Introduction: Prelude to an Argument
“When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything equal to it.”
— Oscar Wilde3
God bequeathed the Ten Commandments to Moses, or so the story goes. It’s a tale believed by millions of pious churchgoing Americans, including former judge James Taylor of Hawkins County, Tennessee. Taylor also believes that America was founded on those commandments and that America’s “founders were religious people whose faith influenced the creation of this nation, its laws, and its institutions of government.”4
Elected to higher office in 2011, Judge Taylor ached to use his new power to proclaim these great truths. He insisted that the Ten Commandments be displayed in his courthouse. The holy exhibit would edify citizens and show that Judeo-Christian principles shaped the development of American law and government. It would demonstrate that his religion birthed America. Taylor commissioned a Ten Commandments plaque, elegantly lettered and struck in bronze; it read as shown in this replica:
Not shy about using a public office to promote his personal religion, Taylor promised to showcase other items of civic piety, including the national motto, “In God We Trust”; the Pledge of Allegiance (“one nation, under God”); and a picture of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge. But the commandments were to be the centerpiece. The complete message was unmistakable: Judeo-Christian principles influenced America’s creation, its laws, and its government.5
This widespread belief is unexamined and, like Judge Taylor’s plaque, unable to withstand scrutiny. Look closely at the wording on that plaque. Taylor lists nine commandments, not ten, omitting the adultery stricture. He also mislabeled his ninth commandment as the eleventh—XI. Hypocritically, Taylor pocketed donations meant to finance the commandments display and had stolen money from his clients. One former staffer filed a $3 million sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the married Taylor.6 All told, Taylor pled guilty to multiple felony theft charges, was sentenced to four years in prison, had to pay $71,783 in restitution and serve six hundred hours of community service, and was disbarred.7
Taylor struggled to obey his beloved commandments, but that does not necessarily mean that he was wrong about their influence. Was he right? Do the Ten Commandments, “In God We Trust,” Washington’s prayer, and the other evidence show that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles?
What Are Judeo-Christian Principles?
Taylor’s claim that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles is common—so much so that people accept it as true without asking simple questions: What is a Judeo-Christian principle? Where do Judeo-Christian principles come from? Are they handed down from on high, like the Ten Commandments? The few attempts to answer these questions are unsatisfying because they are often as vague as the term “Judeo-Christian principles” itself. One reason the “nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles” claim has not been fully examined is that the vagueness of the term insulates that claim from scrutiny.
The term “Judeo-Christian” is difficult to pin down because it is something of a fabrication.8 From a scholarly standpoint, as noted in a 1992 Newsweek article, “the idea of a single ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ is a made-in-America myth.”9 One Jewish theologian stated the problem plainly: “Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism.”10 “Judeo-Christian” is slippery because it is more a political invention than a scholarly description. It originated at the close of World War II when Christian exclusivity was too threatening. After “the Nazi death camps, a phrase like ‘our Christian civilization’ seemed ominously exclusive,” explained Prof. Mark Silk.11 But the term didn’t gain prominence until the fight against communism, during which some religion, any religion, was better than atheistic communism. Eisenhower was probably the first president to use the term, explaining to a Soviet general in 1952 that the American “form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept.”12
These indistinct principles can be sharpened somewhat by looking to the books that embody Judeo-Christianity: the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, and the Christian Bible, or New Testament. Taylor, the “nine commandments judge,” and others who claim that America is “founded on Judeo-Christian principles” confirm this approach. For instance, when running for president, Woodrow Wilson said, “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”13 President Harry Truman stated, on more than one occasion, that “the fundamental basis of all government is in this Bible right here, and it started with Moses on the Mount,” and “the fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul.”14 The ill-defined term becomes clearer in light of these statements; Judeo-Christian principles can be derived from Mosaic Law, such as the Ten Commandments, and the rest of the bible.
The term has the benefit of sounding inclusive to a broad audience while actually speaking directly to conservative Christians who hear only the second part of the term, “Christian.” Robert Davi, the actor, Bond villain, and frequent contributor to the conservative website Breitbart.com, gave this game away. Writing about the imaginary “War on Christmas,” Davi argued that removing a nativity scene from government property is part of “a systematic attack on Judeo-Christian values that our country was founded on.”15 Davi surely knows that the nativity scene features the birth of Jesus as savior, something Judaism rejects. The nativity is Christian, not Judeo-Christian.
It’s not just celebrities who inadvertently admit the singular, not dual, nature of the term. The Judeo-Christian Voter Guide website16 provides local guides and resources, but, prior to the 2016 election, they were nearly all Christian. In the state with the highest number and percentage of Jewish citizens, New York,17 the state voter guide linked to groups such as the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association, whose goal is “to be a champion of Christian activism.”18 It did not link to a single Jewish group. The site even had an identical twin, the “Christian Voter Guide” website, which was the same in every respect except that it lacked that crumb of inclusion: “Judeo-.”19 The Family Research Council (FRC), whose “mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview,” was once featured heavily on these two sites.20 Tony Perkins, the head of the FRC, inadvertently showed the irrelevance of the “Judeo-” in “Judeo-Christian” when chastising the Daughters of the American Revolution for telling its members not to pray in Jesus’s name (a claim the group denied): “This signals a dramatic change in the strong Judeo-Christian roots of the DAR. After all, this is a service group meant to perpetuate the memory of the American Revolution and the values for which we fought. Like it or not, those values and our nation’s identity were rooted in the Christian tradition.”21 One sentence later, Perkins’s inclusive affectation had evaporated.
John McCain was a bit more honest when he claimed that “this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles,”22 but McCain’s more honest phrasing is less inviting. “Judeo-” is a sop, a fig leaf, tossed about to avoid controversy and complaint. It is simply a morsel of inclusion offered to soften the edge of an exclusionary, Christian movement.
That exclusionary movement is Christian nationalism. As a modern American movement, it is fully described by Michelle Goldberg in her 2006 book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.23 Christian nationalists are historical revisionists bent on “restoring” America to the Judeo-Christian principles on which they wish it were founded. They believe that secular America is a myth, and under the guise of restoration they seek to press religion into every crevice of the government. They not only think it appropriate for the government to favor one religion over others, but also believe America was designed to favor Christianity. To them, America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, and promoting that belief is a religious duty.24
History had proven to the framers of the US Constitution that religion is divisive. They separated religion from government to avoid the mistakes of past regimes. “The Framers and the citizens of their time intended…to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the government weighs in on one side of religious debate; nothing does a better job of roiling society,” wrote the Supreme Court in 2005 when examining the origins of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.25 Christian nationalism’s fabricated history conceals an important historical truth: that religion and government are best kept on either side of an impregnable wall, as the founders intended. This book seeks to expose that fabricated history and tell the greater truths.
Is Christian Nationalism Really a Problem? Is It Influential?
It is because of Christian nationalism that “President Donald Trump” is a phrase that reflects reality and not reality television. Before Trump, Christian nationalism tended toward the corrupt and inept. It was an odd, impotent curiosity. But the 2016 election changed that. Trump won because of Christian nationalism. The movement is still based on lies and myths, but a Christian nationalist was elected president of the United States, and he was elected because of, not in spite of, his Christian nationalism.
The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation.26 Researchers studied this connection and were able to control for other characteristics to ensure that Christian nationalism was not simply a proxy for other forms of intolerance or other variables related to vote choice.27 They concluded, “The more someone believed the United States is—and should be—a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote for Trump.”28
Trump rode a wave of Christian nationalism, fostered by fables and myths about America’s founding, to the most powerful office in the world. “Once Christian nationalism was taken into account,” the researchers explained, “other religious measures had no direct effect on how likely someone was to vote for Trump. These measures of religion mattered only if they made someone more likely to see the United States as a Christian nation.”29 Put another way, “Christian nationalism provides a metanarrative for a religiously distinct national identity.” 30 That identity depends on the historical myths exposed in this book. Those myths are the glue that unites the Christian part of this identity with the American part of the identity. Without the bond provided by these myths, the identity and political power begin to crumble.
Christian nationalism is, at least in this sense, more important than religion, political party, or any other factor in American life.
ONLY AFTER THE SHOCK of the 2016 presidential election subsided could we begin to fully understand the power of Christian nationalism. During the election and before, Christian nationalists themselves underestimated their power. Few expected Trump to win, let alone win because of his Christian nationalism. Christian nationalists had caught the presidential tiger by the tail and were unprepared. Playing catch-up, in February 2016 a loose coalition of conservative religious groups and Christian nationalists launched “Project Blitz,” a curious sobriquet given its historical connotations. The goal was to elevate “traditional Judeo-Christian religious values” and “to reclaim and properly define the narrative which supports such beliefs.”31
Project Blitz encapsulates the problem Christian nationalism poses. First, it seeks to alter our history, values, and national identity. Then it codifies Christian privilege in the law, favoring Christians above others. Finally, it legally disfavors the nonreligious, non-Christians, and minorities such as the LGBTQ community, by, for instance, permitting discrimination against them in places of public accommodation or in employment.
This legislative push, ongoing as this book goes to press, includes three categories of bills that reflect these steps, all of which promote Christian nationalist myths and lies. The first category centers on “Our Country’s Religious Heritage.” These bills “recognize the place of Christian principles in our nation’s history and heritage [and] deal broadly with our national motto, history, and civics, including their Judeo-Christian dimensions.”32 They attempt to prove what Judge Taylor’s nine commandments display was meant to prove, that “religion, and particularly our Judeo-Christian heritage, have played a large part in the founding and history of this country.”33 The second category, which includes measures such as a proclamation recognizing Christian Heritage Week, “focus[es] more on our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage,” though more on the Christian and less on the Judeo.34
Christian nationalist myths are central to the Blitz because they are meant to provide a legislative rationale, historical precedent, and legitimacy. Category 1 bills are supposedly less controversial but promote many of those myths, including a bill that mandates displaying “In God We Trust” in all public schools, libraries, and buildings and on license plates,35 and a “Religion in Legal History Acts” bill that requires “public displays of religious history affecting the law,” including the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington’s Farewell Address.36
Category 2 bills include proclamations recognizing “Christian Heritage Week,” “the Importance of the Bible in History,” and “the Year of the Bible.” There is even one for “Recognizing Christmas Day,” because we would all forget otherwise.37 These proclamations list historical evidence to support their claims, including a claim that “the first act of America’s first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer” and another that “Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”38
These seemingly mundane bills are the tip of Christian nationalism’s sword. More dangerous bills will follow. Category 3 bills grant a license to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans, atheists, unmarried couples, and others in the name of Jesus. These bills will allow religious adoption agencies to refuse to put children in loving homes because the bible says that gay couples are an abomination. They seek to give businesses and places of public accommodation the right to discriminate against customers of a different religion or even skin color (though Christian nationalists would be unlikely to admit the latter). This discriminatory agenda cannot be furthered without the seemingly innocuous bills that first warp our sense of who we are as a nation.
The goal is to redefine America according to the Christian nationalist identity and then reshape the law accordingly. As of the end of April 2018, Project Blitz has resulted in more than seventy proposed bills nationwide.39 Christian nationalism’s identity is built on the foundational myths underlying these bills; this inescapable point is reflected in their legislative strategy. If these myths can be exposed and eviscerated, the aim of this book, so can Christian nationalism’s legal and legislative agenda.
Who Are the Christian Nationalists?
The most vocal Christian nationalists are, as you’d expect, religious leaders. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family and thinks “that we have been, from the beginning, a people of faith whose government is built wholly on a Judeo-Christian foundation.”40 Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell wrote that “our Founding Fathers established America’s laws and precepts on the principles recorded in the laws of God, including the Ten Commandments…[and any] diligent student of American history finds that our great nation was founded by godly men upon godly principles to be a Christian nation.”41 Jimmy Swaggart preached that America has “the greatest freedoms of expression the world has ever known…. Those freedom are based squarely on the Judeo-Christian principle, which is the Word of God.”42 The late Billy Graham and his son Franklin Graham have preached that America “was built on Christian principles.”43
Christian nationalism is not solely about religion. It’s an unholy alliance, an incestuous marriage of conservative politics and conservative Christianity. According to ABC News, the Council for National Policy is one of the most powerful political organizations you’ve never heard of,44 and it exemplifies this alliance. The New York Times described it as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”45 It was founded by prominent Christian nationalist Tim LaHaye, and its secretive membership roll is filled with Christian nationalists from the religious and government sectors, including many repeatedly cited in this book.46 The group’s vision statement declares its Christian nationalist mission: to “restore…Judeo-Christian values under the Constitution.”47
Politicians are some of the most vocal Christian nationalists. Presidential candidates seem particularly fond of repeating Christian nationalism claims. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was asked, point blank, “Do you believe that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles?” He replied in his prolix, disjointed fashion: “Yeah, I think it was…. I see so many things happening that are so different from what our country used to be. So religion’s a very important part of me and it’s also, I think it’s a very important part of our country.”48 After winning office with 81 percent of the white evangelical vote, Trump became slightly more adept when deploying Christian nationalist rhetoric. As president, he has often claimed that “in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.”49 He supports this line, so popular with his base, by trotting out some of the favorite Christian nationalist talking points, including:
- That “the American Founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence.”
- That the pilgrims at Plymouth were religious and prayed.
- That “our currency proudly declares, ‘In God we trust.’”
- That “Benjamin Franklin reminded his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention to begin by bowing their heads in prayer.”
- That presidents take the oath of office and “say, ‘So help me God.’”
- That “we proudly proclaim that we are ‘one nation under God’ every time we say the Pledge of Allegiance.”50
This book will address all of these anemic talking points.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump’s primary opponents joined him in promoting these myths. Without bothering to support his position, Senator Marco Rubio argued, “If you don’t believe that Judeo-Christian values influenced America, you don’t know history.”51 After winning the Iowa primary, Senator Ted Cruz told CNN, “This is a country built on Judeo-Christian values.”52 He also vowed, ironically given the election’s outcome, to defend—against Trump—the GOP platform, which was the manifestation of “Judeo-Christian principles, the values that built this country.”53 Ohio governor John Kasich promised to create a new federal agency “that has a clear mandate to promote the core Judeo-Christian Western values.”54 Kasich asserted that “it’s essential…to embrace again our Jewish-Christian tradition rather than running from it, hiding from it.”55
Most of the Republican presidential primary candidates in 2012 also bent toward Christian nationalism. Rick Perry—former Texas governor, Dancing with the Stars contestant, and now secretary of energy—rambled on about “our values—values and virtues that this country was based upon in Judeo-Christian founding fathers”56 and said that “our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution, the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values…. They didn’t shy away from referencing Him, using the values he brought and the message of his son Jesus Christ to build the system that we as a society have enjoyed for more than two hundred years.”57 Senator Rick Santorum was infamously introduced at a campaign rally in Baton Rouge by a pastor who howled “Get out!” at all the non-Christians in America because America “was founded as a Christian nation.”58 Santorum was forced to distance himself from those remarks.59 Representative Michele Bachmann argued that “American exceptionalism is grounded on the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is really based upon the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were the foundation for our law.”60 During the Florida debate, Mitt Romney was asked how his Mormon religion might influence his presidency. He dodged, saying “ours is a nation which is based upon Judeo-Christian values and ethics. Our law is based upon those values and ethics.”61
Christian nationalism surfaces in the US Congress. Representatives Louie Gohmert, Doug Lamborn, and Steve King are some of its most strident proponents.62 Representative King of Iowa, known for his racism and xenophobia, proclaimed that our nation “was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which means we need less law enforcement than anybody else in the world”63—a fallacy we’ll explore later on. Texas representative Louie Gohmert declared in a December 2017 floor speech, “The Supreme Court looked at all of the evidence and declared in an opinion that the United States was founded as, and is, a Christian nation.” He added to this gross misstatement by insisting that “the only way any people can truly have freedom of religion is if they have a constitution that is founded on Judeo-Christian principles.”64 The opposite is true.
Former Virginia representative Randy Forbes, who founded the Congressional Prayer Caucus, gave a 2015 sermon claiming: “President George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan all indicated how the Bible and Judeo-Christian principles were so important in this nation. So if in fact we were a nation based on those principles, what was that moment in time when we ceased to so be?”65 In 2010, Michele Bachmann invited one of the most deceitful historical revisionists, David Barton—a man who used erroneous historical quotations,66 misrepresented Jefferson and his views on the separation of state and church,67 and wrote a biography of Jefferson so full of bad history that the publisher pulled it off the shelves68—to teach a class to Congress on the Christian history of the Constitution.69 Two-time presidential hopeful and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee expressed the belief that “all Americans should be forced—forced at gunpoint no less—to listen to every David Barton message.”70 Forbes’s Congressional Prayer Caucus once introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to recognize “the first weekend of May as Ten Commandments Weekend to recognize the significant contributions the Ten Commandments have made in shaping the principles, institutions, and national character of the United States.”71 The resolution also claimed that the Ten Commandments are “an elemental source for United States law.”72 Not quite. Forbes and Barton founded and run the groups (the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation and Wallbuilders, respectively) leading the Christian nationalist push discussed earlier, Project Blitz.
Politicians and political parties have elections to win, so their words can be discounted; but some scholars have also made these claims. Michael Novak, a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and a professor at Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame, agreed with eighteenth-century jurist Sir William Blackstone that the Law of Moses is the “font and spring of constitutional government.”73 (Thomas Jefferson thought the idea that the Ten Commandments or Christianity was the foundation of English Common Law an “awkward monkish fabrication” and a “fraud.”74) Anson Phelps Stokes—a priest and former secretary of Yale—wrote in his three-volume work on church and state in America that the “ideal of the Declaration [of Independence] is of course a definitely Christian one” that is clearly based on “fundamental Christian teachings.”75 Less scholarly examples include judge-turned-television-personality Andrew Napolitano, who thinks that “we have a Constitution and a Declaration of Independence that embodies Judeo-Christian moral values.”76Author and disgraced Fox News host Bill O’Reilly advocates teaching Christian nationalism in public schools: “Kids need to know what Judeo-Christian tradition is, because that’s what all of our laws are based on. That’s what the country’s philosophy is based on…because that’s what forged the Constitution.”77 Even the Museum of the Bible, which claims to be fair-minded, “is preoccupied with the question of whether America is a biblically rooted nation,” according to The Atlantic, which added, “While the exhibits portray some conflicting views, the message is clear: The country was forged through Christianity.”78
PATRIOTISM HAS NO RELIGION. The Christian nationalist’s argument seeks to change that and is, at its core, a fight about what it means to be an American. A disturbing number of Americans already believe that Christian and American identities are one and the same. The Pew Research Center found that about 32 percent of “people in the U.S. believe it is very important to be Christian to be considered truly American.”79 Some are vocal about it. When Mike Pence accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination, after a few formalities, he repeated one of his favorite lines: “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order.”80 The Christian nationalism ideal fuses two identities, Christian and American, so that to be one, you must also be the other. And if you’re not both, you can, as Santorum’s preacher screamed, “Get out!” President Trump’s infamous travel bans embodied this idea.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump promised to impose “extreme vetting” on immigrants. Vague in the particulars, he promised to admit only those people who “loved our country.”81 In his second week in office, Trump signed a controversial and unconstitutional executive order that banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order also favored immigration for Christians. Anyone who is oppressed for their beliefs should be welcome in this country—it shouldn’t depend on what those beliefs are (a point Trump essentially conceded in the wording of the first revised immigration order, issued on March 6, 2017, even if its implementation did not concede the point). But for Trump, there is no difference between favoring Christians and testing to see if potential immigrants love America, something he reiterated during the signing ceremony.82 Trump used Christianity as a proxy for loving America. He explained this with his typical circumlocution while campaigning at an evangelical stronghold, Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia. Almost precisely one year before he signed the order, Trump declared, “We’re going to protect Christianity. And I can say that. I don’t have to be politically correct. We’re going to protect it.”83 He then made his infamous “Two Corinthians” gaffe, saying “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” The verse to which Trump was referring, 2 Corinthians 3:17, says that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” and confirms the point. After that telling slip, Trump continued, “If you look at what is going on throughout the world, if you look at Syria, if you are a Christian, they are chopping off heads…. Christianity is under siege. I’m a Protestant, Presbyterian to be exact…. Very, very proud of it. We have to protect [Christianity] because very bad things are happening.”84 Incidentally, Syria was one of the seven countries whose citizens Trump banned from the United States in his first order. Syrians were also banned in the two subsequent immigration orders.
For Trump and Christian nationalists, to be an American is to be a Christian. The two have fused. Conservative columnists, such as Diana West, opined on Breitbart.com in 2015 that “the Trump [immigration] plan is absoutely [sic] essential to any possible return…to America’s constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian principles. I actually think of it as our last shot.”85 West penned this before the Iowa Caucus, when Trump was still a candidate proposing a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the country.”86
Christian nationalists use the language of revival and return, but that itself is misleading. They are not seeking to return, but to redefine. They want to redefine our Constitution—they want to redefine what it is to be an American—in terms of their religion.
Christian nationalism has already had a massive impact on our government and its policies, including foreign policy. When Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, Christian nationalist mouthpieces on Fox News declared that he had “fulfilled…biblical prophecy” and related the move back to “the foundation of our own Judeo-Christian nation.”87 Christian nationalism affects immigration policy, as we’ve just seen. Its effects on education policy could be felt for decades, and not just because Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was a dream appointment for the Christian nationalist goal of dismantling public schools through vouchers and school choice. It has denigrated our concept of equality, including by meddling with the legal definition of discrimination and attempting to redefine religious freedom as a license to discriminate, and it has sought to restrict women’s rights and even the social safety net. And, of course, Christian nationalism features heavily in the culture wars.
Correcting the record is important. The political theology of Christian nationalism, the very identity of the Christian nationalist, depends on the myths exposed in this book. Christian nationalism’s hold on political power in America rests on the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Without historical support, many of their policy justifications crumble. Without their common well of myths, the Christian nationalist identity will wither and fade. Their entire political and ideological reality is incredibly weak and vulnerable because it is based on historical distortions and lies. In this right-wing religious culture, the lies are so commonplace, so uncritically accepted, that these vulnerabilities are not recognized. The purpose of this book is simple, if lofty: to utterly destroy the myths that underlie this un-American political ideology.
What I’m Arguing and Who I Am
This objective is particularly important because history is powerful. George Santayana’s warning that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” rings true because the past influences the present.88 Unfortunately, history’s power does not depend on its accuracy. A widely believed historical lie can have as much impact as a historical truth. President John F. Kennedy explained to Yale’s graduating class of 1962 that “the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears…. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”89 Powerful historical falsehoods are particularly harmful in constitutional republics such as the United States. Courts may uphold practices that would otherwise be illegal by relying on comfortable myths instead of legitimate history. Legislators might promulgate laws based on historical clichés instead of reality. Each law or court decision based on revisionist history provides a new foundation from which the myth can be expanded. The myth feeds off itself, lodging more firmly in our collective consciousness.
When James Madison protested Patrick Henry’s proposed three-penny tax to fund Christian ministers, he wrote a landmark in American history and law: the “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (1785). Madison’s arguments overwhelmed Henry and convinced Virginians to strike down the proposed tax. Madison argued that even small, seemingly insignificant battles to uphold our rights must be fought on principle; otherwise the infringements become authority for future violations of our rights:
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.90
Because of history’s power, myths can endanger our liberty. It is our duty as citizens to guard the truth and prevent these myths from becoming tangled in legal and legislative precedents. When Christian nationalists are permitted to use the machinery of the state to impose their religion on us all, even if they do so during times when dissent is punished, these constitutional violations are remarkably tenacious. Christian nationalism operates like a ratchet or a noose, with each violation tightening its hold and making it more difficult to undo. Worse, the violations are used to justify other violations, so the tightening proceeds apace.
Unfortunately, there are two Christian nationalist myths we failed to guard against. These two myths encompass all the lesser myths that Trump and Project Blitz feed into. The first is that America was founded as a Christian nation. The claim is demonstrably false as revealed by any number of documents from the time, including America’s godless Constitution, Madison’s Memorial, or the Treaty of Tripoli, which was negotiated under President George Washington and signed by President John Adams with the unanimous consent of the US Senate in 1797, and which says that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”91 Most people with even a modest grasp of US history, law, government, or politics can debunk this divisive fabrication.
This book does not depend on the specific language of a single treaty, however applicable it may be—“not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” is admirably clear. Nor will it focus on the first myth, that America is a Christian nation. According to Bertrand Russell, religious apologists “try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is.”92 So do Christian nationalists.93 They abandon their earlier obscurantism, the first myth, in favor of a new one: the subtler argument that our nation is founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Christian nationalism hinges on this second myth and, unlike the first, it is broadly accepted.
This second myth is the focus of this book because it pervades all other Christian nationalist arguments. If America is not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, it is not a Christian nation. If America is not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, Christian nationalists are wrong. And although other authors have refuted the first fiction, the second remains untouched. This book seeks to change that by comparing the principles of Judeo-Christianity and the principles upon which the United States of America was founded. By focusing on the central tenets, the core ideas, of America and Judeo-Christianity, the first myth—America as a “Christian nation”—will necessarily be tested, as will the relevance of the founding fathers’ personal religious choices. But those issues are subsumed in the second, greater question, the question the “nine commandments” judge never had to answer: did Judeo-Christian principles positively influence the founding of the United States?
No, they did not. America was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles. In fact, Judeo-Christian principles, especially those central to the Christian nationalist identity, are thoroughly opposed to the principles on which the United States was built. The two systems differ and conflict to such a degree that, to put it bluntly, Christianity is un-American.
Not only is it fair to say that Judeo-Christian principles are un-American, we must. The word “un-American” might make some squeamish because of the value judgment inherent in it. But America is in a fight for its values—its soul, if you prefer—and Christian nationalism is warping and torturing those values, dragging this country down a dark hole. To hesitate to describe this identity with apt phrases because they may be unpleasant is to cede the American identity to an imposter. To refuse to label that which is antithetical to America is to watch Christian nationalists hijack our nation.
Previous books offered gentle corrections to the Christian nationalist: Here’s what history tells us, here’s what the founders actually meant, here’s what the founders actually said. And they’ve left it at that. But correction is not enough—otherwise we wouldn’t have a President Trump. No, pointing out errors is insufficient. This book does so, but then it takes the next step. It goes on the offensive. This book is an assault on the Christian nationalist identity. Not only are Christian nationalists wrong, but their beliefs and identity run counter to the ideals on which this nation was founded.
This book is an assault, but it’s also a defense, a defense of that quintessentially American invention, the “wall of separation between church and state.” I am a watcher on that wall. As a constitutional attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I defend the First Amendment to the US Constitution by ensuring that government officials do not use the power of a public office to promote their personal religion. It is my duty to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We handle thousands of state/church complaints every year. Without fail, recalcitrant violators and their vocal supporters argue that they can impose prayer on kindergartners or pass out bibles in public schools or display the Ten Commandments on public property because this is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. In short, I rebut this claim for a living, and I’ve dedicated my career to this fight because it is so important.
What I’m Not Arguing
It is important to understand the arguments this book is not making. Our country’s government and laws are distinct from its society and culture. It is the difference between our constitutional (or legal) identity and our popular (or social, or cultural) identity. This book does not argue that religion is absent from our culture. Indeed, some of the founders thought religion was necessary for an ordered society (as we shall see, this belief was both elitist and mistaken). However, this book will argue that religion is absent from our constitutional identity and that much of the Christian religion conflicts with that identity.
That constitutional identity is not fully realized, and this book does not argue otherwise. Many of America’s founding principles are aspirational, or were for a long time. Since the American founding, successive generations have failed to fully implement the values, leaving it to their children to conquer human tragedies like slavery, segregation, and the subjugation of half the American population. We’ve made progress toward including all people in “We the People” and have made strides toward genuine equality, but there is still work to be done. Those as-yet-unmet goals do not alter America’s founding principles; rather, they speak to our ability and appetite to realize those principles.
This book will also not revisit that well-trod territory of Judeo-Christianity’s role in important campaigns like the abolitionist and civil rights movements. Many books have been written about religion’s role in those movements while seeming to ignore religion’s contribution to the need for those movements in the first place. It’s a bit like praising a child for cleaning up his messy room. Religion helped perpetuate slavery in the first place, as we’ll see in chapters 17 and 24. Religion did not create slavery—war, economics, racism, poverty, and many more explanations for slavery have been advanced. But religion did provide a moral justification for American slavery. Plenty of historians and authors have focused on the cleanup while ignoring who made the mess. It may seem that this book blames all of society’s ills on religion, but that is simply because I am focusing on the side of the ledger that is typically ignored. Religion has much to answer for.
In short, this book considers the accepted narrative of America’s founding from a new angle, one that does not assume religion is a positive influence on the world. I am an atheist with reasoned, thoughtful objections to religion. I do not think religious beliefs should be immune from criticism, even when analyzed from a historical perspective. Religious beliefs are ideas like any other, though they are defended more fervently and can often seem immune to reasoned argument. This book will treat religion like any other idea: not with contempt, but not with undue respect either. Christian nationalism has succeeded in part because of Americans’ ingrained unwillingness to offend religious sensibilities. But catering to these sensibilities limits our search for the truth, as does religion itself. There is strength in throwing off those self-imposed restraints.
Of course, irreverence is not enough. This book presents the facts. The endnotes are extensive, though the important substance is in the text, not the citations. Wherever possible for the founding era, citations are to original sources. If no original source could be found, the point cannot be found in this book.
One of the paradoxes of writing a book like this is that simply stating facts and relating history from original sources will be seen as an attack on Judeo-Christianity. The destruction of a beloved myth is no more persecution than the erosion of an unwarranted privilege. Many conservative American Christians fail to grasp these distinctions and, as a result, they are gripped by a morbid persecution complex. Every new instance of equality—every time a Christian government employee is told to obey the Constitution, every unconstitutional religious display removed from government property—becomes another talking point of the persecuted majority: the same majority that is overrepresented at every level of American government. When Trump told the Values Voter Summit in 2017, “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” he was referring as much to books like this as he was to store clerks not saying Merry Christmas.94 The Founding Myth is not a work of academic history but an argument, an attack. Specifically, it is an attack on Christian nationalism.
The Argument in Brief
This book takes seriously JFK’s warning about holding fast to the clichés of our forebears. It is time to subject the second myth—that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles—to the discomfort of scrutiny.95 This book will analyze Judeo-Christian principles and compare them to American principles to see if there is agreement or positive influence.
First, we examine America’s pre-constitutional era, beginning with the founders. We will not attempt to provide an in-depth examination of the founding fathers and their religion, which would be a book itself, but some discussion is inevitable. In looking at the founders’ personal views on religion, which are largely irrelevant, and their views on religion’s role in society, which were largely misguided, we find that the Christian nationalist’s argument is both wrong and disrespectful to those founders. The founders’ beliefs about the separation of state and church and political science, not their personal religious beliefs, are most important.
The Declaration of Independence and even its quasi-religious language, examined next, are opposed to biblical law. Then we’ll step back and survey colonial history, where we find true Christian nations—the colonies—founded on Christian principles. Those Christian governments were so tyrannical that they became examples for the founders of how not to build a nation.
Next, we turn to the bastion of Judeo-Christian principles, the bible, and compare some of its fundamental principles—the Golden Rule, obedience to god, crime and punishment, original sin, redemption through Jesus’s sacrifice, faith, and biblical governments—to America’s founding principles. The comparison is disastrous for Christian nationalists.
Then we scrutinize each of the Ten Commandments to see how they stack up against America’s founding principles. The few principles that appear both in the decalogue and in America’s judicial and legislative system—the prohibitions on murder, theft, lying—are not uniquely or originally Judeo-Christian. The exclusively Judeo-Christian principles are actually opposed to American principles.
The book concludes with a look at some unavoidable American verbiage: “in God we trust,” “one nation under God,” and “God bless America.” These are not founding principles, but simply relics of Christian nationalists’ using government offices to promote their religion during times of fear, strife, and diminished civil rights.
