The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

If most Americans are religious, they are free to be only because there is no government-endorsed religion that devours religious freedom. Christian nationalists are required by their bible to believe in eternal punishment and Noah’s ark; they are free to believe such things because of our Constitution.

Judeo-Christianity is not concerned with freedom or liberty—quite the opposite. The bible is rife with obedience and servility.

Our society is less primitive than the one that produced the bible, so how can we fairly judge history by the morality of today? Perhaps we shouldn’t; but the history is not the issue. The issue is biblical religion and morality. Christian nationalists are claiming not only that archaic standards influenced the thought and actions of the founders many centuries later, but also that Judeo-Christianity is the final authority on an absolute, universal morality. Therefore, we should judge Judeo-Christianity and its moral claims by the highest moral code of any time.

that morality and society inevitably progress. The evolving standard is itself antithetical to the Judeo-Christian idea that morality was perfected millennia ago. Indeed, the shifting standard indicts religion’s moral absolutes.

Religion tends to lessen one’s sense of personal responsibility and, in some instances, can even be an indicator that a person intends to avoid all such responsibility. Data backs this up.

The founders were building a government to help future generations secure liberty and happiness in this world.

Christianity is about ensuring one’s own place for eternity, others be damned—literally.

The true Christian should not be concerned with the paltry cares of this world, but with the next. Had the framers taken Jesus at his word, they never would have built a country for the future.

When Bloomfield, New Mexico, lost a court battle over a Ten Commandments monument displayed in front of City Hall, Mayor Scott Eckstein was “surprised (by the decision) and had never really considered the judge ruling against it because it’s a historical document just like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.”57 The city’s reliance on bad history cost the taxpayers $700,000.58 The commandments are ubiquitous not just because of Hollywood promoters, but because they are argued to be the basis of American law and morality.59 They are not. Every one of the ten would be considered unconstitutional in our system—every single one, including the commandments against killing and thievery. The Ten Commandments conflict with our American principles so completely that they alone of the 613 amply prove that our nation is not founded on Mosaic Law.

About one hundred years after the Constitution was proposed and ratified, Pope Leo XIII used the first commandment to declare it “unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, or writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”34 Leo had the gall to title this order On the Nature of Human Liberty. The shackling of the human mind sanctioned by Leo’s encyclical is sought by most religions and would destroy the freedoms of the First Amendment. The Judeo-Christian first commandment and the US First Amendment fundamentally conflict. They are irreconcilable.

Punishing crimes against the regime more harshly than crimes against other people is typical in totalitarian systems. But are we sure that blasphemy is really the issue here? For a god, Yahweh’s legislation is remarkably imprecise. “Misusing” or “taking a name in vain” is so vague as to mean nothing yet somehow prohibits everything. In the United States, sloppy legal drafting is grounds for declaring a law unconstitutional. If citizens cannot know what is prohibited by a law, they cannot be expected to obey the law, and it can be struck down as too vague. Then again, vague laws that permit many interpretations are also typical in totalitarian regimes. This is actually one reason the founders carefully defined treason as a crime within the Constitution itself. “If the description of treason be vague and indeterminate under any government; this alone will be a sufficient cause why that government should degenerate into tyranny,” James Wilson explained to a grand jury in 1791.9 Treason, or any other crime, if poorly defined, “furnishes an opportunity to unprincipled courtiers, and to demagogues equally unprincipled, to harass the independent citizen, and the faithful subject, by treasons, and by prosecutions for treasons, constructive, capricious, and oppressive,” added Wilson in a law lecture that same year. 10

Because not every parent is worthy of respect, this commandment is, to use a legal term, overinclusive: it’s a law that protects people it should not. But curiously, it is also underinclusive, failing to protect people it should. Since the code already mandates blind respect, it could easily be improved by extending the requirement to honor to all one’s family, or better yet, one’s fellow human beings. However, if blind respect is to be mandatory, perhaps the best formulation would require that every human deserves the chance to earn respect. One might justifiably end a moral code there and have done better than the Judeo-Christian god. If the true purpose of this commandment is not to spread familial bliss, as seems evident by its shortcomings, what might it be? There are three possibilities: (1) ensuring obedience, (2) supporting priests, and (3) supporting the clan. All three purposes work to perpetuate the religion that issued the mandate. This commandment is not about honor and respect; it is about obedience and power.

Gaylor was correct to describe this commandment as the authoritarian culmination of the previous orders. That authoritarianism—the veneration of authority—may have helped elect Donald Trump. With his immodesty, lack of liturgical and scriptural knowledge, and “unchristian behavior,” Trump seemed like an improbable choice for American evangelicals. Yet 81 percent of white evangelicals supported him, more than supported Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush.15 Trump promised these voters plenty, but previous candidates had promised more and fared worse among them. They have demonstrated a strong distaste for female leaders.16 While that might account for evangelicals not voting for Hillary Clinton, it does not fully account for them flocking to Trump in greater numbers than they did for past candidates.

Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated.17 Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they’d been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her “Emperor God.”18

With the evangelicals’ ready heart comes an overly receptive mind, a blind faith in the righteousness of the strongman authority. If he says something, it is true. It becomes an article of faith, not an issue of fact or evidence or reality. “You shouldn’t be in the totalitarianism business if you can’t exploit a ready-made reservoir of credulity and servility,” observed Christopher Hitchens.19 Hitchens

Evangelicals believe in virgins giving birth, talking snakes, and all manner of obvious falsehoods. The religious mind is primed to accept lies. Presented with an extraordinary claim, it does not demand extraordinary evidence, but instead engages faith to overcome skepticism. Their religion has taught evangelicals to accept, rather than to question. Trump’s constant waterfall of outright lies landed on amenable minds. His support was greater among regular churchgoers than among lukewarm believers.20 The greater the faith, the more subordinate healthy skepticism becomes. So the biblical fetish for totalitarians may have helped America elect its first.

Interestingly, the biblical god does not base his rules on their universal moral qualities. Instead, the Ten Commandments “unmistakably rest even the universally accepted prohibitions (as against murder, theft, etc.) on the sanction of the divinity proclaimed at the beginning of the text,” as the Supreme Court noted in a ruling against governmental displays of the Ten Commandments.8 This puts the commandments on shaky ground, as we’ve seen it is, at best, only Moses’s word that vouches for the divine origins of the tablets. Formulations of these rules in other cultures are actually based on morality, not on the tenuous authority of a divine character. Which are better: rules that exist because they are valuable precepts for humanity, or rules that exist because a dictator decreed them?

America’s statutory versions of these universal principles apply to everyone; the biblical god’s commandments do not. Judeo-Christianity limits the application of these principles to other believers, destroying their universality. George Carlin’s quip on page 208, “It just depends on who’s doing the killing and who’s getting killed,” is accurate. The god of the bible allows murder if the victim believes in a different god. The biblical commandments protect only other believers. You may not murder, steal from, or bear false witness against other members of our group. This is why the first five commandments deal with god’s supremacy and how he should be worshipped, so that believers can recognize each other, the people to whom the final commandments apply. The in-group application of the final commands is why rather obvious rules against murder, stealing, and lying are not listed first.

longing for this bygone era, when religion supported their racism and they could claim to be superior to others simply by looking at the color of their skin, not the content of their character.49 Christian nationalism is inextricably tied up in the bigotry and longing for a restoration to a racist golden age. Remember, it was not economic anxiety or even racism that was the best predictor of a 2016 Trump voter—it was Christian nationalism. It’s easy for Christian nationalists to sweep aside anything that might be construed as sentiments about treating strangers and foreigners as if they were natives, as in Leviticus 19:33–34, because most of the bible, including the New Testament, backs up their scriptural interpretation.

In the minds of these Christian nationalists, Trump “woke a sleeping Christian nation” that is threatened by “unpapered people,” and the bible justifies bigotry against such people. After all, slavery was never “as bad as people said it was. ‘Slaves were valued…. They got housing. They got fed. They got medical care.’”51 The us-versus-them tenet of Christian nationalism is not only central to Trumpian rhetoric but is also being promoted at the highest levels of power in a bible study conducted for the President’s cabinet, for US Senators, and for US Representatives. This bible study is the reason former attorney general Jeff Sessions cited Romans 13 to justify separating children from their parents at America’s southern border.52

The biblical prohibition on adultery is narrow; it is certainly not as broad as most read it today. Biblically speaking, the prohibition did not pertain to all believers: it applied only to married women. The married woman and her sexual partner were both considered adulterers. But if her husband slept around, or even took another wife, as Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, David, Gideon, and Moses all did, he was not an adulterer. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, adultery is “sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. The crime can be committed only by and with a married woman; for the unlawful intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman is not technically Adultery in the Jewish law.”8 The encyclopedia clarifies that a husband can have sex with women other than his wife without breaking god’s commands: “The ancient Jewish law, as well as other systems of law which grew out of a patriarchal state of society, does not recognize the husband’s infidelity to his marriage vows as a crime.”9 A man was an adulterer when he slept with another man’s wife.10 Essentially, adultery was a crime against a husband. Because husbands owned their wives.11 This raises the question of why a god that passed a prohibition on adultery designed to prevent married women from straying would have chosen a married woman to bear his son, but that is not for me to answer. It may even be fair to say that Christianity is founded on adultery. Joseph and Mary were “betro...

Thoughtcrime is another device to close that information system. Catholic canon law governs the Catholic Church and mandates beliefs for Catholics worldwide. Arguably the most important precept for people claiming to be Catholic is also the most repellant. The law requires a total submission of the intellect: “A religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals…Therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.”46 This is canon law: the law of the Church and, as far as Catholics are concerned, the law of their god.

Criminalizing thought intensifies the power of the church, because laws against thought cannot possibly be followed. Jesus himself promulgated two rather devious thoughtcrimes, both of which humans have little hope of obeying. First, an impossible prohibition on sexual thoughts. Looking “at a woman with lust”50 is adultery. He forbids even the briefest sexual thought flitting across the mind. This criminalizes the most basic of all human impulses, the sexual impulse. Second, Jesus sermonized on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”51 Anger is a crime on par with murder.

The coveting prohibition is fundamentally opposed to the Constitution and antithetical to our criminal laws. The only influence it may have had is as an exemplar of how laws should not be written. The founders strove to protect the freedom of thought. In his 1802 letter that memorialized the “wall of separation between Church & State,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.”54 The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that “the First Amendment protects against the prosecution of thought crime.”55 No truly civilized society will punish for thoughts alone.56 This is perhaps the precept at the heart of the American experiment: our thoughts are free.

The freedom of thought is the only absolute right protected under our Constitution. Every other right is limited in some respect. You have free speech, but can’t threaten others. The press is free, but the media can’t publish willful lies that destroy someone’s reputation. We have the freedom of assembly, but we cannot trespass on someone’s property to exercise that right. There may be a right to bear arms, but we can’t take those guns on planes or into courthouses. Even the free exercise of religion is limited. Every freedom we have is limited, except for the freedom of thought.

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg, speech, Conference on Cosmic Design, Washington, DC, 19991

The idea that religion is the source of morality is a fallacious assumption that underlies the claim that religion and the Decalogue influenced American foundations. Religion gets its morality from us, not the other way around.

One need only look to the Ten Commandments monuments that dot our public lands to see that they are not moral, to see that we give religion its morality. Humans have edited and abridged these monuments to “improve” the Word of God, to make it more moral. If you live in Denver or Austin, or near another Ten Commandments monument on public land, go and examine it. See if the full text of each commandment is carved into the stone. See if slavery is recognized, if women are considered chattel, and if the supposed pinnacle of morality punishes innocent children to the third and fourth generations. If the Ten Commandments were truly moral, there would be no need to edit these displays to fit today’s standards. Morality evolves. These edited monuments undercut the very claim they were set up to make. They are monuments to a lie.

your moral judgment is your own. It is independent from the bible and religion. If religion or the bible dictated our morality, we would not have the moral judgment to condemn this command as murder. If religion or the bible dictated your morality, the commandment to kill your family and friends who explore other faiths would be your morality. But it is not. Most believers are more moral than their god. Most disagree with the Judeo-Christian principles that inform their god’s law. This revelation should alarm us because it means that preachers claiming to know god’s moral law are simply giving their personal moral judgment a divine sanction. They ascribe their morality to a supernatural being instead of to themselves. They are claiming that their judgment is divine.

The biblical authors did the same. Biblical morality is archaic because it reflects the primitive morality of its authors, who wrote at a time when life was brutal and short. Life was cheap, and so was their morality. There was no perfect god writing down laws with moral deficits so obvious that today’s second-graders could improve them. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bible passages that conflict with modern moral judgment. Passages advocating genocide, murder, rape, slavery, subjugation of women and races—we’ve seen many in these last few chapters.12 That enlightened citizens ignore these passages shows that their morality is independent of religion. The founding fathers were more civilized than the bible’s authors, with much higher moral standards, but even they fell short of today’s standards.

Love does not permit child sacrifice; yet it is common in the bible.

In the United States today, religiously motivated child murder is not a mainstream Christian family value; it has died out, but not altogether. In fact, devout parents can still get away with child murder in some states. In Virginia, West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, Washington, and Idaho, laws for negligent homicide, manslaughter, and capital murder have religious exemptions.28 This means that if a child is sick the parent can pray instead of seeking real help. Insulin might save the diabetic child, but parents can substitute prayer. They can pray until their child dies. And not suffer any consequences. Many other states, nearly forty, have religious exemptions to child abuse and neglect laws. These faith-healing exemptions are new; most date only to the mid-1970s.29 American common law (law made in the courts through precedent in the absence of explicit legislation or statutes) rejected the attempts to claim religion as a defense for killing one’s child.30

We are witnessing the gradual death of another Christian family value that is still influential, though waning: homophobic discrimination. Nationally, there are as many as 2.4 million homeless American youth, 20 to 40 percent of whom are LGBTQ, despite comprising only 3 to 5 percent of the total youth population.35 The two most common reasons for homelessness in LGBTQ youth are: (1) family rejection on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, and (2) being evicted from family homes as a result of coming out.36 In these situations the family either rejects the child, making it unbearable for them to stay, or deliberately disowns the child, kicking them out. LGBTQ youth who are rejected by their families are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than those who are accepted.37 Ann Coulter, a mouthpiece for Christian nationalism, approves these Christian family values: “Last Thursday was national ‘coming out’ day. This Monday is national ‘disown your son’ day,” she wrote.38 Religion perverts love.

The misconception has even snared experts like editors for the US Senate Historical Office. One editor mistakenly claimed that presidents dating back to Washington’s inauguration had said “so help me God.”7 Now she agrees that Chester A. Arthur was first to alter the oath: “When I made the video, it was common wisdom that [Washington] said it and I did not check it. After investigating this, I would say there is no eyewitness documentation that he did—or did not—say this.”

No evidence suggests that any early president—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams—added pious words to the oath. The first reliable, contemporaneous account of a president adding these words comes nearly a century after the founding, at Chester A. Arthur’s public inauguration in 1881.17 Arthur was assuming what had become a dangerous office, taking the oath after James Garfield was assassinated, the second president gunned down in sixteen years. This public oath was actually Arthur’s second presidential oath. He had already taken the official oath and assumed the office of president two days earlier, immediately on Garfield’s death. In that private ceremony, he did not edit the oath. The second oath, the one with the religious language, was a public reenactment done for show.18 It was more strategic piety.

Though it is hard to credit, people regularly invoke these slogans to prove that America is a Christian nation, and even a nation founded on Christian principles.26 It’s argument by idiom. A little bit of research reveals that none of these phrases dates to the founding era. “In God we trust” was first added to American coinage in 1863, during the height of the Civil War, seventy-five years after the Constitutional Convention. It was added to paper currency in 1955 and became the national motto in 1956. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The first president to close a speech with “God bless America” was Richard Nixon, in a mendacious presidential message about Watergate.

“In God we Trust,” “one nation under God,” “God bless America.” These tidbits are not historical so much as they are rhetorical. Their tardiness precludes arguments that they somehow prove the founding ideology, but it is worth analyzing how the verbiage entered the American vernacular because doing so reveals something interesting about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalists take advantage of times of fear and use them to impose their god on everyone. When doing so, they often destroy earlier unifying messages with their new, divisive message. Since the first years of our founding, citizens’ rights have been jeopardized and curtailed by war. Or rather, our rights are curtailed, perhaps even willingly given up, because of the fear of war. During the Quasi-War in 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act “in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and intrigue” that Thomas Jefferson dubbed the Reign of Witches.27 Understandably, no one today points to the ignominious Sedition Act to prove that our nation was founded on the government’s ability to punish speech critical of the government. Government censorship of speech is anathema to our founding principles, despite the Sedition Act’s passage and enforcement a mere seven years after the First Amendment was ratified. It is merely a sad, short-lived example of fear trumping our founding principles. But Christian nationalists ignore this logic and recite these religious idioms, each more delinquent relative to the founding than ...

Three men are ultimately responsible for getting “God” on American currency: a preacher, a secretary, and a man seeking to amend the Constitution to promote his personal deity. It reads like a bad joke, but the truth is more sad than funny.

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 Goldfield dates the launch of religion’s political invasion to the 1844 presidential race between Democrat James K. Polk and Whig Henry Clay, and James Birney of the Liberty Party: “From then on, political parties paraded their religious bona fides and attacked opponents as infidels. The campaigns themselves came to resemble religious revivals as much as political exercises. Religion was not only an issue itself, it permeated other issues of the day, especially slavery.”13 The country’s first major religious political party, the Liberty Party, founded in 1839, gained prominence then and used spiritual blackmail to win votes by telling citizens to “vote the Liberty ticket as a religious duty.”14 The party hosted revival-like conventions and was, according to one of its leaders, “unlike any other [party] in history” because “it was founded on moral principles—on the Bible, originating a contest not only against slavery but against atheistic politics from which Divine law was excluded.”15 Religio...

Webster found it curious that believers failed to realize how unconvincing religious arguments are to everyone else: “They do not remember that the doctrines and miracles of Jesus Christ have, in eighteen hundred years, converted only a small portion of the human race; and among the nations that are converted to Christianity, they forget how many vices and crimes, public and private, still prevail, and that many of them—public crimes especially, which are offences against the Christian religion—pass without exciting particular regret or indignation.”

Of course, we are correct today to treat slavery as an intolerable violation of human rights, one on which no compromise is possible. The North was morally justified to fight a war to free the slaves if that was necessary. But had there not been a divine justification for slavery to begin with, the institution might have failed without a war. Religion on both sides solidified arguments, many untenable, as articles of faith. That was Webster’s point. And that was the point of Lincoln’s religious language in his second inaugural.

Jefferson Davis and Daniel Webster were right: the bible supported the southern slaveholders, not the northern abolitionists.28 The point was even made in the House of Representatives during the first US Congress. Two months before his death, Benjamin Franklin petitioned Congress to abolish slavery. Franklin was in an abolition society that included Thomas Paine, other founders, and Quakers. Representative James Jackson of Georgia attacked the petition, at least partly because the bible allows slavery: “If they [the petitioners] were to consult that book, which claims our regard, they will find that slavery is not only allowed, but commended. Their Saviour, who possessed more benevolence and commiseration than they pretend to, has allowed of it.”29 Representative William Smith of South Carolina also favored slavery on religious grounds, as “the professors of its [Christianity’s] mild doctrines never preached against it.”30 Slavery is sanctified and permitted in the bible. Jesus even discusses the proper force with which to beat one’s slaves in Luke 12:45–49, a passage the Southern states often used to justify slavery.31

his government office to do so. Pollock believed that because the United States is “a Christian Nation…the time for the introduction of this or a similar motto, is propitious and appropriate. ’Tis an hour of National peril and danger—an hour when man’s strength is weakness—when our strength and our nation’s salvation, must be in the God of Battles.”65 Pollock could not have been more explicit about desiring to take advantage of the nation’s fear. He went so far as to declare the war lucky, “propitious.” Fear is a friend to those who would violate inalienable rights, including the right to a secular government.

THERE IS A PERVERSE IRONY IN THREE MEN choosing to promote the world’s most divisive force, religion, when fighting a war to preserve a national union. To choose something so quintessentially divisive to replace a unifying sentiment in the middle of a war that actually sundered the nation shows hubris typical of religious privilege. The three imagined that the fate of our nation hinged not on reunification or full equality for black Americans, but on placing a reference to the Christian god on coins, which, luckily, could be done, given the nation’s fear. One would think that this idea would not appeal to those who think highly of their god: “Those great philosophers who formed the Constitution had a higher idea of the perfection of that INFINITE MIND which governs all worlds than to suppose they could add to his honor or glory, or that He would be pleased with such low familiarity or vulgar flattery.”68 That author, writing in 1788, was discussing objections to the godlessness of the American Constitution during the ratification debates, but the point is apt.

Many variations and new committees dealt with the issue for more than eight years, but those three drafters, with help from French émigré Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, decided on the unifying motto E pluribus unum.78 The three fearmongers of the 1860s sought to undo the work of these great men. The original idea expresses the belief that people or states with differences can come together to form a great country. The religious motto expresses an inherently divisive religious belief and applies to only a portion of the population. That language would not only trump the unifying sentiment on our coins, but also officially become America’s national motto during another time of great fear—the Red Scare of the 1950s.

AN OSTENSIBLE PARADOX OF STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION is that citizens living under secular governments tend to be more religious than citizens in countries with established churches. England, with the Anglican Church and a religiously apathetic populace, and the United States, with a rabidly devout (though shrinking) majority, typify this paradox. But it’s not actually a paradox. This is precisely what we would expect to see if religion is like any other product for sale. In a country with an established church, that church has a monopoly. With no competitors and taxes supporting the church, the priests grow fat and indolent, and feel entitled to a flock. They can be successful without effort. In countries with secular governments and protections for the freedom of worship, the religious marketplace is a jungle. If a church gets lazy or a preacher feels entitled, their flock can easily worship across the street. As a result, preachers in America are better salesmen. They have to be. The jungle-like market ensures that the religions that are the best at attracting and keeping members survive.

In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse convincingly shows that the wave of public piety in America, which peaked in the 1950s, was the result of a coordinated corporate strategy. The campaign was launched during the 1930s and 1940s as a response to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the regulation it prompted.

Undeterred, the corporations and industrialists turned to religious individuals, groups, and messages that were more sophisticated and less transparent. They began financing preachers who proclaimed messages such as: “Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal.”7 One of the more prominent corporate evangelists, James Fifield, sought to enlist seventy thousand ministers “in the revolt against Roosevelt” by arguing that the New Deal undermined Christianity.8 The clergy who joined Spiritual Mobilization, as it was called, argued with a religious fervor. Their message could not be countered with logic because it was based on faith. They claimed that freedoms are given by their god, that “Christianity and capitalism [are] inextricably intertwined,” that the “New Dealers were the ones violating the Ten Commandments,” and, most familiarly, that this is a nation “under God.”

As president, Dwight Eisenhower nationalized a tepid Christianity, not only meeting with preachers regularly (Billy Graham in particular), but also becoming the first president to be baptized in office—two weeks after being sworn in. In another presidential first, at his 1953 inauguration, Eisenhower wrote and read his own prayer for his inaugural speech.17 The lead float in his inaugural parade was dubbed “God’s Float.” It featured churches and the slogans “In God We Trust” and “Freedom of Worship.”18 This inaugural piety set the tone for Eisenhower’s entire administration. He opened each cabinet meeting with a prayer. Halfway through one meeting, Ike apparently realized he’d forgotten the opening prayer. “Oh, God dammit, we forgot the silent prayer,”

Some found Eisenhower’s showy religion, displayed so late in life and immediately after assuming political office, hypocritical. Professor and journalist William Lee Miller observed, “President Eisenhower, like many Americans, is a very fervent believer in a very vague religion.”21 Miller was right. The newfound piety of Eisenhower and many Americans was both shallow and ignorant. 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.23 This is precisely the result we’d expect to see from a group of citizens who were deliberately being marketed a vague religion. Despite this vast ignorance of Christianity’s basic tenets, religion invaded the halls of government. Between 1952 and 1956, as RIAL and the anti–New Deal religion peaked, Congress saddled Americans with most of the political piety so familiar today. The timeline is telling: 1952 – National Day of Prayer. Billy Graham says it would be “thrilling” and “glorious” to “see the leaders of our country kneeling before almighty God in prayer” and to use those leaders to bring the nation to Jesus.24 On the Capitol steps, Graham calls for a National Day of Prayer.25 Congress quickly agrees.26 1953 – The National Prayer Breakfast is held for the first time, and President Eisenhower attends.27 This was integral to the anti–New Deal, corporate religion.28 1953 – Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to ad...