Christian Nationalism is Not Christian - An Orthodox Priest's Viewpoint

 From Public Orthodoxy, a few days late: The Christian Nationalist Threat to Freedom of Conscience by Very Rev. Dr. John Jillions (Public Orthodoxy)

According to the US Constitution, the government’s duty is to guarantee us—and everyone else—1) the right to exercise our faith and conscience freely and 2) to not impose its own or anyone else’s faith and practice on us. The only way to protect our own rights is to protect the rights of all, regardless of how diametrically opposed or even abhorrent their way of life and choices may appear to us. The framers of the US Constitution recognized from the start that protecting freedom of conscience would be a continuing issue, even after the ratification of the Constitution in 1790. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1818 letter to a Jewish leader, “…[More] remains to be done, for although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice. Public opinion erects itself into an inquisition, and exercises its office with as much fanaticism as fans the flames of an Auto-da-fé.” 

As a priest of the Orthodox Church, I would generally be thrown into the basket of “religious conservatives.” But not all conservatives are the same, and I’m most worried about the powerful public opinion of Christian nationalists. Although surveys regularly show that the role of religion in America is shrinking, recent decades have shown an increase in the political power of religious conservatives and their success in shaping legislation, the courts, and the executive branch. And in this way, they are eroding the separation of church and state, the constitutional right to freedom of religion for all, and the prohibition against privileging any one religious view in the governance of the nation.  

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While a case can be made for defending many of these faith-based aspects of American civic life, today’s bald-faced political rhetoric about Christian nationalism would leave America’s Founders dismayed. They had seen European and early colonial theocracies leave a trail of intolerance, persecution, torture, and execution. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and others respected the rights of the various Christian denominations and other religious bodies but wanted nothing to do with privileging one group over another.  They were determined to put the infant United States of America on a new and original path that guaranteed both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.  They had little tolerance for religious intolerance.

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