(RNS) — Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., was revving up a crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Philadelphia for the first major No Kings protest last June. His speech, like the demonstration itself, was focused primarily on pushback against President Donald Trump, whom critics such as Raskin likened to a would-be monarch.

But after railing against the president, Raskin paused to focus on one of his favorite Founding Fathers: Thomas Paine, an English-born political writer who supercharged the American Revolution with his wildly popular pamphlet “Common Sense” 250 years ago.

Noting that he named his own late son after Paine, Raskin recalled the corset-maker-turned-revolutionary’s dream of an America that would operate as “an asylum to humanity.” Paine, he told the crowd, envisioned “a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious and political and intellectual and economic repression from around the world” — and then helped spur a revolution to make it a reality.

Less than a month later, at the inaugural service of Christ Church DC — a congregation organized by self-described Christian nationalist Doug Wilson and attended by influential conservatives, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — Pastor Jared Longshore delivered a sermon that held up Paine not as a hero, but a cautionary tale. Longshore dismissed Paine as someone who “exalted human reason to the place of a golden calf,” an apparent reference to Paine’s deism and his criticism of organized religion’s entanglements with political power.

“Thomas Paine actually lost all of his old friends,” Longshore said, standing at a pulpit underneath an American flag. He then implied Paine’s fall from grace could be the ultimate fate of modern progressives, saying: “Only a few mourners came to his funeral, and even the Quakers wouldn’t let him be buried in their cemetery. That’s tough. Shows you how people used to think and how people are thinking now.”

The contrast captures not only Paine’s contested place in American memory, but the larger political and religious debate in the US over whose founding vision should govern. 

Scholars say Paine’s historical importance is undeniable. A seminal and celebrated voice in the American Revolution, Paine was so influential that John Adams once referred to the late 1700s as “the age of Paine.” What’s more, in addition to his role in America’s founding, Paine, an Englishman, championed democratic values so fervently that he later became a leader in the French Revolution despite not speaking French.

But Paine ultimately proved polarizing in his own lifetime, largely because of his blistering critique of organized religion, historians say. Among other things, he helped initiate debates over the separation of church and state that continue to this day, resulting in a bifurcated legacy: Paine as a champion of freedom or Paine as the “Forgotten Founding Father” — embraced or dismissed, depending on who is doing the remembering.

That fissure appears to be growing amid ongoing celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the U.S., with left-leaning leaders who support the separation of church and state championing Paine even as he is derided by prominent Christian nationalist figures aligned with Trump. And as the Trump administration and its allies prepare a faith-themed event on the National Mall to “rededicate” America “as One Nation to God,” debate over Paine’s ideas — such as his passionate opposition to “mingling religion with politics” — is unlikely to abate. 

Paine once enjoyed vocal bipartisan support in Washington. In 1992, bipartisan legislation, signed by President George H.W. Bush, authorized construction of a memorial, but the project stalled. A 2022 bill renewed the push for a Paine memorial that could be erected on the National Mall by 2030, but it is still awaiting approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior and, ultimately, Congress.

As the sponsor of the 2022 bill, Raskin is perhaps Paine’s most visible modern-day champion in Washington. The Maryland congressman told Religion News Service he first encountered Paine in high school by reading the revolutionary’s best-known works: “Common Sense,” “The American Crisis” and “The Rights of Man.” “I read Paine and I just felt like a light bulb went off,” Raskin said, noting that President Abraham Lincoln was also a fan of Paine. “(Paine) had this passionate and unwavering commitment to democracy as the system that will both protect people’s freedom and allow for mutual progress in society.”

Raskin often cites Paine in speeches and even pushed to name a congressional caucus he co-founded with Rep. Jared Huffman the “Thomas Paine Caucus.” The group, which boasts 36 members and is dedicated to both religious freedom and church-state separation, ended up being called the Congressional Freethought Caucus instead, although a portrait of Thomas Paine graces the group’s website.

“Tom Paine is still too radical a figure even in the 21st century, apparently,” Raskin joked.

Liberals, progressives and radicals across the globe have long claimed Paine as one of their own, often pointing to his progressive policy views for his day, such as opposition to slavery as well as support for public education and state-sponsored prenatal and postnatal care.

However, it is Paine’s views on religion — as well as how religion should interact with government — that have likely complicated his legacy. Raised in a Quaker home, Paine made several lengthy theological arguments in “Common Sense,” but ultimately declared himself a passionate deist.

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life,” Paine wrote. “I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

In 1793, Paine published “The Age of Reason,” a lengthy critique of organized religion — especially what he called “the adulterous connection of church and state.” Among other claims, he wrote that he believed the American Revolution would be followed by revolutions in the religious world.

Seth Perry, who teaches American religious history at Princeton University, told RNS the book was hardly met with the rapturous praise enjoyed by “Common Sense.” Part of the issue, Perry said, was timing: “The Age of Reason” was published just as religious revivals associated with the Second Great Awakening had already swept across the U.S., and Paine’s involvement in the chaotic French Revolution — during which Paine himself was imprisoned — gave his ideological opponents in the U.S. cause to condemn him.

“There’s good scholarship showing how the anti-religious vibe of the French Revolution was used by those at the time who wanted more religion in the government as a cudgel to push back on people like Thomas Paine, who were pushing against religion in the government,” Perry said.

In the 20th century, some prominent conservatives embraced Paine, particularly President Ronald Reagan, who often referenced Paine in public remarks. But these days, Paine has become a target among far-right intellectuals, particularly those aligned with Christian nationalism or Catholic integralism, an ideology similar to Christian nationalism that advocates for a less overt approach to exerting Christian influence over society.

“We can find in Paine antecedents for almost every political ideology we find today,” Ben Wright, a professor of American history at the University of Texas at Dallas, said in an interview. “It’s curious to see who decides to claim him and who doesn’t — and that changes over time.”

At last year’s National Conservatism Conference in Washington, Patrick Deneen — a professor at the University of Notre Dame who is associated with Catholic integralism — urged conservatives to distance themselves from Paine. After acknowledging Paine’s influence, Deneen argued far-right thinkers have overlooked Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution and his longstanding debate with Edmund Burke, a seminal conservative intellectual figure.

“Paine was no conservative, and nor, really, was his political theology,” declared Deneen, who went on to voice support for more public religious expression in government. “I would submit that by adopting this Painian, Rousseauan, French Revolutionary … political theology that conservatism has been equally the cause of woe and destruction to the values and the institutions that conservatives all along claimed to hold dear.”

Gary Berton, president of the Thomas Paine Historical Association, acknowledges that Paine has long made some conservatives uncomfortable. But he insisted Paine’s criticisms of religion continue to inspire young people, many of whom are religiously unaffiliated: Berton said that, in recent years, young people often walk into the association’s building wanting to know more about Paine after reading “Age of Reason.”

Raskin, meanwhile, sees the hostility from conservatives in the Trump era as predictable.

“Monarchists and reactionary conservatives have always hated Tom Paine,” Raskin said, noting that Paine famously railed against the divine right of kings, the theology that monarchs answer only to God.

In the meantime, Raskin said, he is looking forward to a Paine memorial eventually being erected in Washington, and will continue to draw inspiration from a man he insists is unfairly maligned by those on the right.

“Democracy is always a controversial idea,” Raskin said. “Monarchy is obviously a betrayal of that idea. Aristocracy is a radical betrayal of that idea. Theocracy is just somebody dressing up their pretensions to power and dictatorship in religious garb.”