Christian Nationalism Versus The Constitution

Yesterday, I spoke at a gathering in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, sponsored by multiple civic organizations convened by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Other speakers addressed the growing threat of this unAmerican movement and the multiple ways it is not Christian. I addressed the threat it poses to America’s constitution. My remarks are below.

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I’ve been asked to discuss the multiple ways in which Christian Nationalism is inconsistent with America’s founding documents—especially the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. It’s always a good idea to define our terms, so let me begin by listing the basic premises of Christian Nationalism—a political movement that my friends in the Christian clergy assure me is anything but authentically Christian.

Christian Nationalists begin with the ahistorical insistence that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that one must be a Christian (or– let’s be honest here—a White Christian) in order to be a “true American.” Christian Nationalists reject Church-State separation and believe that civil government should impose their version of “Christian” behavior on all American citizens. That would entail—at a minimum—banning abortion, rejecting same-sex marriage (and for that matter, criminalizing homosexuality), and reinstating patriarchy.

Virtually every tenet of Christian Nationalism is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. I won’t spend time today explaining how the movement distorts and mischaracterizes either Christianity or the actual history of this country. What I will do is “compare and contrast” some of the foundational provisions of America’s constituent documents—and especially the Bill of Rights— documents that reflect what I call “The American Idea”–with the absolutely contrary premises of Christian Nationalism.

What do I mean when I talk about the “American Idea”? What is that Idea, and what were its political and philosophical roots? Where did our Constitutional system come from, and how did it differ from prior beliefs about the nature of government power and authority? Answering those questions does require a visit to the history of America.

A while back, while I was doing research for one of my books, I came across an illuminating explanation of the stark differences between the original settlers who came to this country—those the scholar called the “Planting Fathers”—and the men who would draft our legal system—the men we call the Founding Fathers. As he pointed out, the Puritans and Pilgrims who first came to America had defined liberty—including religious liberty– as “freedom to do the right thing”—freedom to worship and obey the right God in the true church, and to use the power of government to ensure that their neighbors did too. But the Founders who crafted our constitution some 150 years later were products of the intervening Enlightenment and they had accepted its dramatically different definition of liberty.

Enlightenment philosophers defined liberty as personal autonomy—an individual’s right to make his or her own moral and political decisions, free of government coercion. In the Enlightenment’s libertarian construction, liberty meant freedom to “do your own thing,” subject to two very important caveats: you could do your own thing so long as you did not thereby harm the person or property of someone else, and so long as you recognized the equal right of others to do their “own thing.”  The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are firmly grounded in that Enlightenment understanding of the nature of liberty.

It’s also important to understand that, as a result, America’s constitutional system is largely based on a concept we call “negative liberty.” The Founders believed that our individual rights don’t come from some gracious grants from government; rather, those rights are “natural,” meaning that we are entitled to certain basic rights simply by virtue of being human (thus the term “human rights”), and that a legitimate government is obliged to respect and protect those natural rights.  If you think about it, the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government—“the state”—is forbidden to do. For example, the state cannot prescribe our religious or political beliefs, it cannot search us without probable cause, it cannot censor our expression—and it is forbidden from doing such things even when popular majorities might favor such actions. That concept of a limited and constrained government is absolutely antithetical to Christian Nationalism, which seeks to use the power of the state to compel behaviors consistent with their version of Christianity.

Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, is among the many scholars who have described why that Christian Nationalist approach is inconsistent with the American system, writing that –and I quote–“A worldview that claims God as a political partisan and dehumanizes one’s political opponents as evil is fundamentally antidemocratic, and a mind-set that believes that our nation was divinely ordained to be a promised land for Christians of European descent is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and equality of all.”

The Founders’ view of freedom of religion is incorporated in the First Amendment, which protects religious liberty through the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses – clauses that, operating together, require the separation of Church and State.

Now, as fundamentalists like to point out, the actual phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the text of the First Amendment. What they prefer to ignore is that that the phrase refers to the way the First Amendment’s two religion clauses operate. However, the concept of church-state separation had long preceded its incorporation into the First Amendment. The first documented use of the actual phrase was by Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, well before the Revolutionary War. The most famous use, of course, was that of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson was President, a group of Danbury Baptists wrote to him asking for an official interpretation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. Jefferson’s response was that the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause were intended to “erect a wall of separation” between government and religion. What is less often noted is that since Jefferson’s response was official, it was duly confirmed by the then serving U.S. Attorney General before it was transmitted to the Danbury Baptists.

Historians tell us that the Establishment Clause went through more than 20 drafts, with the Founders rejecting formulations like “there shall be no National Church” as inadequate to their intent. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The courts have uniformly held that this language not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion or state Church but also prohibits government actions that endorse or sponsor religion, favor one religion over another, or that prefer religion to non-religion, or for that matter, non-religion over religion.

Meanwhile, the Free Exercise Clause prohibits government from interfering with the “free exercise” of religion. It protects the right of Americans to choose our own beliefs, and to express those beliefs without fear of state disapproval. Read together, the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause require government neutrality in matters of religion. The Religion Clauses prohibit Government from either benefiting or burdening religious belief.

One way to think about the operation of the religion clauses is that the Establishment Clause forbids the public sector (that is, government) from either favoring or disfavoring religion, and the Free Exercise Clause forbids government from interfering with the expression of religious beliefs in the public square (that is, the myriad non-governmental venues where citizens exchange ideas and opinions.)

When states misuse their authority and play favorites, when they privilege some religious beliefs over others, people who do not share those privileged beliefs are relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Separation of church and state prevents adherents of majority religions from using government to force their beliefs or practices on others, and it keeps agencies of government from interfering with the internal operations of churches, synagogues and mosques.

As to that original purpose of neutrality, I’ve come across few explanations better than the one offered by John Leland. Leland, who lived from 1754 to1851, was an evangelical Baptist preacher who had strong views on the individual’s relationship to God, the inviolability of the individual conscience, and the limited nature of human knowledge. He wrote, “religion is a matter between God and individuals; religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil government, nor in any way under its control…Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

(Leland could hardly have envisioned our current government’s belief that it does have the right to interfere with the principles of mathematics and statistics…But that’s a scary subject for another day…)

The bottom line is that we Americans live in a diverse society, where different religions hold dramatically different beliefs about the matters Christian Nationalists want government to dictate.  For example, in several traditions, including my own, abortion is permissible. Nevertheless, here in Indiana, where our legislators routinely ignore the official neutrality required by the First Amendment, lawmakers have passed a law that imposes a belief held by some Christian denominations on members of denominations and faith traditions who do not share those religious beliefs.

It would be a serious mistake to think that Christian Nationalism is only inconsistent with the First Amendment. The racism and misogyny that is built into it also run afoul of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantees. The constitutional requirement of equal protection is intended to prevent majorities (or in this case, activist minorities) from using government to disadvantage individuals and minorities of whom they disapprove

Essentially, the Equal Protection Clause requires government to treat citizens as individuals, not as members of a group. In the United States, our laws are supposed to be based upon a person’s civic behavior, not on gender, race or other markers of identity. So long as we citizens obey the laws, pay our taxes, and generally conduct ourselves in a way that does not endanger or disadvantage others, we are entitled to full equality with other citizens.  That guarantee of equal civic rights is one of the aspects of American life that has been most admired around the globe; it has unleashed the productivity of previously marginalized groups and contributed significantly to American prosperity. Christian Nationalism strikes at the very heart of that commitment to civic equality—it would privilege certain citizens over others based solely on their skin color and religious identity. It’s hard to think of anything more anti-American.

The conflict of Christian Nationalism with the Constitution and Bill of Rights isn’t limited to the First and Fourteenth Amendments. There is another incredibly important principle embedded in the Bill of Rights that we are already in danger of losing to the sustained assault of these pseudo-religious fanatics: the doctrine of substantive due process, often called the right to privacy or the right to personal autonomy.

I agree with the numerous constitutional scholars who argue that, although the right to personal autonomy or self-government is not explicitly mentioned, the principle is inherent in the Bill of Rights. That’s because it is impossible to give content to the rights that are specifically enumerated unless we recognize the doctrine of substantive due process –and that impossibility was explicitly recognized by the Supreme Court in 1965, in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Connecticut’s legislature had passed a law prohibiting the use of birth control by married couples. The legislation prohibited doctors from prescribing contraceptives and prohibited pharmacists from filling any such prescriptions. The Supreme Court struck down the law, holding that whether a couple used contraceptives simply wasn’t any of the government’s business; it was not a decision that government was entitled to make

The Court recognized that an individual right to personal autonomy—a right to self-government—is essential to the enforcement of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights.  Justices White and Harlan found explicit confirmation of it in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—which is where the terminology “substantive due process” comes from. Wherever it resided–in a “penumbra” or in the Ninth or 14th Amendment—the Justices agreed on both its presence and importance.

The doctrine of Substantive Due Process draws a line between decisions that government has the legitimate authority to make, and decisions which, in our system, must be left up to the individual. I used to tell my students that the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is forbidden to decide. What books you read, what opinions you form, what prayers you say (or don’t)—such matters are far outside the legitimate role of government. The issue isn’t whether that book is dangerous or inappropriate, or that religion is false, or whether you should marry someone of the same sex, or whether you should procreate: the issue is who gets to make that decision—the individual or the government. Allowing any unit of government to decide such matters violates the most fundamental premise of the Bill of Rights and the philosophy that underlies our constitutional system. Yet that is precisely what Christian Nationalists want.

Let me be clear: Government has the right–indeed, the obligation–to intervene when a person’s behaviors are harming people who haven’t consented to that harm. (Mask mandates to protect public health, or requirements that students be vaccinated before entering a public school classroom are examples.) Otherwise, in the constitutional system devised by the Founders, government must leave us alone.

For a long time, secular and religiously tolerant Americans dismissed warnings about the growing fundamentalist assaults on that principle, confident that their right to self-determination was secure.  The conservative Christian reasoning in Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, justified an invasion of that personal liberty, and it was shocking. For the first time in American history, a Supreme Court had withdrawn a constitutional right that had been considered settled for over fifty years.

As polarizing as that decision was, there is still very little understanding of its scope, and the fact that it threatens far more than the health, well-being and self-determination of American women.

In this country, different religions—and different denominations within those religions– have very different beliefs about the status of women and about procreation. What amounts to the Supreme Court’s elevation of a particular version of Christianity has understandably engendered an enormous and negative reaction–a majority of Americans, including a majority of religiously-affiliated Americans, disagree with the Court’s decision, and are even more opposed to emerging efforts to make access to contraception difficult or impossible. What is still not fully appreciated, however, is the fact that Dobbs was more than just an effort to force women to give birth—it was a devastating assault on the American definition of individual liberty, a definition which draws a line between legitimate and impermissible government actions.

If there is no right to privacy—no substantive due process guarantee–if government can force women to give birth, government can move to make interracial or same-sex marriages illegal. It can outlaw birth control. It can forbid divorce. In short, it can decide those “intimate matters” that the Founders and former Supreme Court decisions protected against government over-reach.

So far, my discussion of these issues has been necessarily abstract—a discussion of principles. Let me just conclude by reminding you of the challenge we are facing right here in Indiana, where we have statewide officials who are self-identified Christian Nationalists and who demonstrate daily that they neither understand nor respect the Constitution.

The most obvious example is our Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, who has  pushed the racist White Replacement Theory, compared vaccination policies to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews, advocated that brown people crossing the border be shot, and accused the Indy Star, members of the left and Methodist and Lutheran ministers of wanting to cut off the private parts of children. When he served briefly on a library board, he tried to censor and remove books of which he disapproved, and he constantly engages in ugly diatribes against gay citizens. Most recently, he claimed that undocumented immigrants aren’t entitled to due process.

Todd Rokita, Indiana’s embarrassing Attorney General, has hounded and harassed a doctor who legally aborted a ten-year-old rape victim, and is engaged in a wide-ranging vendetta to root out efforts to foster racial and religious inclusion. I won’t go through Jim Banks’ numerous assaults on the American Idea, since as Fort Wayne residents you are undoubtedly already familiar with them. These men are so busy pursing a Christian Nationalist culture war, they don’t have much time to attend to the duties of their offices. They provide an excellent example of what government would be like in a country run by Christian Nationalists—aka, the Christian Taliban.

A country in the thrall of a Christian Nationalist worldview would look nothing like the America that most of us love and want to protect. We live in a dangerous time, but we cannot give in to fear and reaction, and we absolutely cannot allow Christian Nationalists, White Supremacists and other assorted bigots to jettison the legal system that has fostered American progress and been a beacon to oppressed people around the world.

Throughout our history, America has had to reckon with significant numbers of people who never accepted the premises of the system devised by the Founders. There have always been Puritans who–like the Planting Fathers–believed that they should be able to use government to control the lives and behaviors of everyone else. Throughout our history, we have always had to deal with America’s “original sin” of racism. We’ve had dark times. It wasn’t just the Civil War—I’m only one of the many old folks in this room who have lived through the Civil Rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement. American liberty has always been a work in progress—and has always been frantically resisted by those who have felt threatened and disoriented by social change. That said, the country has moved—granted, in fits and starts—toward realizing the ideals of liberty and civic equality set out in our constituent documents.

Because I am old, I often think of a folk song that was popular during the great upheavals of the 60’s. It was sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, and the chorus was “don’t let the light go out.” That should be our motto as we face this latest eruption of deeply unAmerican challenges from people who are threatened by diversity and dead-set against equality and inclusion.

Don’t let the light go out.

Thank you.