The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

In 1951, 53 percent of Americans could not name even one of the gospels.22 America’s religious literacy has not improved; in 2010 about 49 percent could not name one gospel.

1952 – National Day of Prayer.

1953 – The National Prayer Breakfast

1953 – Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge on April 20.29

1953–54 – Flanders Amendment proposed. This constitutional amendment, which was attempted during the Civil War by the then director of the Mint James Pollock, of “In God We Trust” infamy (see page 271), would have added the Christian god to the godless American Constitution: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on the amendment.30 It fails, again.

1954 – “In God We Trust” is placed on a US postage stamp fo...

1954 – Installing a prayer room in t...

1954 – Congress adds “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.33

1955 – Eisenhower signs a bill placing “In God We Trust” on US paper currency.

1956 – “In God We Trust” is officially adopted as the US national motto.36

1956 – Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments movie is released, and, as part of the publicity push, granite Ten Commandments monuments are gradually erected on government property around the country.

Christianity benefits when the federal courts declare that “In God We Trust” is not religious, and Christian nationalists are willing to turn a blind eye when the government desecrates their religion so long as it also allows them to promote their religion with the government.

Schwarz’s “opposition to Communism was not based upon economics or politics, but upon its false doctrines about God and man.”59 Graham echoed the propaganda, warning that “a great sinister and anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan has declared war upon the Christian God.”60 Another clergyman, John Courtney Murray, wrote that it is “almost impossible to set limits to the danger of Communism as a spiritual menace.”61 Religious stars such as Fulton Sheen, Oral Roberts, Billy James Hargis, and Norman Vincent Peale all achieved new prominence in the early and mid-1950s. They bombarded radio, bookshelves, and particularly television, making people sick with fear and at the same time selling them the cure—the promise of an eternal, fearless future. RIAL added to the barrage. Collectively, they “appealed to millions of Americans who equated Christianity and Americanism and saw the world locked in a life-and-death struggle between godless communism and Christian democracy,” as The Atlantic observed.62

During this era, Congress passed the Alien Registration or Smith Act of 1940, the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, and the Communist Control Act of 1954. All were designed to punish nonconformists. Any thinkers not strictly orthodox—i.e., American, capitalist, and Christian—were suspicious.

“By the time the Great Fear had run its course, six hundred college professors had been dismissed” for being insufficiently orthodox.66

As the legislative history of the law shows, when Congress amended the pledge, it played upon this fear: “At this moment of our history the principles underlying our American Government and the American way of life are under attack by a system whose philosophy is at direct odds with our own…. The inclusion of God in our pledge therefore would…serve to deny the atheistic and materialistic concepts of communism with its attendant subservience of the individual.”69

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

America is seeing a surge in atheism. A 2018 survey found that 21 percent of Americans born after 1999 are atheist or agnostic.80 Another 14 percent have no religious affiliation.81 These Americans do not trust in a god; they do not consider themselves or their nation to be under a god.

26

“God bless America”: The Diversionary Motto

The presidential tradition of troubling deaf heaven with bootless cries by closing presidential remarks with the phrase “God bless America” dates to Nixon and is rooted in one of the worst scandals to mar the presidency. Nixon used religion to distract Americans from Watergate.

Religion is a cheap shorthand for tribal allegiance, but it also has the power to distract from important issues that actually affect governance. Nixon asked people to pray for him and ended with “God bless America” to remind the nation that he was religious and therefore moral, and either innocent or deserving of forgiveness. It was an emotional ploy, but his final note would ring in American history.

When religion is used as a political weapon, it becomes weakened and tainted. And this is the flip side of the state-church separation coin. The separation of state and church is also meant to allow religion to remain free of the taint of this world, of the day-to-day political power struggle. This is why Madison wrote that “religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Nixon, Reagan, and many of today’s politicians have tainted religion by using it as a political tool. Indeed, Madison’s writing is a ...

Conclusion

Take alarm: this is the first experiment on our liberties

Trump and his Christian nationalist brethren want a return to a Christian nation; they want to “make America great again.” But religion did not make the United States, let alone make it great. “We the People” make America exceptional.

America succeeded as an experiment because it was based on reason. If we abandon reason in favor of faith—or if our elected leaders commit this sin—we are asking to regress. Not to some golden age, but to a time “when religion ruled the world…called the Dark Ages,”

book, including some of its favorite minutiae.8 It is unnecessary to debunk every mined quote or disingenuous misrepresentation, because the foundational claim of the Christian nationalist identity—that Judeo-Christian principles influenced American principles—must be discarded. Christian principles conflict with American principles.

By seeking to graft his religion on to the structure of the American government, the Christian nationalist is simply showing his religion to be “a bad one.” Not only bad, but also, according to Thomas Jefferson, erroneous, for “it is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”

As with the Catholic wedding, Christian nationalists’ attempt to co-opt the power and prestige of the American Enlightenment for their own ends says far more about their insecurity and the genuine blindness of their faith than it does about America’s founding.

We must, as Madison warned, take “alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.”

Acknowledgments

Notes

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