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Friend:
The rising threat of Christian nationalism has drawn much-needed new attention in recent weeks, as well it should. Americans United has been in the thick of the effort to expose this existential threat to our democracy, helping journalists, elected officials, students and others understand the connection between religious extremism and attacks on our freedoms.
On Wednesday, I joined U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and AU’s new VP of Strategic Communications, Andrew L. Seidel, for a forum at Rutgers Law School sponsored by the American Constitution Society. The students were very engaged in a discussion about how church-state separation protects so many issues they care about—including LGBTQ equality, reproductive freedom, and racial justice.
We spent a lot of time talking about Christian nationalism, given Rep. Raskin’s membership on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Andrew’s role as an organizer and co-author of “Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection,” a recent report by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The report inspired last month’s Congressional briefing organized by the Congressional Freethought Caucus, of which Rep. Raskin is a co-founder. The Washington Post covered the briefing as the “biggest Congress-related event on the topic in years.”
The Los Angeles Times also recently reported on Christian nationalism, namely on its role in the latest wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the states. Recent examples of these cruel bills include the “Don’t Say Gay” bill signed this week by Florida’s governor and a series of measures in Texas to isolate and stigmatize transgender youth. I told the columnist that the extremism we’re seeing in those two states is the “canary in the coal mine”: “What we see is the White Christian nationalist movement coming for all marginalized communities who have made strides in recent years. No one is safe.”
Christian nationalism also factors into other recent news. In newly exposed text messages between former President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, she pressured Meadows to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election. With religious conviction, he repeatedly assured her the outcome they sought would come to pass: “This is a fight of good versus evil... Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.”
In The Atlantic, journalist David French zeroed in on that quote, writing that the pair, “didn’t just approach the election fight with religious zeal; they approached it with an absolute conviction that they enjoyed divine sanction”—echoing what we also know to be true about many of the insurrectionists.
It’s all evidence of the emboldened Christian nationalist movement that, with your support, Americans United continues to fight every day. Thankfully, the vast majority of Americans—including Christians and faith leaders—support church-state separation as the shield that protects religious freedom for all of us.
As a welcome palate cleanser, I invite you to listen to the words of the Bremerton clergy who are speaking out in support of students’ religious freedom and the Bremerton School District in AU’s upcoming Supreme Court case. Faith leaders like the Rev. Kathleen Kingslight, rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bremerton, who said “the separation of church and state is so important. It is the gift that our Constitution has given us and we don’t want it destroyed by cases like the one that we’re facing right now.”
To that, I think even the nonreligious among us can say a heartfelt, “Amen.”
With hope and gratitude,
Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO
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