America was not founded as a “Christian nation.” Fight for religious freedom

Paul Rosenburg in Salon (see the article Celebrate religious freedom — the way the Founding Fathers originally intended) explains how the religious right has hijacked the idea of religious freedom to impose Christian doctrine on the unsuspecting Americans. 

Before fake news there was fake history, and one of the most significant examples has long been the religious right’s idea that America was founded as a “Christian nation.” It’s a popular misconception sometimes used to promote a profoundly anti-democratic agenda, the "Handmaid’s Tale"-style belief that Christians have a biblical mandate to control all earthly institutions – including government – until the second coming of Jesus. 

We arrive once again at Religious Freedom Day on Jan. 16, when the Christian right will claim that its “freedom” to oppress others is under horrendous assault. For the third year in a row, they’ll be countered by a growing movement of modern-day Jeffersonians seeking to reclaim the real meaning of that day, and the real history that it celebrates — the hard-won freedom of all to practice whatever form of religious belief, or non-belief, their consciences guide them to. 

“When Christian Right leaders talk about religious liberty, they often really mean theocratic supremacism of their own religious beliefs inscribed in government,” author Frederick Clarkson pointed out in 2016, when I first wrote about Religious Freedom Day. Nothing has changed in their core agenda, but the awareness and willingness to confront it has grown, along with the understanding of how they operate.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was remarkable precisely because it didn’t claim to derive authority from God in the typical top-down manner, but instead, bottom-up, from the people, following the arguments used by John Locke to justify government, as well as his views on religious tolerance and the distinctions between secular and religious spheres of power. God is never mentioned in the Constitution, nor is any form of religion except in the negative: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Source: Celebrate religious freedom — the way the Founding Fathers originally intended

In the same Salon article, Paul interviewed Frederick Clarkson (who writes about the Dominionist Family Research Council’s approach to organizing within churches in a forthcoming article at The Public Eye, “A Manual to Restore a Christian Nation that Never Was”) on how to expose the lies of Dominionists and Christian nationalists and how to preserve religious freedom in the US and protect Jefferson's legacy. Some of the questions and answers are reproduced below:

In discussing the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, you write, "This feature of the movement — one that stokes much of its followers’ passion — may also contain the seeds of its undoing." What do you mean?  

The problem for Christian nationalists is that it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. For example, when it came time to forge a coherent national government out of the 13 colonies, the mostly Christian religious and political leaders of the time opted for religious equality under the law, recognizing that if the government could favor a sect or religion, it could control how people think. This is one among many flaws that have always been present in the Christian nationalist narrative, but since most of society didn’t see it, or did not take it seriously, the movement has advanced without being much challenged on the point. 

The religious supremacism inherent in Christian nationalism is repulsive to most people, regardless of their political and religious views. I think if we got serious about taking Jefferson and Madison’s foundational ideas of religious equality under the law into the 21st century, Christian nationalism would crumble. 

The Declaration of Independence is used to smuggle God into the Constitution, but it was written by Thomas Jefferson, who by Cureton's standards was lacking in the very "Christian worldview" that he claims as our nation's lost foundation. How do people like him deal with this contradiction? 

They mostly avoid addressing it. They sometimes point out that Jefferson invoked God at various time and attended church while president. That he said religious things and attended religious services is not, of course, proof against his very public stances in favor of separation of church and state as the best way to guarantee religious freedom for all. That is a problem they cannot actually solve. History is not on their side. 

What can we learn by comparing the actual history of religion in America to the Christian nationalist fantasy?  

When we learn that Christian nationalism is a lie, we get a much clearer sense of hope and possibility in seeing that we are all in this together. We also learn something about what we are up against and therefore have the opportunity to better figure out what needs to be done. I think we also learn that we have been complacent, taking hard-won freedom for granted. But we can also learn of the weakness of their argument, and begin to formulate strong, fact-based arguments against it. 

We can also learn that religious freedom is a powerful, inspiring and authentically revolutionary idea. It is as dangerous to the rich and the powerful today as it was in the 18th century. Religious freedom made possible the best advances in human and civil rights in our history. But we can also see how forces of oppression see that too, and are doing everything they can to neutralize it. 

How does this historical comparison relate to the one you focus on, regarding the history of religious freedom in Virginia and the Bill of Rights? 

I think looking at the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and its role in shaping our constitutional approach to religion and government, exposes the lie of Christian nationalism in a way that allows us to clear away the fog of the long, slow religious war they are waging in America. We also get to see their techniques of strategic misdirection. It’s like learning how a magician performs an illusion: They show us a map of history that points to the Declaration of Independence as the source of the Constitution’s approach to religious freedom. But once we know the story of the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom and the truth about the origins of our Constitution’s approach to religious freedom, the misdirection is revealed. It is helpful to know our actual history and its meaning, and it is humbling to know how we have allowed the Christian right to use this false narrative to its advantage. 

What is the best way to understand the threat to America that Dominionism represents? How can we best respond to that threat? 

First, we need to take the time to understand that the challenge that we face may not be what we think. Dominionism is not as exotic or as rare as it is sometimes portrayed. It is a comprehensive theology relating to conservative Christians taking control over all areas of life, not just church and state. Its influence is getting wider and deeper, partly because there are many dedicated thinkers and capable doers in this movement. Some are political and governmental leaders. 

Now one might say, what’s wrong with that? Don’t they have a right to bring their Christian values into the public square? To which we say, of course. But by the same standard, we are not required to turn a blind eye to their words, their actions, and their unambiguous intentions. This is what theocratic theorist Gary North called “the dilemma of democratic pluralism.” North asserts that we are obliged to tolerate views that are in fact antithetical to democratic pluralism. The Christian right knows this, and is smart about exploiting our dilemma. How do we oppose something our philosophy requires us to tolerate? 

Let’s not kid ourselves about the profoundly antidemocratic nature of the Dominionist mission. Religious freedom and democracy are not settled matters. We are living the dilemma of democratic pluralism.

How do we address that dilemma? 

There are a lot of things we can do, but here are three things for a start. One is that we need to become much better informed about Dominionism and the way it manipulates the idea of religious freedom to advance an agenda that is anything but free. 

Second, we need to be much better citizen activists, especially in electoral politics. The system we have is competitive. Let’s not cede the playing field to the Christian right, which has invested so much in ideological development and the building of electoral capacity for several generations. It has worked well for them, but they are a well-organized minority: They cannot prevail if the rest of us mobilize in our own best interests. 

Finally, when we hear politicians and religious or interest-group leaders go on about how religious freedom is a “cherished” or “treasured” value, let’s ask them to get real. Religious freedom is not a lovely antique, a family heirloom or a relic of a bygone era. It is a dynamic, progressive value that underlies every other constitutional freedom we have -- and it is under siege. We need to require our leaders to lead in this regard and stop patronizing us.

Religious nationalism in the US is foundational and one should be wary of Trump's rise

Jack Jenkins's Historians of Christian nationalism are alarmed by its appearance in American pulpits

A lesson on the dangers to the United States article in Think Progress is informative and warns Americans about what can happen. Christian nationalism is nothing new to the US and countries, like Germany between world wars, have some similarities with the present day US, although there are certainly many differences as well. Following are few excerpts of the article:

Christian nationalism isn’t just common in America. It’s foundational.

At least that’s the argument Aeon editor and former Harvard Society fellow Sam Haselby makes in his book The Origins of American Religious Nationalism, in which he insists American Christian nationalism is an inescapable part our national political discourse. He points to some of the earliest revolutionaries as proof: A band of (apparently laughably bad) poets calling themselves Connecticut Wits were among the first to protest for American independence, calling for a society that was “hierarchical, theological, and anti-racist” in nature.

“[Christian nationalism is] an old debate, as old as the United States itself,” Haselby wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

Granted, the Connecticut Wit social framework didn’t win out against its eventual rival, the so-called Jeffersonian or Virginia model of American identity, which Haselby describes as ultimately “evangelical, egalitarian, and racist.” But like the savior they worship, religious nationalism would not die. As the United States evolved, Haselby says two Protestant Christian ideological frameworks — which he calls “national evangelicalism” and “frontier revivalism” — began to vie for power. Their intellectual dimensions are complex, but the result of their feud was the creation of a shared political rhetoric Haselby describes as religious nationalism, primary articulated through the lens of Protestant Christianity.

The scholar differentiates his definition of Christian nationalism from more contemporary iterations by pointing to three defining (but broad) characteristics.
“Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the ‘political religion of the nation,'”

The first is the almost sacred status Americans often bestow upon the Founding Fathers and the nation’s founding documents. In 1838, for instance, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the “political religion of the nation,” which he argued should be “breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe…taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges…let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls.”

Haselby says this reverence for historical figures is unusual when compared to other industrialized states in Europe, where “founders” in the American sense are an alien concept.

“There is no counterpart in, say, Britain,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “The figure that comes closest to that is probably Winston Churchill.”
The second feature of American religious nationalism, Haselby says, is the fact that leaders of U.S. social movements often invoke what he calls the “Jeremiad” narrative, or the idea that their political cause is in keeping with the spirit of America’s founding. The third facet is the most obvious: The undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or “God talk” in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.

“There’s a lot of liberals and progressive people who theologize,” he said. “When it comes to nationality, Americans are people of the word. They’re textual exegetes, whether they’re liberal or conservative.”

It’s easy to find evidence of these tendencies—sometimes described as our country’s “civil religion”—in modern American political disputes. Fervent debates over what is “constitutional” have defined Trump’s young presidency, with advocates on all sides invoking founding documents in ways that can resemble a theological discussion. Trump supporters and “resistance” activists alike insist their movement carried the torch of liberty lit by the Founders. And appeals to the Almighty were present at both the RNC and the DNC this year, with the latter arguably more overtly religious than the former.

Moment of prayer after Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court

Source: The US President official twitter account

Robert Ericksen, a historian and professor at Pacific Lutheran University, has written about Christians active participation in Adolf Hitler’s rise in his book Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a product of Christian nationalism and Professor  Ericksen wants to learn from that era.

Direct conflations between Nazi Germany and U.S. politics are prone to gross hyperbole, and Erickson was quick to list a number of differences between the modern political moment and the rise of the Third Reich. 1930s Germany, for instance, was still reeling from a humiliating defeat during World War I while also enduring the Great Depression—neither of which are directly applicable to the United States in 2017. And while Trump-supporting Nazi sympathizers have made news in recent days, virtually none have any major institutional faith affiliation.

But Ericksen argues the past is meant to inform the present, which is likely why he was one of the first scholars to point to broad parallels between Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and those that backed the infamous German dictator.

In a Huffington Post op-ed published in September of 2016, Ericksen observed that evangelicals were already falling in line behind the businessman despite his questionable ethics during the campaign—and observed similarities between their fervor and that of 1930s German Christians. Like modern American Christians, these Germans emerged out of a deeply Christian Europe, where religious nationalism was embedded in many cultures. Although obviously distinct from Haselby’s understanding of faith-fueled political discourse, fusions of faith and politics permeated German society in ways not altogether dissimilar from American “civil religion.”

“To be loyal to God and country was a very powerful emotion and a common slogan,” Ericksen said.
“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,”

There are also eerily familiar cultural factors that accelerated Hitler’s rise—including appeals to what modern observers might describe as “family values.” The infusion of women into the workplace during and after World War I altered traditional perceptions of gender roles, for instance, and the forced imposition of democracy on Germany as a byproduct of losing the war didn’t sit well with many citizens.
“All of these things were perceived by the Christian community as a moral breakdown,” he said. “Democracy we believed to have encouraged that moral breakdown, because democracy believed in political equality.”

What’s more, the relatively few residents who were able to celebrate aspects of the “roaring 20s”—dance halls, the emergence of the movie industry, and a “more open sense to people having a moral right to express themselves”—suddenly became targets.
“They were perceived as not accepting Christian values and standards,” Ericksen explained. “They were aggressively blamed for pornography and prostitution.”
The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.
“There were a lot of comparisons to [famous theologian] Martin Luther, who was, up until then, probably the biggest German hero,” he said. “He saved Germany or created Protestantism by his response to the Bible and God’s word, and now Hitler had come along to save Germany in this time of need in a different way—but still according to God’s will.”

Ericksen pointed out that Christians did this even as Hitler exhibited behavior to contrary—much as Christian nationalists have publicly ignored Trump’s attacks on the press, democratic institutions, and other evangelical faith leaders. And even if Trump ultimately has little in common with Hitler, Ericksen noted that Trump has more dangerous weapons in his arsenal—weapons Christian nationalists such as Robert Jeffress has proclaimed God gave him the authority to use.
“In the end, Trump could be more dangerous than Hitler, because Trump has the nuclear option,” he said.

Estimating/Measuring Religious Nationalism

Measuring the religious content of a country's nationalism is difficult. Nationalist struggles bring together a broad spectrum of ideas and groups. However, there is usually some specific culture, religion, language, ethnicity (or aspects thereof) that are prioritized, highlighted and repeatedly mentioned to inscribe them to the nation’s memory. Even primordialists, those who believe in immemorial, unchanging nations, now agree that nationalists have to choose from tens, if not hundreds, of different folk tales, martyrs and myths to help the ‘rebirth’ of the nation.

It is difficult to quantify the role of religion in a country’s nationalism but effort can be made to at least come up with criteria on the basis of which a reasonably fair assessment can be made and countries can be compared. Three criteria can be selected to assess religion’s role in nationalism of a country: founding fathers statements/actions during and after nationalist struggle; national mottos, crests, emblems, anthems, flags; and public pronouncements of leaders on national holidays. The more religion figures in these three criteria, more is its role in nationalism.

Founding Fathers' statements/actions

Period of independence is important in studying nationalism as it is the period when leaders decide, devise and employ the nationalistic myths, martyrs, narratives and slogans to arouse and mobilize people. After the independence is won, this is the period which people look back on to decide who they are.

Aviad Rubin in his article (The status of religion in emergent political regimes: lessons from Turkey and Israel, 2013) argues that the period of new regime formation is very important, ‘The conditions in place at the moment of regime formation are of crucial importance to the future status of religion in the state…Following the establishment of the new regime, the emerging political elite is likely to implement the fundamentals of its political agenda... After being solidified in institutional and constitutional arrangements, the initial structure can remain resilient for many years despite significant social and political changes.’

Mottos, crests, anthems and flags

Symbols are very important to nationalism. They define nations and make them visible. As Michael Walzer in his article (The Facsimile Fallacy, 1967) contends flags, anthems and other national symbols are required because nations had to be personified and seen before they are loved. Gabriella Elgenius in her book Symbols of Nation and Nationalism: Celebrating Nationhood (2011) argues that national symbols ‘repeatedly illuminate boundaries and raise awareness of membership’, hence they are crucial to nationalism. Geisler in his book National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative (2005) explains why these symbols are significant part of nationalism and nation-building effort.

‘Yet national symbols perform an important function not only as catalysts for the formation and maintenance of national identity. They take on a particularly crucial importance in fusing a nation to a state. For especially in those cases where the territorial boundaries of the state do not correspond to the geographic outlines of the ancestral “homeland” claimed by a nation, or where a state is created without the ideological support structure of a nation, national symbols are charged with the difficult task of creating a nation’. 

Flags, anthems and mottos are symbols that are recognized as related to a nation’s identity both inside the nation and internationally. Flags and anthems stir emotions across nations as they are considered embodiment of nation’s history and pride. Therefore, for understanding religion’s role in the nationalism of a country flags, crests, anthems and mottos can be analyzed for their religious content. Following symbols can be particularly useful:

1.      Official country motto, crest/emblem, anthem

2.      Mottos of the three/four armed forces, anthems

3.      Mottos of the states/provinces

National Days

Similarly, national days are important national symbols. If flags and anthems are visual and auditory symbols of a nation, national days are temporal symbols of nationalism. The selection of national day inform us how a nation sees itself and what is important to a nation. Beside the basis of selection of national days, what is said and done on a national day also shows the kind of nationalism (ethnic, religious, civic etc.) a nation believes in.  Therefore, to ascertain religion’s role in a country’s nationalism, not only the selection of the national day has to be analyzed but also the speeches of the head of government/state on that day. Number of references to religion/religion-related symbols in the public pronouncements by the President and Prime Minister (or head of state/government) on the most important national holidays would inform whether the nationalism is religious or not.