Berkeley historian Ronit Stahl, in a 2022 interview, said, “Many of the Founders — though I wouldn’t say all — were very concerned about religion as the guiding force for government. That wasn’t a critique of religion in people’s personal lives, but there was a wariness about what it meant … for government and religion to be fully interlaced.”
Those concerns have historical roots.
As early as 1814, Thomas Jefferson warned in a letter to the New York writer and inventor Horatio G. Spafford that, “in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the Despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
More recently, in a 2004 column, J. Brent Walker, then-executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, reiterated the Committee’s long-held view “that, when church and state get mixed up together, one of two things always happens — and both are bad.”
Yet, as Ryan Burge, a political science professor and then-Baptist pastor, wrote in a 2021 guest essay for The New York Times, “It used to be that when many people thought about evangelicalism, they conjured up an image of a fiery preacher imploring them to accept Jesus. Now the data indicate that more and more Americans are conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power.”
Nevertheless, as Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation magazine in February 2024, “One of the signature features of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is that he is now in open alliance with Christian nationalists — a faction markedly more radical and opposed to democracy than the mainstream evangelicals he courted in previous elections.”
In 2021, Georgetown University Professor Paul D. Miller wrote in “Christianity Today” that, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation.’“
A 2023 Public Religion Research Institute/Brookings Institution national survey found that “nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants qualify as either Christian nationalism adherents (29%) or sympathizers (35%), and more than half of Republicans are classified as adherents (21%) or sympathizers (33%).”
But as the ACLU of North Dakota pointed out last year, “there are no mentions of Christianity in the Constitution, and religion is mentioned only three times: to prohibit attempts to establish a national religion, to prohibit infringing upon the free exercise of religion, and to prohibit religious tests in order to hold public office.”
In 1994, Republican U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater warned, “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
Many advocate that being a good citizen is tied to being a certain kind of Christian who is willing to break the rules for the greater good. With the GOP now having been transformed from a political party into a religious sect that stands in opposition to the constitutional democracy our Founders imagined, Jefferson’s admonition that the “priest has been hostile to liberty” and “is always in alliance with the Despot” becomes more relevant.
Chuck Ardo is a retired political consultant in Lancaster, Ohio. He previously served as press secretary to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
Have something to say about this topic?
* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.
* Email general questions about our editorial board or comments or corrections on this opinion column to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, (updated 8/1/2024) and acknowledgement of our Privacy Policy, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 10/1/2025).
© 2025 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us).
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.
Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.
YouTube's privacy policy is available here and YouTube's terms of service is available here.
Ad Choices
