My last column was on Christian nationalism and the threat that movement poses to religious freedom. Some would say that is our most basic freedom: to make our own way through the thicket of religions that clamor for our embrace — even if that freedom results in rejecting them all. Orthodox Christian faith holds that that freedom to make decisions is an essential aspect of our imago Dei, our being created in the image of God (as recounted in the Genesis creation stories).
That freedom to decide one’s own religion, unencumbered by government officials, is assured in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
What Christian nationalism threatens is that fundamental right. It does so by “using the power of the state to force ... one accepted form of religious belief” (Amanda Tyler, Executive Director, Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, in her Congressional Testimony of October 25, 2023).
The Louisiana Legislature’s requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in that state’s public-school classrooms is a crystal-clear example of violating that right. The Oklahoma Secretary of Education’s requiring a Bible be placed in every public-school classroom and that teachers teach from it is a crystal-clear example of violating that right.
But there’s a second reason to be fearful of Christian nationalism. It is anti-democratic — meaning, Christian nationalism is a minority movement that wants the power to rule the majority. The leaders of the movement believe that a substantial majority of US citizens have chosen wrongly: by leaving religion behind or by embracing forms of religion they believe are wrong-headed. And they want to fix that by forcing their version of Christianity on you.
Here's a telling example. On October 11, 2019, then-Attorney General Bill Barr gave a major address on religious liberty at the University of Notre Dame Law School. Barr has made no secret of his close association with Opus Dei, the quasi-secret, worldwide society of conservative Catholics.
Early in the speech he laid out his thesis: “The Founding generation’s view of human nature was drawn from the classical Christian tradition. These practical statesmen understood that individuals ... if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large. No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity. But, if you rely on the coercive power of government to impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to ... tyranny.”
Translation: Human nature is burdened by original sin; Individuals can’t help themselves—they sin; Therefore, they need to be restrained; But government can’t be trusted to do the restraining because it uses coercive methods which lead to tyranny.
So what is left to tame the “powerful passions and appetites” of humankind? Religion. As Barr put it, “social order must flow up from the people themselves—freely obeying the dictates of ... commonly-shared moral values ... [that] must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.”
Here we have a textbook example of using religion for social control — a purely political use of religion (Barr’s version of course). Force feed ‘em a dose of militant Christianity, and soon we’ll have fewer petty larcenies, rapes, murders and car-jackings, or so he argues.
So, and here’s the crux of the matter: the goal of Christian nationalists is to impose an amalgam of Protestant evangelical and right-wing Catholic Christianity upon US citizens. Enforcing that religion thus becomes a patriotic duty because it saves the nation from ruin. That’s what they’re up to.
Former Attorney General Barr, along with The Heritage Foundation, Senator Josh Howley and others, are free to have whatever religion they choose. It’s forcing their religion upon the rest of us, the majority, that is the danger. That coercion of religious choice tramples on our most basic freedom, violates the Constitution, and threatens democracy because it is rule of the majority by a small minority.
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Dr. Conville is a professor of communication studies (ret.) and long-time resident of Hattiesburg. He can be reached at rlconville@yahoo.com.
