Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
∵
When Donald Trump was re-inaugurated as President in January 2025 he said, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” This strange, hubristic proclamation is a prime example of Christian nationalism. The second Trump administration we will likely include much more of this. Hence, the need for this book, which was completed before Trump’s re-election.
As I completed the years-long process of writing this book in the summer of 2024, several U.S. States are attempting to impose the Christian faith on their citizens. In Oklahoma, the state superintendent of education issued an order requiring the Bible to be taught in schools. And in Louisiana, the governor signed a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in schools. When he signed the Louisiana law, Governor Jeff Landry said, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law-giver, which was Moses.”1 In defending the law, Governor Landry said, “This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and every time we steer away from that, we have problems in our nation.”2 As the Louisiana law made headlines, Donald Trump posted in support of it, in all caps, on his Truth Social account: “i love the ten commandments in public schools, private schools, and many other places, for that matter. read it—how can we, as a nation, go wrong??? this may be, in fact, the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed, in our country.”3
The recent revival of Christian nationalism has occurred alongside the growth of a general nonreligious worldview. The first trend concerns me, as someone who thinks that the separation of church and state is a good thing. And although I am not religious myself, I understand that the second trend (the growth of nonreligion) may be one of the things that is driving the growth of Christian nationalism. Some Christians appear to be afraid that their country and their identity is being threatened by the growing number of people who are not religious. I interpret Christian nationalism in part as a backlash to the growing sense that secular political values are simply taken for granted, and to the correlative fact that in a world where there is extensive freedom of religion, nonreligion will grow.
As I argue in this book, Christian nationalism is an anti-secular movement and ideology. It has something in common with other forms of political religion: Hindu nationalism, political Islam, and so on. In its American iteration, it is based in a tendentious reading of American history that fails to acknowledge the basically secular structure created by the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments. It also typically fails to understand the diverse and often unorthodox religiosity of the American founders, as well as their common commitment to religious liberty. My goal in this book is to present an argument in favor of political secularism that responds to the Christian nationalist challenge, and which shows that there are important resources in Christianity, in
For atheists and defenders of political secularism, Christian nationalism is a non-starter. And liberal/progressive Christian scholars will argue—against their Christian nationalist co-religionists—that Christian nationalism is based on flawed theology, a bad reading of Biblical texts, and an unholy marriage of political and religious power. The fact that Christians disagree about nationalism, theology, and the Bible shows us why secular systems of politics are wise and necessary: secular political systems allow for peaceful co-existence despite religious disagreement. The inclusive spirit of secularism reaches a limit, however, in the case of political and religious movements that are opposed to secularism itself. Indeed, as this book explains, Christian nationalism is primarily an anti-secular movement, with some Christian nationalists going so far as to describe secularism as Satanic.
This book articulates a critique of Christian nationalism from multiple standpoints including Christian theology and exegesis, historical analysis, and liberal political philosophy. It also considers the question of whether Christian nationalism is a sincere commitment or whether it is merely the rhetorical hyperbole of our polarized political era. While some of this may be mere rhetoric, there are sincerely committed Christian nationalists who aspire to create a Christian nation. The book includes extended criticism and analysis of the words and arguments of a range of contemporary figures who use Christian nationalist rhetoric, including people like Donald Trump who has suggested that “Our enemies are waging war on faith and freedom, on science and religion, on history and tradition, on law and democracy, on God Almighty himself.”4 As we’ll see, even if Trump does not himself sincerely believe that the enemies of his movement are waging war on the Almighty himself, there are others who do think that U.S.’s secular system is anti-religious and even Satanic.
The critique of Christian nationalism discussed here points in the direction of a significant problem, described here as “the paradox of secularism.” The paradox occurs when inclusive secular systems confront exclusivist anti-secular religious movements. Can secular systems legitimately exclude Christian nationalism and other forms of anti-secular religiosity without violating the inclusive spirit of secularism? This is related to the question of how a defender of the secular separation between church and state might respond to someone
Secularism, as interpreted here, is a political framework that is inclusive of religion and not opposed to faith. Political secularism is fundamentally a political system grounded in religious liberty. It presumes that religion and politics ought to remain distinct and that freedom of religious belief is fundamental. Secular principles provide substantial reasons to reject Christian nationalism and other anti-secular ideologies that seek to combine exclusivist religion with narrowly nationalistic view of political power. Political secularism is also antithetical to atheistic nationalism and overt attempts to destroy or eliminate religion. Secularism, as defended here, is inclusive: it includes atheists, theists, and other believers who each benefit from religious liberty. Nonetheless, political secularism is opposed to the political aspirations of Christian nationalism and other kinds of religio-political exclusivism (such as political Islam, Hindu nationalism, or state-mandated atheism).
Secularism has been defined in a variety of ways, as Berlinerblau has recently explained.5 My focus here is political secularism, defined as a system of legal norms that limit the state from overt religiosity and which ensure that individual religiosity is protected. In the American system, secularism is grounded in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly recognizes a fundamental right to religious liberty, and which also stipulates that government should not favor or “establish” any religion. Secular systems locate religion in a place outside of political power, preventing any religious group or organization from acquiring political power. This may seem to “exclude” religion. But in excluding religion from political power, a more inclusive and diverse social and political world is supposed to result. And individual believers and religious communities are supposed to be left alone to pursue their own freely chosen faith.
Anti-secular religious ideologies such as Christian nationalism throw a wrench in the works, since they advance the idea that religion and politics should be more closely wedded. In response, secular systems find themselves in a bind. In excluding exclusivist and nationalistic faiths, secular systems appear to violate the spirit of inclusivity and impose a limit on some kinds of
The paradox of secularism described here is similar to the “paradox of toleration,” as discussed in the literature on toleration and liberal political theory. This paradox can be formulated as a question: should secular systems include religious beliefs that are anti-secular? The problem with Christian nationalism, from a secular vantage point is that it is antithetical to the inclusive vision of secular politics, and thus may have to be excluded. But if Christian nationalism is excluded, this may violate the spirit of inclusion and respect for liberty that are hallmarks of secularism. The book explores this apparent paradox in a variety of ways, while admitting that it may be impossible finally to resolve the problem, since it involves a fundamental conflict of values (described here as a “tragic conflict”).
The “paradox of secularism” as discussed here is quite different from what Blankholm (2022) has recently called “the secular paradox” (and by which he means to suggest that secularism can include a kind of “religiosity”—what he calls in the subtitle of his book, “the religiosity of the not religious”).6 I respond to Blankholm’s account implicitly throughout this book, arguing basically that this is a misleading description of secularism. It is true that some “secular people” can be described as “religious” in a broad sense, and that there can be some kind of “religiosity” involved in secular forms of life. There may even be a quasi-religious devotion to the basic principles of secular political systems (say, when we think that there is a kind of “sacred” value to the fundamental idea of religious liberty). And some secular people may indeed explicitly espouse a kind of “secular religion.” This is, in fact, what many of the Christian nationalists are afraid of: that secularism as religion is seeking to replace Christianity. But this over-reaction results from a kind of equivocation that is often based on a misunderstanding (sometimes a deliberate misunderstanding) of what political secularism is. Political secularism is not a religious view; it is, rather, a political philosophy. Of course, a critic might claim that you simply cannot have a political philosophy without staking a claim about theology (even if the claim
This book offers both a sustained critique of Christian nationalism and a defense of political secularism. It argues that religion ought to be left in the private sphere and that political life ought to be based on universal values that transcend the values of particular sectarian religious belief. This conception of political life aims to be both inclusive and universal. The inclusive aspect of secular systems is derived from the celebration of individual religious liberty and the diversity that comes with it. At the same time, this approach points beyond nationalism and sectarianism toward a universal and cosmopolitan conception of human rights and shared human values. This universal, cosmopolitan ideal is not antithetical to religion—and indeed, there are forms of religion that embrace a kind of inclusive pluralism (we see this, for example, in Gandhi’s view of religion or in the idea of a “global ethic,” as embraced by the Parliament of the World’s Religions). But again, the problem is that pluralistic and tolerant religious ideals encounter a limit case in relation to Christian nationalism and other forms of exclusivist political religion.
The book considers as well, a religious critique of Christian nationalism, articulated from an inclusive and pluralistic interpretation of theology and religion (what I call “progressive” or “liberal” Christianity). One important point here is the fact that Christianity includes internal diversity, which is a fact that is often ignored by advocates of Christian nationalism. This kind of Christian diversity has been present since the founding of the United States. And indeed, it is clearly present among the American Founders. Contemporary Christian nationalists cite quotes from the Founding Fathers that indicate that the U.S. is a Christian nation. In an oft-quoted letter from 1816, John Jay said, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. National prosperity can neither be obtained nor preserved without the favor of Providence.”7 Jay clearly states that this is a
It is even possible to derive a type of “Christian humanism” in readings of Christian texts and traditions. As I explain, a central idea here is that God is not a tyrant and does not want Christians to exert tyrannical political power. This progressive, humanistic, and modern theological idea is rejected by the advocates of Christian nationalism. Progressive Christian humanism, as I describe it here, is derived from a radical but sympathetic reading of the Bible and the Christian tradition of theology such as we find in the religious musings of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. To return to the issue of the Ten Commandments, which we discussed at the outset, we might note that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged letters about this text in which they questioned whether the text was, as Adams put it, “not written by the finger
The strongest argument against Christian nationalism is flatly atheistic: if there is no God, then it makes no sense to insist that political life be oriented around belief in God. Of course, atheism is often viewed as a scary and divisive idea; and atheists remain a small minority among the general public, despite the rising tide of non-religion. And indeed, Christian nationalism has developed as a backlash against the growth of secularity, non-religion, and atheism. For this reason, it is useful to establish common ground between atheism and progressive, humanistic Christianity, and to consider the extent to which progressive Christians might agree with their atheist neighbors in a common argument against Christian nationalism.
Of course, tensions remain. Progressive Christian theists maintain that God is not a tyrant and that Christianity is not best understood in nationalistic terms. But atheists may object that even while progressive Christians oppose nationalism, they remain wedded to much of the traditional theology of Christianity. And so it goes, in a complex argument that includes militant atheists, disengaged non-religious people, progressive Christians, Christian humanists, and Christian anarchists each offering arguments against Christian nationalists. Of course, there are more possibilities and problems in a world that includes radical diversity. For example, we ought also to consider Muslim atheists, Hindu cosmopolitans, and Indigenous people who appeal to secular ideas in order to defend their traditional religious ways of life. The fact of robust pluralism has often been ignored, especially in a discourse that has typically focused on the arguments of militant atheists such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett and progressive Christian theists such as Martin Luther King,
The critique of Christian nationalism offered here is located in the common ground that can be found between nonreligious humanism, atheism, and progressive Christian theism. I have discussed this elsewhere.11 This approach may seem weak from the standpoint of a more militant kind of atheism that wants to dismantle and discard religion entirely. And some Christians may be unwilling to find common ground with atheists. But the arguments and ideas of progressive Christian theology and of contemporary atheology can be combined with the fact of robust diversity and radical pluralism in a powerful argument in defense of secularism and against Christian nationalism.
This general idea points toward an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and other secular systems in which the goal of these systems is understood as peaceful co-existence in the face of radical pluralism. Christian nationalism poses a challenge to this interpretation. But as I show in the book, there are substantial resources within the Constitutional system and in theology and American history for responding to this challenge. This is not a panacea or a slam-dunk solution. And tragic conflicts remain. But when we understand the theological and political issues underlying these conflicts and debates about Christian nationalism, we will be better able to negotiate those remaining conflicts and to discover a wise path forward. This path involves a basic commitment to critical thinking, sincerity of belief, careful historical analysis, trust in the value of religious liberty, and a kind of faith in humanity that holds that human beings can in fact understand that religious liberty is valuable and that secular political systems are wise.
A Note on Texts and Methods
In what follows, I mix current affairs with history, sociology, theology, and philosophy. There are difficulties in this way of proceeding. In the opening paragraph of this Preface, I have quoted Donald Trump verbatim—including his use of all caps in his messaging. The audience, tone, and content of that kind of communication is quite different from what we find in the Bible, in
Things becomes even more complicated when quoting the Bible and other ancient and early modern texts. I have generally quoted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. In some cases, where I think it matters, I note difficulties of translation. As a useful resource for Biblical texts, I have consulted the Blue Letter Bible (
Finally, I realize that there are other issues of concern with regard to the sources and subject matter discussed here. I mention issues involving gender, race, slavery, sexuality, and Eurocentrism throughout the text. There important truths that deserve further exploration. John Locke defended colonialism. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And many contemporary Christian Nationalists express ideas that are homophobic, Eurocentric, and even racist. I mention some of this, where relevant. But my focus here is not on these important issues. Rather, my goal is to argue against the anti-secular assumptions of Christian nationalism using traditional theology and political thought, while also exploring the paradoxical limit of a secular response to Christian nationalism.
“Louisiana requires display of Ten Commandments in all classrooms” bbc News, June 19, 2024, accessed July 8, 2024.
“Louisiana governor defends 10 Commandments in schools mandate: ‘The US is founded on Judeo-Christian values’” Fox News, June 21, 2024,
Donald J. Trump on Truth Social June 20, 2024
Donald Trump speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference on June 24, 2023, posted at The Rev:
Jacques Berlinerblau, Secularism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2022).
Joseph Blankholm, The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious (New York: nyu Press, 2022).
John Jay to John Murray, October 12, 1816,
A useful source is David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 14, 1813,
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, January 24, 1814,
See Andrew Fiala and Peter Admirand, Seeking Common Ground: A Theist/Atheist Dialogue (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021); and Andrew Fiala, Secular Cosmopolitanism, Hospitality, and Religious Pluralism (New York: Routledge Publishing 2016).