Enabled by the Trump administration and the United States Supreme Court, Christian nationalists, those who believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, are surging right now, pressing their case to eviscerate the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.
The notion that church and state should be discrete entities was a novel idea late in the eighteenth century when the new nation was being formed. The founders were well aware of the religious conflicts that had roiled England and Europe — the Wars of Religion in France and the English Revolution — and they wanted to avoid that kind of contestation.
In addition, they confronted the extraordinary religious diversity in the colonies, from Baptists and Congregationalists in New England to the Quakers, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterians and Jews in the Middle Colonies. If the U.S. were to establish a state religion, which would it be?
If the Church of England, predominant in Virginia and the Southern Colonies, were chosen, the Congregationalists in New England would not be happy. If Presbyterianism were selected as the preferred religion, Quakers and Huguenots (French Protestants) would protest, and if Thomas Jefferson’s favorite expression of religion, Unitarianism, were designated the state church, virtually everyone would have been unhappy.
The founders also rejected the designation of generic Christianity. When Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, proposed that Christianity be supported by the state, James Madison wrote his “Memorial and Remonstrance” to argue against such designation.
“Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society,” Madison wrote. “For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”
Henry’s bill was defeated in favor of Virginia’s Statue of Religion Freedom, drafted by Jefferson: “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing of him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness.”
These convictions, later encoded into the First Amendment — “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — constitute America’s best idea. The First Amendment has shielded the government from religious factionalism, but religion has also flourished in the United States as nowhere else precisely because the government has stayed out of the religion business.
Christian nationalists, for reasons that escape me, want to change that.
They begin with the flawed assertion that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and that the founders themselves were evangelical Christians. The text of the First Amendment itself refutes the former, and the notion the founders were orthodox in their Christian theology is so ludicrous that it scarcely merits a refutation.
With the possible, though far-fetched, exception of John Witherspoon and Benjamin Rush, no founder would be welcome as members of any congregation now advocating Christian nationalism.
Those who trumpet the Christian origins of the U.S. also fail to reckon with the Treaty of Tripoli, which was ratified unanimously by the Senate on July 7, 1797. Article 11 of the treaty reads in part, “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. . . .”
Christian nationalists, however, are undeterred. They push for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places, including schools. They are trying to rescind the Johnson Amendment, which forbids tax-exempt organizations from making political endorsements.
Most alarmingly, they are using Republican supermajorities in red states to provide taxpayer funding for religious education, once a bright line marking the separation of church and state.
And this is the camel’s nose under the tent. If some of the more extreme Christian nationalists prevail, they will outlaw not only abortion but divorce and same-sex marriage. They will write the Apostle’s Creed into the Constitution, allow only one vote per household and restrict office-holding to Christians.
America’s best idea, the separation of church and state, which has ensured both political stability and religious vitality, is under attack as never before seen in our history.
Randall Balmer, one of the expert witnesses in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, teaches at Dartmouth College. His latest book, “America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State,” will be released Aug. 5.