President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission could meet in any government building in Washington. Instead, they’ve twice chosen a venue that screams Christian nationalism with the subtlety of a crucifix-shaped bullhorn: the Museum of the Bible, bankrolled by the billionaire evangelical crusaders behind Hobby Lobby.
Per an executive order signed by Trump back in May, the Religious Liberty Commission is tasked with producing a report on the state of religious liberty in the United States, and providing executive and legislative policy recommendations to the federal government on how to protect it.
Its true agenda, however, goes much further.
At the commission’s rollout ceremony in the Rose Garden, Trump mused about church-state separation: “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” He then answered his own question by naming Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick to a position that oversees the commission. Patrick had gained national attention by championing a law—since enjoined by a federal court—that would have forced Texas public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom. He has also claimed that America was literally founded by God, “because he wrote the Constitution.” (If true, the Almighty has a strong plagiarism case against James Madison.)
Other Trump appointees include a former beauty queen, Carrie Prejean Boller, who at the commission’s first hearing reverently quoted an 18th-century jurist arguing, “It is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” Prejean’s participation in the 2009 Miss USA pageant made national news after she declared her opposition to gay marriage. She placed as first runner-up nonetheless.
There’s also a televangelist who calls Islam a death cult and equates opposing Trump to opposing God, and a right-wing radio host who argues enforcing church-state separation creates an unconstitutional “secular religion.”
Then there’s Dr. Phil, bringing to the proceedings the constitutional gravitas of a TV psychologist who once juiced ratings by counseling a woman who swore she was pregnant with baby Jesus. At that first hearing, he crystallized the decades-long Christian nationalist project to rewrite history and dismantle church-state separation, declaring that our founders “didn’t view religion as a threat to liberty” and “didn’t create a secular state.”
The commission and its allies will likely work to flood the zone with such revisionist history, almost certainly relying on the Christian nationalist movement’s reigning mythmaker-in-chief David Barton. Barton, who was conspicuously present at a commission hearing last week, has parlayed a bachelor’s degree in religious education into a right-wing fake history empire by churning out “Christian nation” content that sacralizes America’s founding as a Christian covenant with God, and reinvents our Enlightenment-era founders as proto-evangelicals.
His organization opposes the separation of church and state, and promotes a vision of the United States in which our laws are based on evangelical Christian beliefs. The narratives he has curated are now echoing through the rhetoric of the Religious Liberty Commission, and there is a lot more to come.
Undoubtedly, Christian nationalism is having a moment—and trying to create an even bigger moment by embedding its narratives into the upcoming celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The “Christian nation” founding myth that Barton, Johnson and so many others relentlessly promote is central to that effort.
But that myth is just the battering ram. Once the wall of church-state separation is breached, expect Christian supremacists to charge through on a second myth also being promoted by Trump’s commission: the “naked public square.” Rooted in Christian privilege and hostility to pluralism, this argument caricatures non-religious Americans like myself—30 percent of the population and growing—as radical secularists who’ve banished Christianity from civic discourse.
This fearmongering trope attacks a strawman. Christians dominate every corner of public life: the Supreme Court, Congress, state legislatures, school boards and most of American culture. Twelve of the 13 Religious Liberty Commissioners are Christians, who have all built public careers promoting Christianity. (The thirteenth is the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.)
The public square is anything but naked. So then, what Christian nationalists can’t accept—and what triggers their moral panic—is that the public square belongs to all of us. Sharing it equally with other faith perspectives is essential.
No one expects Christians to check their faith at the door. But imposing extremist doctrines on others is another matter. Faith can guide public service without turning government into a tool of religious coercion.
This nefarious Christian nationalist agenda being advanced by Trump’s commission seeks to lead us to taxpayers subsidizing electioneering in churches, funding for sectarian religious education, and—as one Commissioner is already openly advocating—official government religious ceremonies. The long-term goal is habituation—suffusing religion into public institutions, schools, and laws to the point where the separation of church and state no longer means anything, and religious “liberty” is redefined as Christian privilege.
Americans who value secular democracy, pluralism, and public education should pay close attention. Because when fascism comes to America, it will wave a flag and carry a cross.
The post Opinion: It’s Not Just Free Speech. The Trump Administration Is Coming for Religious Freedoms appeared first on The Daily Beast.
