The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Mark Twain tried: The Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.8

Christopher Hitchens convincingly compared Christianity to a “celestial North Korea,” and he was careful to add that “at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea. Does the Koran or the Bible offer you that liberty? No. The tyranny, the misery, the utter ownership of your entire personality, the smashing of your individuality only begins at the point of death. This is evil. This is a wicked preachment.”

The entire Christian religion is based on a singular claim that violates the principle of personal responsibility so critical to our systems: that Jesus died for your sins.

the sacrifice of Jesus means that one’s sins are forgiven. This is vicarious redemption through human sacrifice—Jesus as a sacrificial scapegoat. Each idea is repugnant to American principles in its own way.

The sacrifice of Jesus culminates a long tradition of human sacrifice. The Israelite general Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to the biblical god for granting him victory in battle,4 and that same god tells Moses to “take all the chiefs of the people, and impale them in the sun before the LORD, in order that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.”5

And people saying how crazy it was that Indigenous people sacrificed others to their gods. Meanwhile, the CHRISTIAN BIBLE references human sacrifices repeatedly

Genesis 22:2–12—God commands a father to kill his son as a test. Neither has done anything wrong; god just wants to make sure Abraham is so scared of him that he will kill Isaac, his child.

“It is better to run the risk of sparing the guilty than to condemn the innocent.”20

This heavily applies to capital punishment

If there is found among you…a man or woman who…serve[s] other gods and worship[s] them…and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true…then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death.

- Deuteronomy 17:2–5, Can switch out ‘serving other gods’ with ‘getting an abortion’.

SEPARATION OF POWERS CAME FROM MONTESQUIEU, not Isaiah. The bible venerates principles such as obedience and fear, not freedom, as the Constitution does.

Unlike the Maccabees, America’s founders did not reject the Grecian culture that birthed democracy. Quite the opposite: they rejected the bible and looked to ancient Greek city-states and pre-Christian Rome when drafting our Constitution.

Perhaps this was because, as atheist author Ruth Hurmence Green put it, “There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.”35

“Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges— have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law. Nothing could be more absurd…all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.” — Robert G. Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible: A Lecture, 18941

“All pay heed, the Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given unto you these Fifteen [drops one of three stone tablets]…oy. Ten! Ten Commandments for all to obey.” — Mel Brooks as Moses in History of the World: Part I, 19814

Noah’s son, Ham, accidentally walks in on him, drunk, naked, and passed out. Refusing to take responsibility for his frat boy behavior, Noah curses an innocent child, Canaan, Ham’s son and Noah’s own grandson, to a life of slavery for Ham’s “crime” of seeing him naked. 6 This was the only man the Jewish god thought moral enough to save from a worldwide flood.

The idea that Jesus was born of a virgin is a transliterative mistake that cannot be admitted because of religious certitude. The original Hebrew text labels Mary alma, Hebrew for “young woman.”39 This was mistranslated into Greek as parthenos, “virgin,” even though there is a different Hebrew word for virgin.40

The freedom of religion cannot exist without a government that is free from religion

Moses was the sole witness to a god actually giving the commandments and may have been a tad delirious (see page161). Rather suspiciously, he had the priests set a perimeter around the mountain to ensure that no other person could see, or not see, his god.

The commandment prohibits a basic, universal human impulse: to create something that reflects and thereby enhances the beauty of life.

Judeo-Christianity contributed significantly to our country’s long and shameful history of slavery.

Speaking of his former master, Frederick Douglass wrote, “His religion hindered him from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my skin on any other day than Sunday. He had more respect for the day than for the man for whom the day was mercifully given; for while he would cut and slash my body during the week, he would on Sunday teach me the value of my soul, and the way of life and salvation by Jesus Christ.”13

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.

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

“Just think about Irish history, the Middle East, the Crusades, the Inquisition, our own abortion-doctor killings and, yes, the World Trade Center to see how seriously religious people take Thou Shalt Not Kill. Apparently, to religious folks—especially the truly devout—murder is negotiable. It just depends on who’s doing the killing and who’s getting killed.” — George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, 20041

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.

Christian nationalism is inextricably tied up in the bigotry and longing for a restoration to a racist golden age.

grow. Progress is possible under our founding documents, while the bible will forever enshrine an ancient and outdated morality. Nothing in these commandments supports the Christian nationalist argument.

Many of the sex regulations are as sexist as they are absurd. 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

Sterilizing sex and degrading that lovely and loving act to the lowest form of uncontrolled reproduction should ring familiar bells for Christians, particularly those raised in more conservative churches. Sex, when done properly, fosters and improves loving relationships, creating loyalty outside of the church. Judeo-Christianity’s and Big Brother’s goals are chillingly similar: “trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it”37 to ensure loyalty to the leader, not to one another.

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.

Judeo-Christian principles have had a devastating impact on women—half the country’s population—and the tenth commandment exemplifies the problem. The bible treats women like property, not people.

Childbirth is not just viewed as god’s punishment—it is considered unclean. Women must be purified afterward.17 Women are unclean when they menstruate.18 Everything an unclean woman touches is unclean.19 In this childish understanding of the world, the bible essentially tells us that women have cooties.

And let’s not forget: all the pain, evil, and suffering in this world is Eve’s fault. True, the biblical god actually created that pain, evil, and suffering, but Eve had the temerity to exercise the curiosity that god gave her, so she gets the blame.

Since some songs in the liturgy required high voices and women were to remain silent, the religious solution was to castrate boys.

The bible has been a millstone around the neck of women for millennia. The women fighting for suffrage and equality had to challenge religion. The suffragists had to battle against bible verses, like those above, which subjugate women.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” — GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 39

Criminalizing thought intensifies the power of the church, because laws against thought cannot possibly be followed.

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 particular thought the tenth commandment prohibits—covetousness—is itself a problem for the Christian nationalist. Even Americans with no historical or legal training should recognize that coveting is the basis of American capitalism and our consumer society.

The American ideal is equality, though it is often unmet and progress can be slow. Judeo-Christianity’s ideal is elitism—being part of a favored class singled out for special treatment.

Humans have edited and abridged these monuments to “improve” the Word of God, to make it more moral.

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.

AN HONEST EXAMINATION OF BIBLICAL FAMILY VALUES can also help illuminate the distinction between religion and morality. The Hebrew bible shows a distinct lack of familial warmth. The first half of the first book, Genesis, contains, among other things, fratricide,13 polygamy,14 incest,15 pimping one’s wife to a king,16 and a father offering his daughters up to gang rape and then later impregnating them himself.17

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

Love does not permit child sacrifice; yet it is common in the bible. God demands that Abraham murder his son Isaac, 26 and the Israelite general Jephthah’s battle plan to defeat the Ammonites consisted of sacrificing his daughter

Society has traditionally labeled anything good, virtuous, or kind as “Christian.” When people are misbehaving, a father disowning his gay daughter for instance, people may say, “That’s not very Christian.” But it is very Christian—it’s just that the tenets of Christianity are immoral.

Thus, the modern tradition of presidents adding a god to the oath can be tied directly to the Washington Irving myth about George Washington through Woodrow Wilson, the president largely responsible for that modern trend. Myths are powerful, regardless of their truth.

“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.

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.