The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

It is not until halfway through god’s most moral precepts that we begin to see, if not influence, at least some resemblance to American law and government. That these few commandments resemble some of our laws does not necessarily mean that they influenced those laws or the founding of this country.

First, these principles are not exclusive or original to Judeo-Christianity. They are universal principles that all humans understand and arrive at regardless of their participation in the Judeo-Christian religion.6 This includes cultures and religions that predate Judaism and even holds true within Judaism itself, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out: My mother’s Jewish ancestors are told that until they got to Sinai, they’d been dragging themselves around the desert under the impression that adultery, murder, theft, and perjury were all fine, and they get to Mount Sinai only to be told it’s not kosher after all.7

Interestingly, the biblical god does not base his rules on their universal moral qualities.

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.

Other, earlier legal codes in the region of the Levant contained similar prohibitions, as did other religions.9 Although Christians often talk of Jesus’s humility and their desire to emulate him, it is monstrously arrogant to claim that a universal human principle belongs to one religion, especially a relatively young religion.

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.

according to the biblical text itself, “neighbor” refers only to your fellow believers.18 The in-group interpretation of these commandments makes even more sense given the events that follow the covenant. Shortly after receiving the commandments, the Israelites go on a killing spree. According to the bible, they commit genocide after genocide—more than seventy all told.19 “Thou shalt not kill” is a contradiction that cannot be reconciled with the genocides the Israelites inflict on the inhabitants of the region, unless their killings are not murder because the victims did not worship Yahweh. All the groups of people they destroyed were people who did not worship their god. The Israelites did not violate the divine prohibition on murder because that commandment applied only to other Israelites.

The basis of Judeo-Christian morality and ethics is the clan. The tribe is more important than morality; people who are different are lesser. Those who exercise their freedom of religion to worship differently will be treated as nonhumans. Does that sound like an American principle?

There is also the small matter of hell, the place of eternal torment for all who do not believe that Jesus is god.35 Love your enemies indeed. If you are of the correct religion, you get eternal bliss; if not, eternal torment (see chapter 9).

Standing alone, this sentiment penned by the apostle Paul sounds broad and inclusive: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”36 But in context, this is more like the slogan of the Orwellian farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Paul’s version might read “Everyone is equal, so long as you are a Christian,”37

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

America is attempting to live up to is the nonbiblical principle inscribed on the Supreme Court in Washington, DC: “Equal Justice Under Law.” Whereas the immutable, imperfect law of the Judeo-Christian god will forever discriminate against people who don’t believe in the “right” god, American law comes ever closer to attaining the equality ideal. God’s law holds that some people are more equal than others. American law has expanded to include men of other races, then women, and so on, until now we are finally beginning to treat people of different sexual orientation equally under the law. We have not fully realized the ideal, but at least our founders gave us room and a process to grow. Progress is possible under our founding documents, while the bible will forever enshrine an ancient and outdated morality.

VII. “You shall not commit adultery.” — Exodus 20:14

To this day, Maryland outlaws oral sex as an “unnatural or perverted sexual practice.”4 And in Michigan, adultery is still a crime.5 This country has a long history of regulating and prohibiting sex. More often than not, it is a history not just of ridiculousness, but of racism, sexism, and discrimination, all actively pushed by Christian churches.

The vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, once called for criminalizing adultery, bemoaning the modern “discomfort with a law against adultery.” He, for one, did not think it an “antiquated sin,” but believed that “the Seventh Commandment contained in the Ten Commandments is still a big deal.”6

Whether this history of legislating sex is essential to the American founding is unclear, but the Judeo-Christian influence on legislating sexual mores is undeniable and, as this chapter concedes, can be legitimately claimed by Christian nationalists. But upon that history, shame, not a country, should be built,

The bible demands that we “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.”14 It also prohibits homosexuality,15 cross-dressing,16 sex while or with a partner who is menstruating,17 masturbation,18 lying about your virginity (but only if you’re female),19 being raped,20 and bestiality (an excellent prohibition with a punishment that demands the death of yet another innocent victim: both human and animal are killed.)21

The bible declares that menstruating women are unclean,22 but allows polygamy.23 Fathers may sell their daughter into sexual slavery, but only to another Israelite.24 Soldiers may sexually enslave any female virgins after they’ve killed the virgins’ men.25 Men can get away with rape, if they pay the victim’s family 50 shekels and marry the victim.26 There are many prohibitions against having sex with family members, but men have a duty to impregnate the wives of their dead brothers.27 Biblical heroes even trade in flesh. David purchased a wife by giving his future father-in-law, King Saul, one hundred foreskins of the king’s enemies.28

Perhaps the true rationale behind the sexual commandments and Christianity’s unnatural enthusiasm for celibacy is not to curb immorality, but rather to guard the primacy of one’s relationship with the religion. Jesus has to be more important than anything else, including your husband, wife, or lover. He said so himself: “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother.”33 His followers’ love and attention must be directed toward Jesus first.

Jesus himself lays down the most vile and controlling sexual law by making it impossible to obey the adultery commandment: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”40 This commandment then, at least as interpreted by Jesus, is meant to make believers feel guilty and, in doing so, builds their spiritual debt.

That perpetual guilt binds people to their church and is the basis of thoughtcrime, which appears undisguised in the final commandment (see chapter 21).

Until 1967, penalties for miscegenation—mixed-race sex, relationships, or marriages—were common, and had been since the colonial period.41

What goes on in the bedroom of two consenting adults is no business of the state. When the state does intrude, it is often with a law based on Judeo-Christian principles, like those embodied in the seventh commandment. The influence of these principles cannot be denied. But such laws are a shameful part of America’s past, and the sooner we purge that venomous influence, the better.

The American government cannot punish citizens for violating religious laws, and all citizens are freer and our society better for this.

X. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” — Exodus 20:17

The final commandment is triply disturbing. First, the Judeo-Christian god allows, for the second time in his ten moral precepts, slavery. Second, he recognizes that a wife “belongs to” her husband; women are chattel, like the slave, ox, or donkey. Third, he criminalizes thought. Thoughtcrime is the defining feature of totalitarian regimes.2

“I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” — ABIGAIL ADAMS, in a letter to John Adams, 17763

The Judeo-Christian belief that women are a form of property significantly affected this country. Because the belief was religious, based on divine law and divine order, it provided an unquestionable justification for oppression. To question woman’s place was to question “God’s plan.” As with slavery, religion might not have been the root cause, but it provided an unassailable moral justification for diminishing half the population.

The pair of men who entered the White House in 2017 cling to a benighted view of women, criticizing working wives and working mothers. In a 1994 interview, Donald Trump said he thought women should stay in the home because working is unattractive: “Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing” because a woman’s “softness disappear[s]” and because “when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”33 This is language the Christian nationalist no doubt appreciates and concurs with.

The nucleus of the tenth commandment is “shall not covet,” which prohibits specific thoughts. But the First Amendment protects—absolutely—the freedom of thought.40 The right to believe whatever one chooses is the only unlimited right under the Constitution.41 This Judeo-Christian principle does the opposite, seeking to stifle thought and enforce ideological uniformity.

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

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.

Christopher Hitchens put it more simply when he observed, “The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey.”53 This strategy allows those in power a pretense to eliminate anyone at any time, because they are surely guilty of something. Judeo-Christianity, and particularly Catholicism with its confession and priestly absolution, relies on thoughtcrime to ensure perpetual guilt. Then the guilty—everyone—must turn to the Church for forgiveness and absolution.

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 courtho...

Justice Jackson again:

Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.”60 Judeo-Christianity attempts just such a claim; I refer you again to Catholic Canon law, “a religious submission of the intellect and will.”61

America has abandoned or is still trying to escape the parts of the Ten Commandments that can rightly be said to have influenced it: legalized slavery, codified sexism and suppression of the sexual impulse, and inequality among races and religions under the law. These are not the influences the Christian nationalists wish to claim, but they are all that history justifies.

The Ten Commandments are not a moral code; they are a religious code. That distinction, often lost, is crucial. A moral code is a set of principles that help us analyze and reach moral solutions in the innumerable dilemmas life presents. A religious code is a set of rules based on divine authority—its only “morality” is to obey, to follow. Those who obey are treated favorably; others are killed, excommunicated, banished, or otherwise removed from favored status.

At a more basic level, the confusion arises, particularly in America, because many people assume that religion and morality are the same thing.

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...

Summoning the intellectual honesty and fortitude to distinguish between religion and morality is difficult for many, particularly those who have been told all their lives that religion is morality.

Yet the bible commands you to kill anyone who would “entice” you to worship any god other than the Judeo-Christian god—especially your family members.8 There is no worming out of this order. No matter who it is, you must kill them, “even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend.”9 The death sentence is inflexible: “You must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them.”10 More grotesquely still, “your own hand shall be first against them to execute them.”11

This is one of Judeo-Christianity’s laws. That we find it abhorrent proves the point: 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.

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.

AN HONEST EXAMINATION OF BIBLICAL FAMILY VALUES can also help illuminate the distinction between religion and morality.

During the “great commission”—when Jesus commands his apostles to spread his word—he stressed the destruction of the family: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.18 Luke confirms the message.19 This alone casts suspicion on Christianity’s value to healthy families. Jesus did not want to share his followers with their families.

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