Christian nationalist myths are central to the Blitz because they are meant to provide a legislative rationale, historical precedent, and legitimacy. Category 1 bills are supposedly less controversial but promote many of those myths, including a bill that mandates displaying “In God We Trust” in all public schools, libraries, and buildings and on license plates,35 and a “Religion in Legal History Acts” bill that requires “public displays of religious history affecting the law,” including the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington’s Farewell Address.36
Category 2 bills include proclamations recognizing “Christian Heritage Week,” “the Importance of the Bible in History,” and “the Year of the Bible.” There is even one for “Recognizing Christmas Day,” because we would all forget otherwise.37 These proclamations list historical evidence to support their claims, including a claim that “the first act of America’s first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer” and another that “Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”38
These seemingly mundane bills are the tip of Christian nationalism’s sword. More dangerous bills will follow. Category 3 bills grant a license to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans, atheists, unmarried couples, and others in the name of Jesus. These bills will allow religious adoption agencies to refuse to put children in loving homes because the bible says that gay couples are an abomination. They seek to give businesses and places of public accommodation the right to discriminate against customers of a different religion or even skin color (though Christian nationalists would be unlikely to admit the latter). This discriminatory agenda cannot be furthered without the seemingly innocuous bills that first warp our sense of who we are as a nation.
The goal is to redefine America according to the Christian nationalist identity and then reshape the law accordingly. As of the end of April 2018, Project Blitz has resulted in more than seventy proposed bills nationwide.39 Christian nationalism’s identity is built on the foundational myths underlying these bills; this inescapable point is reflected in their legislative strategy. If these myths can be exposed and eviscerated, the aim of this book, so can Christian nationalism’s legal and legislative agenda.
Who Are the Christian Nationalists?
The most vocal Christian nationalists are, as you’d expect, religious leaders. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family and thinks “that we have been, from the beginning, a people of faith whose government is built wholly on a Judeo-Christian foundation.”40 Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell wrote that “our Founding Fathers established America’s laws and precepts on the principles recorded in the laws of God, including the Ten Commandments…[and any] diligent student of American history finds that our great nation was founded by godly men upon godly principles to be a Christian nation.”41 Jimmy Swaggart preached that America has “the greatest freedoms of expression the world has ever known…. Those freedom are based squarely on the Judeo-Christian principle, which is the Word of God.”42 The late Billy Graham and his son Franklin Graham have preached that America “was built on Christian principles.”43
Christian nationalism is not solely about religion. It’s an unholy alliance, an incestuous marriage of conservative politics and conservative Christianity. According to ABC News, the Council for National Policy is one of the most powerful political organizations you’ve never heard of,44 and it exemplifies this alliance. The New York Times described it as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”45 It was founded by prominent Christian nationalist Tim LaHaye, and its secretive membership roll is filled with Christian nationalists from the religious and government sectors, including many repeatedly cited in this book.46 The group’s vision statement declares its Christian nationalist mission: to “restore…Judeo-Christian values under the Constitution.”47
Politicians are some of the most vocal Christian nationalists. Presidential candidates seem particularly fond of repeating Christian nationalism claims. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was asked, point blank, “Do you believe that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles?” He replied in his prolix, disjointed fashion: “Yeah, I think it was…. I see so many things happening that are so different from what our country used to be. So religion’s a very important part of me and it’s also, I think it’s a very important part of our country.”48 After winning office with 81 percent of the white evangelical vote, Trump became slightly more adept when deploying Christian nationalist rhetoric. As president, he has often claimed that “in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.”49 He supports this line, so popular with his base, by trotting out some of the favorite Christian nationalist talking points, including:
That “the American Founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence.”
That the pilgrims at Plymouth were religious and prayed.
That “our currency proudly declares, ‘In God we trust.’”
That “Benjamin Franklin reminded his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention to begin by bowing their heads in prayer.”
That presidents take the oath of office and “say, ‘So help me God.’”
That “we proudly proclaim that we are ‘one nation under God’ every time we say the Pledge of Allegiance.”50
This book will address all of these anemic talking points.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump’s primary opponents joined him in promoting these myths. Without bothering to support his position, Senator Marco Rubio argued, “If you don’t believe that Judeo-Christian values influenced America, you don’t know history.”51 After winning the Iowa primary, Senator Ted Cruz told CNN, “This is a country built on Judeo-Christian values.”52 He also vowed, ironically given the election’s outcome, to defend—against Trump—the GOP platform, which was the manifestation of “Judeo-Christian principles, the values that built this country.”53 Ohio governor John Kasich promised to create a new federal agency “that has a clear mandate to promote the core Judeo-Christian Western values.”54 Kasich asserted that “it’s essential…to embrace again our Jewish-Christian tradition rather than running from it, hiding from it.”55
Most of the Republican presidential primary candidates in 2012 also bent toward Christian nationalism. Rick Perry—former Texas governor, Dancing with the Stars contestant, and now secretary of energy—rambled on about “our values—values and virtues that this country was based upon in Judeo-Christian founding fathers”56 and said that “our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution, the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values…. They didn’t shy away from referencing Him, using the values he brought and the message of his son Jesus Christ to build the system that we as a society have enjoyed for more than two hundred years.”57 Senator Rick Santorum was infamously introduced at a campaign rally in Baton Rouge by a pastor who howled “Get out!” at all the non-Christians in America because America “was founded as a Christian nation.”58 Santorum was forced to distance himself from those remarks.59 Representative Michele Bachmann argued that “American exceptionalism is grounded on the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is really based upon the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were the foundation for our law.”60 During the Florida debate, Mitt Romney was asked how his Mormon religion might influence his presidency. He dodged, saying “ours is a nation which is based upon Judeo-Christian values and ethics. Our law is based upon those values and ethics.”61
Christian nationalism surfaces in the US Congress. Representatives Louie Gohmert, Doug Lamborn, and Steve King are some of its most strident proponents.62 Representative King of Iowa, known for his racism and xenophobia, proclaimed that our nation “was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which means we need less law enforcement than anybody else in the world”63—a fallacy we’ll explore later on. Texas representative Louie Go
hmert declared in a December 2017 floor speech, “The Supreme Court looked at all of the evidence and declared in an opinion that the United States was founded as, and is, a Christian nation.” He added to this gross misstatement by insisting that “the only way any people can truly have freedom of religion is if they have a constitution that is founded on Judeo-Christian principles.”64 The opposite is true.
Former Virginia representative Randy Forbes, who founded the Congressional Prayer Caucus, gave a 2015 sermon claiming: “President George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan all indicated how the Bible and Judeo-Christian principles were so important in this nation. So if in fact we were a nation based on those principles, what was that moment in time when we ceased to so be?”65 In 2010, Michele Bachmann invited one of the most deceitful historical revisionists, David Barton—a man who used erroneous historical quotations,66 misrepresented Jefferson and his views on the separation of state and church,67 and wrote a biography of Jefferson so full of bad history that the publisher pulled it off the shelves68—to teach a class to Congress on the Christian history of the Constitution.69 Two-time presidential hopeful and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee expressed the belief that “all Americans should be forced—forced at gunpoint no less—to listen to every David Barton message.”70 Forbes’s Congressional Prayer Caucus once introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to recognize “the first weekend of May as Ten Commandments Weekend to recognize the significant contributions the Ten Commandments have made in shaping the principles, institutions, and national character of the United States.”71 The resolution also claimed that the Ten Commandments are “an elemental source for United States law.”72 Not quite. Forbes and Barton founded and run the groups (the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation and Wallbuilders, respectively) leading the Christian nationalist push discussed earlier, Project Blitz.
Politicians and political parties have elections to win, so their words can be discounted; but some scholars have also made these claims. Michael Novak, a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and a professor at Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame, agreed with eighteenth-century jurist Sir William Blackstone that the Law of Moses is the “font and spring of constitutional government.”73 (Thomas Jefferson thought the idea that the Ten Commandments or Christianity was the foundation of English Common Law an “awkward monkish fabrication” and a “fraud.”74) Anson Phelps Stokes—a priest and former secretary of Yale—wrote in his three-volume work on church and state in America that the “ideal of the Declaration [of Independence] is of course a definitely Christian one” that is clearly based on “fundamental Christian teachings.”75 Less scholarly examples include judge-turned-television-personality Andrew Napolitano, who thinks that “we have a Constitution and a Declaration of Independence that embodies Judeo-Christian moral values.”76Author and disgraced Fox News host Bill O’Reilly advocates teaching Christian nationalism in public schools: “Kids need to know what Judeo-Christian tradition is, because that’s what all of our laws are based on. That’s what the country’s philosophy is based on…because that’s what forged the Constitution.”77 Even the Museum of the Bible, which claims to be fair-minded, “is preoccupied with the question of whether America is a biblically rooted nation,” according to The Atlantic, which added, “While the exhibits portray some conflicting views, the message is clear: The country was forged through Christianity.”78
PATRIOTISM HAS NO RELIGION. The Christian nationalist’s argument seeks to change that and is, at its core, a fight about what it means to be an American. A disturbing number of Americans already believe that Christian and American identities are one and the same. The Pew Research Center found that about 32 percent of “people in the U.S. believe it is very important to be Christian to be considered truly American.”79 Some are vocal about it. When Mike Pence accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination, after a few formalities, he repeated one of his favorite lines: “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order.”80 The Christian nationalism ideal fuses two identities, Christian and American, so that to be one, you must also be the other. And if you’re not both, you can, as Santorum’s preacher screamed, “Get out!” President Trump’s infamous travel bans embodied this idea.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump promised to impose “extreme vetting” on immigrants. Vague in the particulars, he promised to admit only those people who “loved our country.”81 In his second week in office, Trump signed a controversial and unconstitutional executive order that banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order also favored immigration for Christians. Anyone who is oppressed for their beliefs should be welcome in this country—it shouldn’t depend on what those beliefs are (a point Trump essentially conceded in the wording of the first revised immigration order, issued on March 6, 2017, even if its implementation did not concede the point). But for Trump, there is no difference between favoring Christians and testing to see if potential immigrants love America, something he reiterated during the signing ceremony.82 Trump used Christianity as a proxy for loving America. He explained this with his typical circumlocution while campaigning at an evangelical stronghold, Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia. Almost precisely one year before he signed the order, Trump declared, “We’re going to protect Christianity. And I can say that. I don’t have to be politically correct. We’re going to protect it.”83 He then made his infamous “Two Corinthians” gaffe, saying “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” The verse to which Trump was referring, 2 Corinthians 3:17, says that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” and confirms the point. After that telling slip, Trump continued, “If you look at what is going on throughout the world, if you look at Syria, if you are a Christian, they are chopping off heads…. Christianity is under siege. I’m a Protestant, Presbyterian to be exact…. Very, very proud of it. We have to protect [Christianity] because very bad things are happening.”84 Incidentally, Syria was one of the seven countries whose citizens Trump banned from the United States in his first order. Syrians were also banned in the two subsequent immigration orders.
For Trump and Christian nationalists, to be an American is to be a Christian. The two have fused. Conservative columnists, such as Diana West, opined on Breitbart.com in 2015 that “the Trump [immigration] plan is absoutely [sic] essential to any possible return…to America’s constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian principles. I actually think of it as our last shot.”85 West penned this before the Iowa Caucus, when Trump was still a candidate proposing a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the country.”86
Christian nationalists use the language of revival and return, but that itself is misleading. They are not seeking to return, but to redefine. They want to redefine our Constitution—they want to redefine what it is to be an American—in terms of their religion.
Christian nationalism has already had a massive impact on our government and its policies, including foreign policy. When Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, Christian nationalist mouthpieces on Fox News declared that he had “fulfilled…biblical prophecy” and related the move back to “the foundation of our own Judeo-Christian nation.”87 Christian nationalism affects immigration policy, as we’ve just seen. Its effects on education policy could be felt for decades, and not just because Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was a dream appointment for the Christian nationalist goal of dismantling public schools through vouchers and school choice. It has denigrated our concept of equality, including by meddling with the legal definition of discrimination and attempting to redefine religious freedom as a license to discriminate, and it has sought to restrict women’s rights and even the social safety net. And, of course, Christian nationalism features heavily in the culture wars.
> Correcting the record is important. The political theology of Christian nationalism, the very identity of the Christian nationalist, depends on the myths exposed in this book. Christian nationalism’s hold on political power in America rests on the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Without historical support, many of their policy justifications crumble. Without their common well of myths, the Christian nationalist identity will wither and fade. Their entire political and ideological reality is incredibly weak and vulnerable because it is based on historical distortions and lies. In this right-wing religious culture, the lies are so commonplace, so uncritically accepted, that these vulnerabilities are not recognized. The purpose of this book is simple, if lofty: to utterly destroy the myths that underlie this un-American political ideology.
What I’m Arguing and Who I Am
This objective is particularly important because history is powerful. George Santayana’s warning that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” rings true because the past influences the present.88 Unfortunately, history’s power does not depend on its accuracy. A widely believed historical lie can have as much impact as a historical truth. President John F. Kennedy explained to Yale’s graduating class of 1962 that “the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears…. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”89 Powerful historical falsehoods are particularly harmful in constitutional republics such as the United States. Courts may uphold practices that would otherwise be illegal by relying on comfortable myths instead of legitimate history. Legislators might promulgate laws based on historical clichés instead of reality. Each law or court decision based on revisionist history provides a new foundation from which the myth can be expanded. The myth feeds off itself, lodging more firmly in our collective consciousness.
The Founding Myth Page 3