SACRAMENTO — I grew up a few miles from where George Washington and his Continental Army crossed the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack on Hessian mercenary soldiers stationed in Trenton, N.J. Down on his luck, Washington launched this audacious military strike on Christmas, sending three groups (only one made it) across the ice-choked waters on small cargo boats during a ferocious storm.
In my teen years, a friend and I re-enacted the crossing in his canoe. The river is only 300-feet wide at the crossing point and we attempted it on a summer day, but we mangled the metal boat on some rocks. Anyway, Washington’s maneuvers — memorialized by a German-American artist in 1851 — were a turning point in the history of our country.
As America prepares for its Semiquincentennial — a tongue-twisting term referring to its 250th birthday — we’ll be hearing much about the revolution, our history and the nation’s future. The think tank I work for, the R Street Institute, is hosting myriad related events as an opportunity “to reinvigorate the American creed of self-government and principled pluralism in an era of political division and institutional distrust.”
American democracy is going through some trials, as we deal with a ruling party that’s committed to disruption, savors the obliteration of long-standing democratic norms and is committed to a leader who often acts like a wannabe despot. We’ve also seen the rise of discourse on the right and left that is openly dismissive of democracy and plays footsie with authoritarianism.
This isn’t entirely new, but it is a new twist in the modern era. One of the most noxious ideas, which is gaining traction among some MAGA devotees, is the concept of Christian nationalism. It’s the idea America was founded as a Christian nation and should operate if not as a theocracy, at least as a close cousin to one. Its defenders claim the term is just a “dog whistle” pushed by liberals to discredit Christianity in the public realm, but that’s mostly nonsense.
Christian nationalists, some of whom are influential with members of the Trump administration, don’t hide their views. One prominent pastor, Douglas Wilson, calls himself “a theocratic libertarian” in a New York Times interview. He says “if we outlaw something, I want a Bible verse, ideally the Ten Commandments.” But when it comes to, say, the “manufacturing and sale of widgets, or the thoughts a person thinks, or the beliefs that they have, I’m a libertarian.” That sounds contradictory, but I suppose they’ll outlaw things based on their read of the Bible, but will leave us alone economically.
Wilson, who admits he’s not against stoning adulterers (although he’s not necessarily in favor of it, either), is one of the least-outrageous of their lot, with some calling for repealing the right of women to vote. It’s a fringe movement, we’re assured, but it would be more reassuring if the secretary of defense didn’t repost sympathetic videos. A lot of this does sound like America’s Taliban. Christianity is an international religion, so I find “Christian nationalism” a heresy. But I’ll leave theology to others.
We’re seeing the re-emergence of an age-old debate. Most people see America as an experiment in classical liberalism, whereby the founders created a system of limited government, religious pluralism and liberty. Religious leaders are free to spread their message through the culture — but not to take control of the levers of power and base lawmaking on their sectarian Bible interpretations. The Constitution protects everyone’s natural rights, with its main purpose limiting the sphere of government — not implementing rules to assure proper religious observance.
There really is no other way to seriously read our Constitution, but many religious people still argue the founders were Christians who envisioned a Christian nation. Some of the founders were indeed devout Christians and these folks cherry-pick Christian quotations from them. The Heritage Foundation, which has recently taken a nationalist detour, argued in 2011 that the most-reasonable read is that the founders simply were “influenced by Christian ideas.”
Indeed. I’m a Christian who believes our faith centers on kindness, charity, redemption and free will rather than empowering tribunals to decide who gets publicly stoned or flogged for violating some biblical admonition. Consider the madness that will ensue if religious interpretation becomes the legal standard. Then again, the hilarious fights at city councils between Calvinists and Catholic integralists over the proper manifestation of God’s will might be worth the price of admission.
Christian nationalists often argue that America cannot survive as a multicultural, multi-religious nation. To which I’ll quote a 1788 rebuttal from George Washington: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” As we approach the 250th anniversary of our founding, Americans must not let Washington’s brilliant legacy and the nation’s ideals get hijacked by wackadoodles.
Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.