Tennessee’s recently enacted “Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act,” named after the slain conservative activist, is harmful legislation promoting Christian nationalist revisionist history.
The law is nearly identical to Ohio’s HB 486, which the FFRF Action Fund was among the first to call out. That bill passed Ohio’s House but is still pending in the Senate. Both Tennessee’s law and the original bill in Ohio encourage schools and universities to promote a one-sided, fictionalized narrative of religion’s “positive” influence on American history.
The Tennessee law presents an extensive list of cherry-picked or fictional “historical accounts” meant to glorify religion’s role in American society. The Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act not only distorts history but violates the First Amendment by advancing a government-sponsored religious narrative inside public classrooms.
Schools and universities are encouraged by the law to promote a one-sided, fictionalized narrative of religion’s “positive” influence on American history. The legislation reads more like a Turning Point USA pamphlet than a serious civics curriculum, stating that teachers may highlight the supposed Christian underpinnings of American liberty while conveniently ignoring religion’s deeply harmful roles — from justifying slavery and segregation to opposing women’s suffrage, civil rights, LGBTQ+ equality and science itself.
Extolling the historical “influence of Judeo-Christian values on the freedom and liberties ingrained in our culture,” the law lists 19 supposed examples of religion’s positive role in U.S. history.
One of the most absurd falsehoods in Tennessee’s law is its claim that Benjamin Franklin advised Thomas Paine to burn “The Age of Reason, published in 1794. Franklin died in 1790, long before Paine had even started the book. The American Historical Association called this out directly, noting that the bill’s supposed “historical accounts” are riddled with errors, mischaracterizations and anachronisms taken from a discredited Christian nationalist website whose stated mission is to “restore America’s biblical foundation.”
That mendacious website falsely frames the Ten Commandments as the basis of American law, a myth repeatedly rejected by courts and historians — and is refuted simply by reading the Constitution itself, which is godless, its only references to religion being exclusionary. The law treats the latter-day addition of “In God We Trust” and “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War as evidence that America is founded on religion. Instead, those belated tamperings with motto, money and the Pledge were the result of theopolitical messaging driven by the “Red Scare” against the Soviet Union nearly 180 years after the Declaration of Independence.
Then there’s Tennessee’s second Charlie Kirk bill: HB 1476 / SB 1741, the “Charlie Kirk Act.” The Tennessee legislature also passed SB 1741, and Gov. Bill Lee is likely to sign it into law soon. While presented as a defense of free speech and open discourse on college campuses, the bill prohibits students from “staging walk-outs during an event or in the middle of an invited speaker’s remarks” that intentionally cause “material and substantial disruption.” It empowers colleges to impose disciplinary sanctions, up to and including expulsion, on students who exercise their First Amendment rights.
PEN America criticized HB 1476 / SB 1741 for elevating certain ideological viewpoints under the guise of neutrality, calling it a threat to free expression that “places demands on universities that will diminish free expression.” Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones put it more bluntly: “I think it’s ironic that we’re honoring free speech when professors in Tennessee were kicked out of their position for exercising their free speech rights.” And Tennessee is not alone. According to a recent Associated Press analysis, lawmakers in more than 20 states have introduced more than 60 Charlie Kirk-themed bills seeking to promote his ideology, establish official days of remembrance or affix his name to roads and public places.
SB 1828 rewrites history. HB 1476 / SB 1741 punishes dissent. Different mechanisms, same goal: push public institutions toward one preferred political ideology, then call the result “religious freedom.”
FFRF Action Fund supplied detailed testimony to legislators in both Ohio and Tennessee, thoroughly debunking the Charlie Kirk Act and called on its Tennessee advocates to defeat it. Our legislative team is monitoring and working to defeat similar legislation rewriting U.S. history to promote the myth of a “Christian nation.”
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. As the advocacy affiliate of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, it also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.