Christian nationalism versus actual Christianity

When I was doing my undergraduate work at Ohio State, I had several roommates who belonged to the evangelical Christian group, Campus Crusade for Christ. One day, a couple of Mormon missionaries came to our house. My roommates welcomed them in, pulled out their bibles, and engaged in an hour-long argument on why Mormonism was “wrong” and “not really Christianity.” The encounter ended with the Mormons storming out after one of my roommates called them “heretics.”

Political Christianity is a powerful force in this country. It is remarkably easy to define and Republicans had been amazingly adept at using political Christianity to their advantage. I am a Christian. He is a Christian. She is a Christian. We are Christians. They are not Christians. We have our Christian values, they don’t. We have our Judeo-Christian values, and they don’t. By defining Christianity as an “us versus them” battle, the Christian right has won elections, expanded their voter base, and continued to grow.

While Republicans have embraced political Christianity, they also knew there were limits on their promises. They made promises about winning the “war on Christmas” and “bringing back prayer to school” and “making America a Christian country again.” The problem is, the religious right actually wanted all of these things, from abortion restrictions to school prayer. When Republicans didn’t come through, they started voting for populists that would.

Enter the Christian nationalists.

We like to argue that the separation of church and state needs to remain in place because the government cannot endorse Christianity over Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, atheism, or even Satanism. And they are right.

But the question to Christian nationalists should be this: Which Christianity do you want to endorse? Which Bible do we teach? The Catholic one or the Protestant one? Is Christianity the Catholic faith of Vice President JD Vance, which tells us to pray to Mother Mary and venerate the saints? Is Christianity the Protestant faith of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) which tells us that a personal relationship with God is all we need for salvation? What do we teach children about denominations? Which one is right? Why are the others wrong?

Should teachers be allowed to evangelize their Christian faith to students? Christian nationalists might say yes. But what if those teachers are Mormons? Would you want your kids learning that the Book of Mormon is the word of God?

This is why our Founding Fathers were way smarter than we give them credit for. You see, they didn’t establish the separation of church and state to just protect Americans who weren’t Christian. They wanted to protect Christians from each other.

These were educated men who studied religion, history, philosophy and government. They were products of the Age of Enlightenment. And they also wanted to make sure our new country didn’t make the same mistakes as European governments did. We like to pretend that religious conflict has always been limited to the Middle East while ignoring events like European Wars of Religion.

Millions died in Europe from conflicts between Protestants and Catholics. Wars were fought, people displaced and massacres that we would now define as genocide happened. Just look up the Thirty Years’ War, War of the Three Kingdoms and French Wars of Religion. Religious liberty was so fragile in Europe that some people even got on boats and went to the other side of the world … like America.

Our Founding Fathers learned from those wars and said, yeah, we aren’t going to have that here. They established the separation of church and state because they knew that by making Christianity the official religion of a country where everyone was Christian, religious conflict would still break out because everyone wanted to instill their own version of Christianity. And it worked. Yes, we have had religious violence such as the expulsion of Mormons, but by and large sectarian violence in this country never took hold. European countries took notice and followed suit.

Opponents of Christian nationalism have struggled to contain the movement by playing into the “us versus them” game. But maybe they need to start asking politicians to define their Christian faith and asking if they were willing to codify those beliefs into law. And yes, opponents of Christian nationalism must be politically incorrect in order to show just how fragile the unity of Christian nationalists is.

We need to ask President Trump and his administration which denomination of Christianity should be endorsed instead of just making populist statements.

At that point, Christian nationalists would lose the “us versus them” advantage, because they would start fighting with each other over which of them is right. That would only prove why our Founding Fathers wanted to keep our country secular and establish the separation of church and state.

Jos Joseph is a recipient of the Military Reporters and Editors award for Best Commentary / Opinion. A graduate of Harvard and Ohio State, he is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He currently lives in Anaheim, Calif.

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