Chuck Schumer's favorite Founding Fathers quote is completely made up

Historians can't find references to "God's Noble Experiment." The Founders never said it. Yet Schumer keeps insisting they did.

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Over the holiday weekend, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York issued a religion-heavy message marking the nation’s 250th anniversary:

Happy 250th, America!

The founding fathers called America God’s noble experiment. I believe in all three words to this day: we are one nation under God, we have clung to noble ideas for longer than any other nation, and we are an experiment always changing, trying to make ourselves better.

God bless America, and I hope everyone has a wonderful day celebrating with their friends and family.

You expect that kind of rhetoric from Republicans, not the leader of Democrats, but that’s besides the point. Schumer claimed the Founding Fathers referred to their new country as “God’s noble experiment” before riffing on all three words.

So… when exactly did the Founding Fathers—any of them—say that?

The answer, as far as I can tell, is never.

In fact, if you search for that phrase, the only time it ever seems to come up is in speeches delivered by… Chuck Schumer.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (screenshot via YouTube)

Like in a 2025 speech about Americans’ right to protest:

I say to the American people, do not be afraid to exercise your right to free speech. Be proud that you are doing it. Do not be afraid to exercise your right to free speech. Do not be afraid to protest peacefully against Donald Trump’s eroding of our democracy. Do not be afraid to show how much you love this beautiful democracy, as the Founding Fathers called it, God's noble experiment. We have to keep this precious democracy.

And in a 2022 speech about voting rights:

Members of this body now face a choice—they can follow in the footsteps of our patriotic predecessors in this chamber.

Or they can sit by just as the segregationist-oriented Democrats in the post-civil war era did and try to have democracy unravel. I do not believe that we want our democracy to unravel.

I do not believe that is the ultimate destiny of this country. It is a grand country. As the founding fathers called it, God’s noble experiment.

And in a 2018 speech about the Russia investigation and stock buybacks:

Somehow President Trump doesn’t grasp the rudiments of our democracy and our system of laws. President Trump seems to have a view that the Justice Department exists to protect his interests and prosecute his enemies. But in the long history of this country — God’s noble experiment as the founding fathers called it — that’s never been what the Justice Department has stood for.

And in a 2017 speech about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Mandatory Arbitration Rule:

I worry about this country, Mr. President. I love this country. It's been so good to me, my family, my people. I still believe to this day it is what the founding fathers called it when they left constitution hall, God's noble experiment. We are one nation under God. God's. Noble, we're a noble country.

And in 2016, after Trump was elected (and Schumer was re-elected):

“As the leader-to-be of the Senate Democrats — God willing, my colleagues all said they would vote for me on Wednesday — I look forward to hearing from the American people and charting a path to achieve our sacred goals and defend our values.

“When the Founding Fathers finished writing the Constitution over in Philadelphia at Constitution Hall, they said they had created God’s Noble Experiment. I believe those three words are every bit as relevant today as they were then.

“We are under God, a nation of faith. We are noble, we believe in democracy and that everybody has equal opportunity. And experiment, that means we keep changing and adapting to the times as we’ve seen in election after election.

And in this 2009 speech during the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor when she was nominated to the Supreme Court:

Mr. Chairman, people felt at the founding of America that we were ‘‘God’s noble experiment.’’ Judge Sotomayor’s personal story shows that today, more than 200 years later, we are still God’s noble experiment.

And in this 2003 speech opposing the nomination of a right-wing federal judge:

I believe to this day what was said when America was founded, that we are God’s noble experiment. We still are. That is why the debate today and in the following weeks has so much vitality. For this beautiful work of art to maintain its beauty and brilliance, the Senate must hold up its end of the bargain. We have a duty, a responsibility, an obligation to the judiciary, to the Constitution, and, yes, to the American people, to carefully evaluate these nominees and decide whether they merit confirmation.

I may have missed a few dozen. But the point is the only person who believes the Founding Fathers said that is the only guy who keeps repeating the damn line. And after he said it this weekend, commenters chimed in to tell him he was flat-out putting words in their mouths. Including Yale historian Joanne Freeman:

According to Adam Keiper, Executive Editor of The Bulwark, the only reference to that phrase he could find before Chuck Schumer seemingly conjured it out of thin air was in a 1939 book review that was published by a professor at the (now firmly right-wing) Hillsdale College:

In the late forties, the cause of the Nativists was kept alive by the great influx of immigrants and the passions engendered by the Mexican war. In order to purify the immigrant stream at its source, the crusaders began with great zeal to convert the Catholics of Europe to the Protestant faith. This foreign endeavor had its counterpart in their efforts to save the middle West from the designs of “Popery.” To the mid-century Protestants, this was more than a religious cause. They were saving American democracy, God’s noble experiment, on whose success hung the fate of all democracies. In this struggle they had no doubts of their ultimate victory. As they read the signs of providential guidance in the past discovery and settlement of America, they faced the future optimistic and unafraid, for the dice were loaded in favor of Protestantism.

Even then, the author wasn’t quoting the Founders.

So here’s where we’re at: The Senate Democratic leader has spent more than two decades attributing a quotation to the Founding Fathers that appears to have no historical basis whatsoever. It’s not just a careless mistake either. It’s a myth that he’s helped manufacture through sheer repetition. And because he keeps saying it, we risk journalists and future politicians and the David Bartons of the world repeating it as if it were authentic.

This isn’t some innocuous mistake. Schumer’s constant repetition of a fake phrase is inadvertently propping up Christian Nationalist mythology. Because if America was founded as “God’s noble experiment,” then it implies some divine mission that was present from the beginning as well as a specific religious identity. It’s the same argument Republicans make to say any move toward a more secular government is a betrayal of our origins.

Democrats—especially the Democrats’ Senate leader!— shouldn’t be validating that worldview by fabricating religious rhetoric for the Founders. There are plenty of genuine quotations celebrating our grand experiment and the noble underpinings of it without bringing God into the equation.

He should apologize for lying to everyone and stop repeating a line that has no basis in reality unless he can point to a citation for it.

American Atheists, which first brought this to my attention, is calling on supporters to sign a petition demanding that Schumer “correct the record, retract his fabricated statements, and apologize.” They added:

“It’s disturbing to see any American politician fabricate — apparently from whole cloth — a quotation that is indistinguishable from the junk history being pushed by David Barton and the rest of the White Christian Nationalist movement,” said Nick Fish, president of American Atheists. “It’s particularly galling in the wake of Christian Nationalist hijacking of our nation’s 250th anniversary and their attempts to redefine America in stark, exclusionary terms.”

…

“That Chuck Schumer has seemingly been repeating this sentiment for more than 20 years doesn’t make it true. The truth matters. And the truth is that the United States is an experiment in secular self government, not theocratic rule. A nation that promises religious pluralism, not religious tests of any kind,” added Fish.

Incidentally, Schumer has been under fire this past year for a different story he’s been telling for decades about the Baileys, a middle-class couple he supposedly thinks about when making every decision.

Except the Baileys don’t exist either.

Making up lies that serve his preferred narrative appears to be just a regular part of Schumer’s political career. Democrats deserve so much better than what they’re getting from him.

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