The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Ben Franklin cautioned, “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”9 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.”10 Christian nationalism, by its very existence, admits the weakness of Christianity’s truth claims, the frailty of a morality based on supernatural authority, and the shortcomings of an antiquated book. 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.