Built on a Foundation of LIES: Christian Nationalism is dangerous bunk
Christian Nationalist Lies
Christian Nationalism, the political position that government should be run on Christian principles, is entirely based on falsehoods. Falsehoods about government, religion, Christianity, freedom, and goodness—and falsehoods about the motives of the people who advocate Christian Nationalism. As false doctrine and worse policy, Christian Nationalism needs to be thoroughly rejected, rebuked, and repudiated.
Perhaps the most glaring falsehoods propagated by Christian Nationalists are their claims about Church/State Separation, including its history, philosophical justification, and legal status. It is easy to show that their claims on this topic are wrong, so it is the obvious point of counterattack to defend ourselves from this pernicious movement. Church/State Separation is also the issue of most pressing importance to most Americans affected by Christian Nationalism.
Christian Nationalism is a Christian Problem
Some of Christian Nationalism’s other lies are about Christianity itself, and those I am happy to leave to others to call out. Since I’m not a Christian or a theologian, I am not typically going to tell Christians how to interpret their own doctrine.
But I do insist, as Chrissy Stroop, Andrew Seidel and others have argued, that Christian Nationalism is a Christian problem: The “those are not real Christians” attempt to dodge responsibility does not work. Christian Nationalists claim Christianity, claim they have the correct/only interpretation of the religion, and claim they are acting in the Christian God’s name to create a Christian extremist theocracy.
It is an ugly movement, so I understand the desire of decent normal Christians to say, “That’s not us.” But its ugliness is precisely why Christians need to engage with it. No one is better placed to defeat Christian Nationalism than Christians: They have the numbers, access, leverage, internal credibility/authority, and the best reasons to defeat Christian Nationalism.
As with any doctrinal controversy, the theological battle, and the battle for the hearts and minds of followers, are internal matters. That is why the Christians Against Christian Nationalism movement is so important to the overall defeat of Christian Nationalism. (See this post for some links to organizations fighting Christian Nationalism. Amanda Tyler’s Christians against Christian Nationalism, Broadleaf Books, 2024, is also a good resource.)
Some reassuring news here is that Christian Nationalism is still a minority position, even among US Christians. See the 2024 PRRI/Brookings report, which found that only 10% of Americans are strict believers in Christian Nationalism, with an additional 19% being sympathetic to some of the ideas they hear about it. That “sympathetic” group probably contains a large proportion who do not fully understand the content or dangers of the ideology; they are the persuadable group that should be the primary target for communication.
It is also worth noting, however, that Christianity itself is based on falsehoods. (A few examples are discussed in my post, The Bible is Morally Wrong and Factually False.) This aspect of how the religion trains its followers to think is at least partly responsible for their susceptibility to other falsehoods, including those from corrupt preachers, deceitful conspiracy theorists, sham prophets, snake oil salespeople, and politically opportunistic Christian Nationalists. Christianity needs to grapple with this, too, while it is grappling with dangerous extremism in its midst.
The doctrinal debate may be an internal matter, but do not neglect the fact that external influences—including media, politicians, corporate interests, billionaires, and foreign powers—have been stoking the flames of Christian Nationalism because they think it is in their interests to have Americans in its thrall. They think it gives them political and economic advantages, to have Americans believe the false claims of Christian Nationalism and for the form of government that Christian Nationalists dream of to come into existence. (Let that sink in: America’s enemies would be happy if Christian Nationalists won.)
What is Religious Nationalism?
Nationalism is an obscene mutation and corruption of patriotism or love of country. Nationalism is really about power and oppressing people who are “other.” In the U.S., nationalists have coopted the flag and its colors. They make flamboyant displays to send the message that they are the “true Americans.” They are not. They are anti-American in the literal sense of promoting values that go against the principles the country was founded on, principles enshrined in the Constitution. Some of nationalists have proposed, even acted on, over-throwing the government, in order to get their way. Sedition and treason are obviously explicitly anti-American, by definition!
Religious nationalism is especially heinous. From history, we see it quickly becomes fascism and religious extremism, often leading to oppression, violence, and war. The kind of religious nationalism being pushed in the U.S. today is very similar to what we have seen—and what Americans have typically abhorred—from groups like the Islamic Republic of Iran, al Qaeda, ISIS, Hindu nationalists, both sides in the Irish conflict, and the Taliban. It is worth mentioning that sometimes these movements are fundamentally political, and they merely take advantage of the fact that adding religion to the mix allows them to more effectively convince people to support their cause (rather than the religion being an inherent part of the nationalism). Not everyone who espouses Christian Nationalism is a true believer: Many of the worst of them merely use it as a tool for manipulation.
How Christian Nationalists Lie
Some Christian Nationalists are dumb, or think their audience is. Here’s an example from CPAC 2022. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declared, “we were a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because He wrote the Constitution.”
This insane claim about the US Constitution being divinely inspired, I was shocked to learn, is not Patrick’s alone. Baptist News Global reports that, “According to Pew Research Center, 72% of Republican Mormons, 56.3% of Republican Orthodox, 48.3% of Republican evangelical Protestants, and 28% of Republican Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants believe that ‘The U.S. Constitution was inspired by God and reflects God’s vision for America’.” That’s thankfully still a small minority of US citizens overall, since these groups are mostly demographically small and since Republicans are currently only getting about half the popular vote. But given that the claim is a complete fabrication and a distortion of American history, not to mention an utter corruption of the content of the Constitution, the percentage of people who believe this claim should be zero.
We see similarly deceptive claims from people like Congressperson Lauren Boebert, who has said that the separation of church and state is not part of the Constitution. In her particular case it is hard to look past “stupid” as an explanation for her remarks, but they are also deliberately deceptive. As Harvard political scientist Gwen Calais-Haase put it, Boebert’s remarks are “false, misleading, and dangerous” (the quotes from Boebert and Calais-Haase are in this Washington Post article).
The claim “separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution” has become a bit of a slogan with this crowd. It is true that the literal words are not in the document, but there is a long history of precedent in case law, not to mention the writings of the people who framed the Constitution, that tell us that is the intended meaning of the Anti-Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The words aren’t there in that form, but the principle of the separation of church and state is most definitely present in the Constitution.
The Foundations of Religious Freedom and the Separation of Church and State
Any religious person should want freedom of conscience, and by the Golden Rule (or even just by Social Contract thinking) they should want the same freedom of conscience for everyone—or else others could violate their own freedom of conscience, too. Christian Nationalists want freedom of conscience for themselves, but not for others with whom they disagree.
We have seen the current US Supreme Court support this aspect of Christian Nationalism in decisions that twist the meaning of freedom of religion—in overturning Roe, in the cake shop decision, in the praying football coach decision, and in other cases, too. The trend is toward making it so that extremist Christians can impose their religious ideas on others by invoking their own religious freedom, while others are not equally free to believe (or not) as they see fit. This is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. This bad case law from the Supreme Court is leading us down a path where a religious minority is succeeding in imposing its extremist ideas on the whole country. This in turn is perhaps the best reason to pursue the option of expanding the Court to dilute the corrupting influence Trump’s appointments have made.
The fundamental purpose of legitimate governments is to foster conditions that promote the welfare of their people, both individually and collectively. Part of this can be done through regulations that incentivize a choice architecture that maximizes freedom while protecting people from harms caused by others.
Religious nationalism abandons this goal of good governments in favor of deliberately oppressing some people and deceiving others, so that a small subset of powerful and/or rich people receive extra benefits and the expense of everyone else. So, in addition to being religiously wrong, a corruption of patriotism, founded on deceptions, and a violation of the Constitution’s protection of freedom of (and from) religion, Christian Nationalism also undermines the very purpose of governments. I discuss my view on the correct position for governments to take on religion in: Governments and Religious Freedom.
