Senator Josh Hawley spoke at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in April of 2026 with a call for the church to lead the nation down a path of continued spiritual revival a amidst a cultural and moral decay, going to say far as to suggest that Christianity was present at America’s founding in public discourse and must return to the forefront of political action if the values and ideals of the country will persevere.
For context, the senior Missouri Republican Senator delivered the 2026 Duke K. McCall Leadership Lecture at the Louisville, Kentucky campus. Hawley is not himself a Baptist, instead engaged in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church with his home church, as it were, being The Crossing Church in Columbia, Missouri. He was raised as a United Methodist.
“The world tells the church, stay put. The world says to the church, stay within your walls,” Hawley’s remarks began. “Go within your churches, shut the doors. Don’t talk to anybody else. Don’t do anything else. Certainly don’t talk about Jesus in public. Don’t witness in the workplace. Don’t take your faith into the public square. Don’t play. Take it into school. Don’t take it anyplace else. Just stay nice and quiet, nice and dependable. Stay within your churches and be silent.”
“There’s a whole body of thought in this country that has raged now and developed for 50 and 60 years called, sometimes the philosophy of neutral public reason. What it just means, basically, is practical atheism. We have been told for decades now, the world has been telling us that this is a secular nation, that liberty is an inherently secular thing, that the church must remain within its bounds, that the public square needs to be shorn of any religious language.”
“You know, the Supreme Court actually had a decision back in the 1970s, a doctrine that it observed for decades and decades, called the Lemon Test. And the lemon test is about as good as its name suggests. It was a real lemon. That’s a joke. Now, come on, you got to work with me. I’m a lawyer. I mean, it doesn’t get funnier than that. So, you know, the Lemon Test said that if there’s any law that has been adopted by a state legislature or the United States Congress, this is a supreme court test now that relies upon scripture or religious doctrine or religious justifications, it may be unconstitutional.”
“The lemon test actually asked, is there a secular and independent ground for a law? Because if there’s not, if all we have are religious principles, why that would violate the constitution of the United States, that represents the world, saying to the church, stay put. Stay out of it. Leave it to us. The problem is that is not what this country was founded on. The problem is, that’s not what the Constitution says.”
“Can I just tell you what the truth is? I hope you know it. But if not, let me be clear about it. This country was founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ. This country was founded on the truth of the Bible. This country was not founded on some enlightenment secularism. It was not founded on a series of neutral principles, whatever those would be. This country was founded on the truth of Scripture.”
“And I could be more specific still, this country was founded on a covenant. And I don’t mean primarily our Constitution. I mean something earlier and older than that. I mean the covenant that the first settlers took, those brave Puritan men and women when they sailed aboard their ship called the Arbella in 1630 coming to Massachusetts Bay. What did they do before they set foot on dry ground?”
“They took a covenant together, and they said, We shall be as a city set upon a hill. The great John Winthrop preached the sermon to that band of Puritans. He said, covenant with me, brothers and sisters, we shall be as a city set upon a hill. We shall be a godly Commonwealth. We shall choose to live together under the ordinances of the Lord.”
“And ever after, the Puritans would ask themselves, for what purpose did you come across the great ocean into the howling wilderness that they called America? Was the purpose for money? No. Was it for trade? No, was it for gain? No. Was it for honor? No. What was it for to observe the ordinances of the Lord, to worship the Lord in the freedom of their consciences, to worship the Lord according to the dictates of Scripture that ladies and gentlemen is what this country was founded on.”
Watch Senator Hawley below:
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video