Ken Burns on the American Revolution

The Russell Moore Show

Christianity Today, Russell Moore

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 914 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ken Burns says the American Revolution is "the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ." That's a bold claim—especially in a moment when the word "patriot" has become a weapon and the experiment that revolution launched feels more fragile than ever. In this conversation, Russell Moore sits down with the legendary documentarian to explore what eight years of wrestling with the founders can teach us about our fractured present. How do you love a country—or a church—while being honest about its deep hypocrisies? Can you hold together progress and permanence, hope and clear-eyed realism? And what does faithfulness look like when certainty has replaced faith? Burns's new series, The American Revolution (premiering November 16 on PBS), attempts something audacious: telling a visual story from an era with no photographs, bringing to life the contradiction-filled men who proclaimed "all men are created equal" while many of them held other human beings in bondage. Using voices including Tom Hanks, Liev Schreiber, and Claire Danes, Burns creates a narrative that refuses both myth-making and cynicism. Burns discusses with RDM why labels such as “Heritage American” and “Christian America” fail and what the founders actually believed about divine providence (hint: it wasn't what you think). Along the way: Schoolhouse Rock nostalgia, baseball metaphors, and what it means to be a patriot when the word itself has been hijacked. Watch the full conversation on YouTube.Resources mentioned in this episode: Watch Burns’ “The American Revolution” on PBS for free starting November 16th. Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at [email protected] Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?
0:04.2	Not much to it, is there?
0:06.2	Unless, of course, it's a Walker's sandwich.
0:10.9	Mmm, that is good.
0:12.9	Now that's what Asani should sound like.
0:15.8	Go all crisp in with walkers.
0:19.0	Delicious.
0:21.1	E pluribus Unum.
0:22.8	Out of many won.
0:24.6	And today, there's too much pluribus and not enough unum.
0:28.7	That's what I have spent the last 50 years,
0:31.6	saying all of the great moments have been when we have come together
0:35.3	to coalesce regardless of differences, to make a difference in the world.
0:42.7	Hello, this is Russell Moore, and this is the Russell Moore Show, brought to you by Christianity today.
0:48.3	Here, we look for signposts in a strange time by standing fast to what really matters, kingdom over culture wars,
0:56.3	truth over tribalism, pilgrimage over partisanship, sanity over cynicism, witness over winning,
1:02.9	and Christ over everything. Today we have a conversation to do just that.
1:16.1	My wife hates watching movies with me unless we're in a movie theater
1:18.9	because I typically get occupied
1:21.7	doing something else, my attention gets diverted,
1:25.5	and we're about an hour in when I suddenly look up and say, wait,
1:29.5	where did the aliens come from? She says, this is what the whole movie's been about.
	...

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