.”

Phot Credit: “Celebrate America at 250 Magazine” | PragerU

This is neither history according to the standards of academic discipline nor accurate truth-telling.

Trained historians test claims against evidence, debate in good faith, contextualize primary sources they find in archives, and subject all their work to peer review. Professional historians are comfortable with complexity and resist the temptation to turn the past into a tidy moral fable.

By contrast, nationalistic storytelling often elevates confident nonspecialists—figures such as Dennis Prager, a radio personality—whose authority rests on persuasion and savvy use of multimedia rather than structured method.

When expertise is sidelined in favor of agenda, the result is ideology wrapped in red, white, and blue. And it’s now being given the imprimatur of the presidency.

Jesus taught his followers that the truth will set us free.

However sobering or painful, truth liberates, enabling us to see reality as it is and to make faithful choices in the pursuit of loving God and neighbor.

By contrast, lies, myths, and selective histories lead to a kind of bondage, trapping us in ignorance or comforting illusions.

For Christians, this is not a minor concern: We believe the good news of the gospel is strong enough to confront even the hardest truths.

Truth frees us to move forward and make repair; false history is rooted in fear—the fear of reality, of accountability, and of reckoning with what it takes to heal.

Throughout U.S. history, Christians have too often opted to sanctify the nation’s myths instead of telling the truth.

But as we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation’s founding documents, we have another option.

Neither master nor servant

WHEN I THINK about the role of the church in relation to the state, I go back to Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermon “A Knock at Midnight,” in which he said,

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.” King continued, “If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club with no moral or spiritual authority.”

I was very pleased to write this article as the cover story for a special edition of Sojourners Magazine dedicated to America 250.

Continue reading the article HERE.