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“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross”
Sinclair Lewis, 1935
One of the central tenets of the Religious Right is that “Patriotism is next to Godliness.” White Christian Nationalists argue that America was founded as a Christian nation, blessed and protected by God above all others. Therefore, pride in one’s country is not just civic duty—it is framed as obedience to God Himself. In their worldview, America thrives only because God protects it as a Christian nation.
This theology shapes politics in disturbing ways. God, they claim, supernaturally intercedes to help America win wars (well, except Vietnam). It is supposedly God’s mission to make America the most powerful militarized country on earth. But the Jesus they invoke is not the lamb of the Beatitudes—it is the roaring lion who flipped tables in the temple. Leadership is seen as chosen by divine right: those who disagree with the White Christian Nationalist agenda are branded as messengers of Satan sent to “test” America’s faith.
But here’s the problem: as anyone who has taken an American History class or Civics class can tell you, all of this is built on historical distortion. The Founders crafted a secular Constitution, explicitly rejecting the entanglement of church and state. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion for everyone, not just Christians. They knew well the dangers of a state religion, having seen England’s abuses firsthand. Yet White Christian Nationalists have blurred history and theology so thoroughly that many now treat the Bible as if it were one of America’s founding documents.
America was founded on the principle of the separation of Church and State.
But more and more, White Christian Nationalists are entangling church and state, even putting country before God through their own interpretations of scripture.
So why do so many people believe America is a Christian nation and almost treat the Bible as one of our founding documents? Why does the majority of our Supreme Court justices seem to base all of their decision-making on their religious interpretation rather than the interpretation of the law? Why do Republicans thump the Bible every time they want to make a point rather than basing a legal argument on reason?
Well, if you will join me once again, I’d like to take another look at the world of White Christian Nationalism:
Laying the Groundwork: Making the Government with God’s Image
It seems like every President in recent memory has closed speeches with “May God bless America.” Both Democrats and Republicans alike repeat it as if it were tradition stretching back to the Founders. But in reality, the first President to end a speech with those words wasn’t George Washington—it was Richard Nixon in 1973. [ [link removed] ] Ronald Reagan, ever the performer, resurrected the phrase in 1980 and cemented it as a political requirement. From then on, [ [link removed] ] passing the “God and Country” test became as important as policy proposals.
Even more striking is the story of In God We Trust. Most people assume it has been America’s motto from the beginning, but it wasn’t made official until 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law during the height of the Cold War. [ [link removed] ] For the first 180 years of the Republic, the unofficial motto was E Pluribus Unum—“Out of many, one”—which first appeared on the Great Seal in 1795.
The phrase In God We Trust itself comes from the lesser-known fourth stanza of Francis Scott Key’s 1814 poem “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” written during the War of 1812. One line reads:
O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation,
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just.
And this be our motto — "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
The first stanza of Key’s poem became The Star-Spangled Banner, later set to the tune of a British drinking song. It wasn’t officially adopted as America’s national anthem until 1931, under Herbert Hoover. Less than three decades later, in the fever pitch of anti-communist sentiment, lawmakers dusted off Key’s forgotten line and declared it America’s sacred motto.
Why? To distinguish America from the “godless” Soviet Union. Conservative preachers and politicians argued that only a Christian America could withstand the Cold War. And Eisenhower, under the sway of evangelist Billy Graham, eagerly agreed. Eisenhower had grown up in a Mennonite offshoot and never been baptized, but just ten days after his inauguration he was baptized at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington. Graham became a regular presence at the White House, pushing for faith to be fused with patriotism. Under Eisenhower, the National Prayer Breakfast was launched, setting a precedent every president since has followed.
Eisenhower preached that faith was the dividing line between American freedom and Soviet oppression. In his mind, the Soviets trampled religion, while America’s strength came from belief in God. Under his leadership, religion became not just a private faith but a civic duty—something baked into the political DNA of the nation.
It was both a distortion of history and a distortion of reality—but it laid the foundation for the Christian Nationalist warping of America that persists today.
The City on a Hill: American Exceptionalism
During one of his radio addresses in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower rewrote American history with a distinctly religious brush. “Out of faith in God, and through faith in themselves as His children, our forefathers designed and built the Republic,” he declared. Never mind the fact that the Founders deliberately wrote a secular Constitution. Eisenhower’s version tied America’s origins directly to divine will.
Whether this came from his own revived faith or from the influence of Billy Graham, Eisenhower had effectively adopted the Christian Nationalist playbook: frame America’s greatness as God-ordained, with its leaders chosen for sacred missions. In this retelling, George Washington wasn’t a pragmatic revolutionary but a messenger of God; Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the great emancipator but a divine instrument to heal the Union “in Christ’s name.
This framing wasn’t invented out of thin air—it drew from a deep well of Puritan imagery. In 1630, aboard the Arbella, John Winthrop delivered his sermon A Model of Christian Charity [ [link removed] ], where he said:
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it likely that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.
He invoked Matthew 5:14—“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden”—to describe the Puritan settlement as an example to the world: exceptional, chosen, and under divine scrutiny.
For centuries, those words were remembered primarily in theological circles. But in the 20th century, they became a rallying cry for politicians eager to fuse patriotism with divine mission. None used it more effectively than Ronald Reagan.
Reagan invoked the “City on a Hill” metaphor repeatedly throughout his career, most famously in his 1989 farewell address: [ [link removed] ]
“I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.”
In Reagan’s telling, America wasn’t just powerful or prosperous; it was literally sanctified. Its victories—especially the defeat of the “godless communists” in the Cold War—were framed as proof of divine blessing. The narrative left no room for failure or self-critique: if God chose America, then America could never be wrong.
Reagan’s alliance with the Religious Right made sure this vision took root. Leaders like Jerry Falwell Sr. and James Dobson saw Reagan’s rhetoric as validation of their movement, and Reagan welcomed them into the White House as spiritual advisors, just as Eisenhower had done with Graham. By the end of the 1980s, Christian Nationalism and Republican politics were fused under the banner of American exceptionalism.
What started as a Puritan sermon aboard a ship had been weaponized into a political theology: America as God’s favorite nation, a beacon to the world, and a country whose policies—foreign and domestic—were framed not just as political choices but as divine mandates.
Republicanness is Next to Godliness
If Dwight Eisenhower laid the groundwork and Ronald Reagan popularized the script, then Jerry Falwell Sr. was the director who made sure the Religious Right had its starring role. Falwell was not just a preacher; he was a political operator cloaked in a pastor’s robe, and he wielded his faith as a tool for consolidating power.
One of his earliest symbolic moves was renaming the school he founded in Lynchburg, Virginia, from Lynchburg Baptist College to Liberty University. The rebrand wasn’t accidental. Falwell wanted to monopolize the language of freedom and patriotism, wrapping Christianity in the stars and stripes. Just as Reagan made America’s exceptionalism divine, Falwell made Republicanism synonymous with godliness.
Through the creation of the Moral Majority in 1979, Falwell institutionalized this merger of faith and politics. The Moral Majority was not just a church group — it was a political machine that mobilized conservative Christians into a unified voting bloc. Its agenda stretched from pushing for school prayer to opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research. What made it especially potent was Falwell’s willingness to open its doors beyond Evangelicals: Catholics, Jews, and Mormons were welcome allies so long as they shared the same political objectives. In practice, theology took a backseat to ideology.
Falwell blurred the lines so thoroughly that his sermons became indistinguishable from stump speeches. He would rail against Democrats and civil rights activists as if they were literal demons sent to test America’s resolve. In a 1965 sermon, he even said: [ [link removed] ]
“Believing the Bible as I do, I would find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ and begin doing anything else — including the fighting of communism, or participating in the civil rights reform…. Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners.”
Christ and begin doing anything else — including the fighting of communism, or participating in the civil rights reform. Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners.”
It was a sleight of hand: by framing politics as religion, Falwell could claim his political pronouncements weren’t political at all — they were God’s truth, and thus above debate.
This tactic caught fire. Across the country, churches raised American flags as high as their crosses. Congregations sang “God Bless America” during services as if it were a hymn. Congregants were taught that voting Republican was not just civic duty, but divine obedience. By the 1980s, Falwell and his allies had created an alternate moral universe where conservative politics and Christianity were one and the same.
We see the legacy everywhere today. On January 6th, rioters carried crosses and “Jesus Saves” banners alongside Trump flags and nooses. Signs read: “Jesus is my Savior. Trump is my President” or “An Appeal to Heaven.” What might have seemed contradictory — invoking Christ, who preached universal love, while pledging loyalty to one party — made perfect sense to those steeped in Falwell’s logic. In their eyes, Republicanism was Christianity.
And it’s not just the rank-and-file. In 2024, a report described how Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, leaned into this same culture war blending of faith and politics. She reportedly flew flags at her home in Florida as a form of protest against her neighbors’ LGBTQ+ pride flags. At one point she told an activist who was secretly recording her that she wanted to fly a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because she had to look across the lagoon at a Pride flag all month. Even at the highest levels of influence, the symbolism of Christian identity fused with political grievance is weaponized to intimidate and divide.
The same happens at the grassroots. In her book Star Spangled Jesus, former Christian Nationalist April Ajoy recalls joining a protest to remove Confederate statues in her hometown. It was not a religious demonstration — until counter-protesters made it one. They hurled taunts like:
“As long as Trump is for Jesus, I’m for Jesus.”
“Do you know what color sin is? Sin is black!”
“We’re the example of Good Christians over here!”
What should have been a debate over monuments became a religious litmus test, framed as God versus godlessness.
This was the true genius of Falwell’s project: not just to politicize religion, but to religiously sanctify politics. The result is a worldview where challenging the GOP is framed not as disagreeing with a party, but as rebelling against God Himself.
Roll It Back: Why the Christian Right Wants to Rip Away Every Progress Made
For White Christian Nationalists, there’s an implicit contract with God: if America remains a Christian nation — as they define it — God will continue to bless and protect it. But if America strays into pluralism, equality, or social progress, then God’s protection is revoked. This worldview is the bedrock for every regressive push of the Religious Right. It turns politics into theology, and every advance in civil rights into an act of rebellion against divine order.
From the 1960s onward, we see the same story on repeat. When Black Americans won the right to vote, to attend integrated schools, and to live free from Jim Crow segregation, many Evangelicals didn’t view it as progress but as blasphemy. Some even defended [ [link removed] ] slavery retroactively, claiming it “saved” Africans by exposing them to Christianity. For decades after abolition, segregation was framed by Southern preachers as the divine ordering of society — White Christians on top, Black Americans “guided” into faith beneath them [ [link removed] ]. To this day, [ [link removed] ] corners of the Christian Right openly argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake.
The same logic resurfaced with second-wave feminism. Phyllis Schlafly became the face of the backlash, painting the Equal Rights Amendment as an assault on God’s design for gender roles. Her STOP ERA campaign (“Stop Taking Our Privileges”) cast women’s inequality as a blessing from God, suggesting that separate restrooms and “dependent wife” benefits under Social Security were sacred traditions. Schlafly’s rhetoric hardened into gospel for the Religious Right: feminism was rebellion against God, and rolling it back became holy duty.
This is why Evangelicals waged cultural warfare throughout the 1980s Satanic Panic. Rock music, Dungeons & Dragons, and even daycare centers were accused of being gateways to Satan — not because Evangelicals truly thought Ozzy Osbourne was summoning demons, but because they knew fear could rally suburban parents into their movement. It was always about controlling culture under the guise of protecting children.
The throughline continues today in the courts. For decades, the Religious Right’s top priority has been judicial capture. George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump all stacked the Supreme Court with justices steeped in conservative Christian ideology. This strategy culminated in the 6–3 Court that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. That victory was decades in the making, a direct line back to Schlafly’s anti-feminist crusades and Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority.
And they are far from finished. Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion [ [link removed] ] in Dobbs v. Jackson explicitly called for revisiting rulings on contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage. That’s not subtext — it’s the plan.
We’ve already seen how this plays out at the state level. In 2006, Virginia passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between “one man and one woman.” It was ratified by voters long before Obergefell v. Hodges established marriage equality nationwide in 2015. The infrastructure for rolling back LGBTQ+ rights has been in place for years; Evangelicals are simply waiting for the green light to resurrect it. And with a Speaker like Mike Johnson — who openly frames politics as a biblical war — that green light may come sooner than many think.
Today, the rollback agenda extends beyond the courts and into every cultural battlefield:
Anti-Trans Legislation: From bans on gender-affirming care to restrictions on bathroom access, Evangelicals frame trans rights as an existential threat to God’s design because “God only made two genders.” State legislatures in places like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee have codified laws that explicitly target LGBTQ+ youth under the banner of “protecting children.”
Book Bans and Curriculum Censorship: School boards across the country, often backed by Evangelical parents’ groups, are banning books that reference racism, LGBTQ+ characters, or feminism. From Maus to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, literature that challenges the myth of a pure, Christian America is being erased.
Attacks on DEI Programs: Conservatives now argue that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in universities and corporations are “un-American” and “anti-Christian.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has positioned DEI as cultural Marxism, using state power to dismantle higher education’s modest steps toward equity.
Reproductive Rights Beyond Roe: Evangelicals aren’t stopping at abortion bans. They are targeting IVF treatments, contraceptives, and even emergency medical procedures under “fetal personhood” laws. Their long-term goal is to cement the idea that a woman’s body is not her own, but God’s vessel for reproduction.
Importantly, this isn’t mainstream Christianity. The Vatican itself has never advocated dismantling contraception rights or interracial marriage. These are uniquely American, Evangelical political projects masquerading as faith. But for those steeped in White Christian Nationalism, divine mandate trumps democracy. If God’s will conflicts with majority rule, majority rule must give way.
That’s why the same movement that resisted Civil Rights in the 1960s and fueled the Satanic Panic in the 1980s is now orchestrating rollbacks in the 2020s. Their crusade is simple: reverse every gain since the mid-20th century and drag America back to a pre-civil rights, pre-feminist, pre-LGBTQ+ era. In their telling, only then will God once again bless America.
Faith Without Monopoly
As I have said before, Democrats don’t need to run from faith—we just need to stop letting the Right weaponize it uncontested. The Christian Right has twisted the gospel into a blunt instrument of power, convincing millions that Jesus votes Republican. That isn’t religion—it’s branding.
Millions on the Left, myself included, count ourselves as religious. President Joe Biden went to Mass every Sunday and still governed as a progressive. Majorities of Black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics vote Democratic [ [link removed] ], living proof that faith and progressivism are not contradictions.
The truth is simple: Jesus healed the sick, fed the poor, and loved the outcast. That’s not the agenda of today’s GOP. That’s the heart of progressivism.
So no, Democrats shouldn’t play their game of Bible-thumping politics. But we also can’t keep leaving the pulpit empty. Faith communities already power progressive movements—from civil rights to immigrant justice. If we fail to show up, White Christian Nationalists will keep monopolizing God-talk, dressing up authoritarianism as holiness.
The Religious Right has monopolized God-talk for too long. If we don’t contest that monopoly, White Christian Nationalism will keep masquerading as the only “authentic” expression of faith in public life. But the truth is, the gospel they preach is not the gospel of Jesus—it’s the gospel of power. And there’s nothing godly about that.
They’ve stolen God to sell power. It’s time we remind America that the gospel of Jesus isn’t about power at all.
It’s about community.
It’s about people.
TL;DR
White Christian Nationalists have rebranded American history and politics to fuse God and country, insisting that patriotism equals Christianity. Starting with Eisenhower and amplified by Reagan, leaders wove religion into governance—adding mottos like “In God We Trust,” staging prayer breakfasts, and pushing American Exceptionalism as divine destiny. Evangelical figures like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell blurred the lines between faith and Republican politics, convincing followers that to be a “good Christian” is to be a conservative.
This marriage of church and state now drives efforts to roll back progress—from civil rights to abortion rights to marriage equality—under the guise of “restoring God’s favor.” With a conservative Supreme Court and leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, this project has real teeth.
Democrats don’t need to attack Christianity. Instead, they should reclaim faith’s true values—compassion, justice, service—and stop ceding religion to the Right. The gospel doesn’t belong to authoritarians. It belongs to the people.
By the Ballot is an opinion series published on Substack. All views expressed are solely those of the author and should not be interpreted as reporting or objective journalism or attributed to any other individual or organization. I am not a journalist or reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This publication represents personal commentary, analysis, and opinion only.

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