The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

In other words, what most religions label absolute morality is simply their personal morality given divine sanction. It is far better to premise human rights on the simple fact of being human, as the founders did, than to put them into the hands of people claiming to speak for a supernatural being that does not exist.

These commandments are so fundamentally at odds with our laws, with our morality, with our principles that one is almost forced to choose: are you a Christian or an American? Your answer to that question, which, if incorrect, the biblical god punishes with death, is protected under our Constitution. The separation of state and church and our First Amendment protect your right to be an American Christian. Christians can choose to personally follow the Ten Commandments’ totalitarian tendencies because their rights are protected by the Constitution. The Constitution puts checks and limits on what would otherwise be unbridled, tyrannical power, while the Ten Commandments demand worship and obedience of just such a power.

The father of the modern conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, recognized and feared the inflexibility of religion in politics in 1994 when he famously insisted, “If and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise.”12

The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneer’s block stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit, the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches.

The signal moment of the decline might be John F. Kennedy’s September 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, where he famously declared: I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the