Q&A: Micah Beckwith on Christian nationalism, America's founding and who gets to govern – IndyStar

Editor’s note: This article is part of IndyStar’s project on Christian nationalism, funded by The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that trains and supports journalists. 
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has raised the profile of Christian nationalism in Indiana. He embraces the political label partly to stick it to his critics who call him that.
But, Beckwith admittedly embraces ideas that academics say fall under the umbrella of the ideology’s core tenets — mainly that the U.S. is a distinctly Christian nation and should be governed from a biblical worldview. That, he says, is what the founding fathers intended.
IndyStar sat down with Beckwith to discuss Christian nationalism, the United States’ roots, Charlie Kirk’s death and what the fusion of Christianity and civic life could practically look like in Indiana.
The following interview has been edited for length, brevity and clarity.
Q: You’ve said in the past, “I love God and I love my nation, so I’m a Christian nationalist.” But what do you think Christian nationalism is, practically speaking? 
A: We can’t have a nation without a God, because that God will say, “This is the moral law of the land.” Why is it wrong to murder? Somebody said so. Well, who’s the somebody?
I believe what the founders believe. Our founders believed that there is a God of nature, essentially. The Judeo-Christian God, they mention four times in the Declaration of Independence, and they say, he’s the one who gives the truth. (NOTE: The Declaration makes these four references to God or divination: “Nature’s God,” unalienable rights endowed by a “Creator,” appealing to the “the Supreme Judge of the world,” and “the protection of divine Providence”.)
The government’s job is to secure the truth. God gives us our liberties. It’s the government’s job to secure those liberties. So, making a big distinction, government is not God. The only reason government exists is to secure what God says, and that’s what the founders said. The beauty is, they got it right because they went to the right God. … And it has worked really well.
What we’re seeing now in today’s culture is people say, “Well, we want all the blessings of God, but we don’t want God.” And we can’t have that. You’d be like trying to take a house, and moving it off its foundations. The house would totally fall apart.
People will say, “Well, the founders didn’t want religion in government.” Well, really? Because the first 13 state constitutions all made you make your public declaration of faith in Christianity if you wanted to run for office. (NOTE: According to the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin, most but not all coloniesoriginally had a religious test requirement for holding public office in their constitutions.) You look at that and say, “Okay, we are a Christian nation. Our foundations are that 100%, and you can’t have liberty without these Christian foundations.”
So when people come at me and say, well, “That’s Christian nationalism,” they’ll say, “You want to shove Christianity down people’s throats.” It’s like, no, I don’t. I honestly don’t have any care as a politician how you worship. … People will throw out the Christian nationalism term, and they’ll do it as a way to kind of threaten me so I back down, and I just kind of say, “Yeah, I love Christ and I love my nation, so sue me.” I more or less just throw it right back at them. But they typically don’t want to hear the breakdown of it.
Q: Do you find the term to be disparaging?
A: No, not to me, because I know they’re ignorant usually when they’re throwing that term out. If it’s an ignorant person calling you a name, I don’t get offended by it, because I just know they just don’t know what they’re talking about. I actually think it’s a term that I hold dear to just because I love Christ and I love my nation. And I think those are two really important things to be good citizens. I think if we want to maintain our success and continue to be a land of the free, then we have to be rooted in those principles.  
Q: Which Christian orthodoxy are we talking about? There are certain subsets of Christians who believe gay people can get married, and there are certain that don’t. So, which should be the law of the land?  
A: The founders were very clear that they didn’t want a national church, not because they were wrestling between Christianity and Islam or Christianity and Hinduism. It was that they didn’t want the Methodists telling the Baptists that the Anglicans were all bad. (NOTE: Several historians told IndyStar the founding fathers understood the dangers of having a government-established national church. James Madison even argued that having a large republic and multiplicity of religious sects helped guarantee religious freedom.) Maryland was Catholic. Pennsylvania was Quaker. But it was all centered around the Word of God. So ultimately, yes, you’re going to have multiple interpretations of scripture.
Let’s just start there. Again, the other stuff, gay marriage, parental rights, abortion ― if I can just get somebody to come to the basic foundations of principles that there is a God, it is the Christian God in America, we are rooted in His word. That’s a great place to start. I’m not worried about all the other things. I’m saying the foundations are what we need to get back to, and then let’s have those discussions on interpretations of scripture.
Q: If we’re deciding that we are a Christian nation and it’s the Christian God that we’re following, how is that not a theocracy?  
A: Well, theocracy says that God says, therefore, I do. A Christian nation is not “God says.” It’s there are principles of that God that we build upon. I’ll use my interpretation of scripture here. God says that marriage is between one man and one woman. I believe that. Do I think that that means anyone who wants to go out and live in a homosexual relationship should be banished from society? No, not at all. I’ve actually called for civil unions many years before even gay marriage was a thing, only because I believe that God gives you the freedom to make your choices and walk away from what he says is true.
I think the government also needs to have some aspect of that willingness to say, “Hey, we’re going to let you make your own choices. Now, we’ve got to warn you, it may not be the right choices, and we also have to put boundaries in place so it doesn’t destroy the society.”… That’s very different than saying, “Hey, now we’re going to normalize it.” I’ve always been against gay marriage in the sense that marriage is sacred, and God says what marriage is.
Q: Some people would argue, whether they’re pastors, theologians, or academics, that there’s a wall between church and state, and that there is no overarching moral truth, because it depends on an individual’s interpretation of scripture.
A: The separation of church and the state, you have to understand, that concept was derived from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1802. … What he was saying was, the state’s not allowed to come in and tell the church what to do. But the church needs to be very close to the state in order to be the conscience of the state. Yes, the church doesn’t become the state, but the church needs to be influencing. … To pull a private letter from Jefferson and then try to apply it as some sort of constitutional litmus test is really, really poor judgment in my opinion.
Q: In the Catholic Church women can’t lead, so whose version of Christianity dictates the biblical worldview for governance? Should women not be able to hold office? Should atheists not hold office?
A: Go back to the founders, they actually wrestled with the same thing. … There are some churches that believe women can’t be pastors. Okay, fine. You guys can deal with that over there. But guess what? There’s churches like mine where we have women pastors. Our mom was a pastor. But we all go back to the central authority of scripture, and that there is a God. It’s almost kind of like the hills to die on are important. The hills not to die on aren’t necessarily as important.
The danger is when we start to say, no, the Bible, the Apostles’ Creed, God, none of that exists, and so get rid of that, and now it opens up Pandora’s box to who gets to decide? And you’re asking the right question. That’s what I’m demanding an answer from Indiana.
Q: There’s a tug of war, a power struggle over who gets to make the decisions, whose vision prevails. Can you be Christian and liberal? Can you be Muslim and also govern, or do you not get to govern by your worldview?
A: So, would it be okay if Minneapolis institutes Sharia Law over the constitutional law?
Q: That is enforcing one sect of Muslim views. How is that distinct from enforcing the Christian worldview?
A: Because we’re rooted in a long-standing historical tradition of Christian values. The reason that you can say in good faith that the Muslims do not have the right to institute their idea of what law is, is because America is not rooted in the Quran.
So if you’re a Muslim and you want to take part in this governance, okay, fine, but you check your Muslim values at the door and you submit to the values of the longstanding historical tradition of the United States, which are the Constitutional values which are rooted in Judeo Christian ethic. (NOTE: Many of the nation’s founding fathers were Protestant and held Judeo-Christian beliefs and values. However, Constitutional values were inspired by several sources — Christianity being one of them, said John Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution. Philosophers of the Enlightenment Era, Greeks, and Romans were just as important as were the experiences of the Americans during the colonial and Revolutionary period.)
That’s why we can say to my friend, Sen. Fady Qaddoura, “Hey, I love you. You have a right to worship, but you don’t have a right to bring your values and change the foundations of what we have established here in the United States.”
Q: We made many amendments to the Constitution over the years, and our nation has changed, it’s become more pluralistic. Why don’t the guiding principles change as well?  
A: Because you don’t change the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is the vision statement of America. The Constitution is the mission statement. Any business will tell you the vision statement stays the same. There’s a vision for why we exist. The moment that vision statement changes, the business ceases to be, and it’s a new business that’s created. The mission statement is the, how do we accomplish the vision?
Q: The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of religion, but also allows for the free exercise thereof. So is that the guardrail for intertwining religion and governance, whether it’s wanting to institute Sharia law or some version of Christianity?
A: Well, how do we have etchings of Moses over the Supreme Court? Why did George Washington put his hand on the Bible to swear an oath? Why wasn’t it the Quran? I think yes, the First Amendment is very clear, and Washington D.C., is not going to establish a national religion, but understand, that was because they believed the states were going to make sure that the moral heartbeat of the people that were being sent to Washington were going to be in right standing with the Christian faith. Again, that’s why I go back to the 13 state constitutions. … Really, the First Amendment was not getting involved with the denominational struggles. (NOTE: The nation’s framers believed in virtue and that religion was an important source of morality in government. Their understanding of virtue, believed to be an absolute necessity for a successful republic, came from multiple sources, including Christianity as well as Greek and Roman philosophies, Kaminski said. As for the states, each had internal debates about the nature of religious involvement in government.)
Q: Charlie Kirk’s assassination has spurred a lot of the good versus evil rhetoric. How do you think that will play out? What does that even mean?  
A: The Bible tells us in Ephesians that we battle not against flesh and blood. So we are in a battle of good vs evil, but it’s not you and me. It’s not Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk. I don’t look at Tyler Robinson as the enemy. I think the lies that he gave himself over to are the enemy. I think it’s coming from demonic forces. I think it’s coming from powers in the dark realm that are very much at work, trying to influence it. …
Good will overcome evil, absolutely, but if we overcome it with love, we overcome it with truth and boldness and courage. What Charlie did was he didn’t battle with bullets and bombs, he battled with the words coming out of his mouth, which are more powerful than any bullet. And so that’s why people hated him so much, because they hated what he was saying. But he was saying it out of a place of love, saying, “No, I love you enough to tell you the truth.”
The truth is, there is a God. The truth is, he has a purpose. There is right and wrong. There’s an absolute right and wrong. And you will actually be way better off if you follow what God says. And if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t tell you.
Q: Did his death bring more people into your line of thinking on this?  
A: Oh, 100%. Yeah. I think before Charlie’s murder, people would look at me and be like, “Man, this guy’s always talking about Jesus and faith and government, and he’s super weird.” And now everyone’s like, “Tell me more. We want to know more. Who is this God? Who is this Jesus? And how does it impact America?” I’ve gotten more comments and messages about like, “Okay, I’m ready to listen. Tell me what you know, because it seems like you and Charlie were saying kind of the same things.”
Q: What do you think you can do in the lieutenant governor’s office to further this vision that we were talking about?  
A: Well, I think one is educating people, letting them know, okay, Christian nationalism is not maybe what you think it is. There’s a lot of rhetoric and scare tactics around Christian nationalism. Most of the people, I think, if you just throw that phrase out, they’re going to think theocracy. … And so the best thing I can do as a lieutenant governor is to just continue to educate people, to passionately pursue them, to go where they are.
That’s why I do my town halls. That’s why I do the mobile offices. The pastor roundtables are to go and say, “Hey, what are you dealing with, and how can we help?” And I’m going to ultimately look for those ways to get them back to, “Hey, this is the truth. God’s word is true.”
Contact IndyStar Statehouse reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X@kayla_dwyer17.
Contact IndyStar investigative reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @allyburris and on Bluesky at‪@allymburris.bsky.social‬.

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