Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America's supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.

But the Christian nationalist narrative has a fatal flaw: it is based on revisionist history that does not stand up under scrutiny. The bad news is that to true believers, it does not have to stand up to the facts of history to be a powerful and animating part of the once and future Christian nation. Indeed, through a growing cottage industry of Christian revisionist books and lectures now dominating the curricula of home schools and many private Christian academies, Christian nationalism becomes a central feature of the political identity of children growing up in the movement. The contest for control of the narrative of American history is well underway.

History is powerful.

That's why it is important for the rest of society not only to recognize the role of creeping Christian historical revisionism, but our need to craft a compelling and shared story of American history, particularly as it relates to the role of religion and society. We need it in order to know not how the religious Right is wrong, but to know where we ourselves stand in the light of history, in relation to each other, and how we can better envision a future together free of religious prejudice, and ultimately, religious warfare.

We've seen how religious beliefs (and other ideologies) inspire people to view others as subhuman, deviant, and deserving of whatever happens to them, including death. It is the stuff of persecution, pogroms, and warfare. The framers of the U.S. Constitution struggled with how to inoculate the new nation against these ills, and in many respects, the struggle continues today. The story goes that when Benjamin Franklin, a hometown delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, emerged from the proceedings, people asked him what happened. His famous answer was "You have a republic, if you can keep it." To "keep it" in our time, we must appreciate the threat and dynamics of Christian nationalism, and the underlying historical revisionism that supports it. Then we can develop ways to counter it.

The Separation of Church and State in Party Politics

Christian nationalism is permeating not just cultural but national political life. The Republican National Committee employed leading Christian revisionist author David Barton to barnstorm conservative churches in voter mobilization campaigns during the past few election cycles and to make appearances with GOP candidates. The talented Mr. Barton made hundreds of campaign appearances in 2004 alone. In his appearances, Barton glibly but effectively links the notion of one's personal religious identity with the destiny of the nation, which in turn is conveniently interpreted in terms of the fortunes of GOP candidates.

This should come as no surprise. Barton was named one of the nation's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals" by Time magazine in 2005 and for many years served as the vice-chair of the Texas GOP. In the 2006 mid-term elections, Barton again went out on the stump, notably with unsuccessful GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell of Ohio.

"His presentation has just enough ring of truth to make him credible to many people," wrote Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, (comprising mainstream Baptist groups, but not the Southern Baptist Convention) in a detailed critique of Barton in 2005. Among other things, Walker rebuts historical distortions and revisions regarding the phrase "separation of church and state."

"Barton asserts that church-state separation is not in the Constitution," writes Walker. He continues:

Of course, neither the words "church state separation" nor "wall of separation" appear in the Constitution. That does not mean Barton's position is correct. The Constitution does not specifically mention "separation of powers" or "the right to a fair trial" either, but who would deny the Constitutional status of those concepts? "Church-state separation" is a metaphor for what certainly was and is the spirit of the First Amendment's religion clauses - government is to be neutral toward religion to the end of ensuring religious liberty.

Barton mentions church-state separation as flowing from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association. He asserts that later in the letter Jefferson made it clear that he wanted only a "one directional wall" to prevent the government from harming religion, not to prevent religion from capturing the government.

A reading of the entire letter belies any suggestion that Thomas Jefferson thought it was "one directional." There is absolutely nothing in the letter even to hint that that is the case. Indeed, to the degree that Jefferson's notion was one-directional, most scholars would argue that he was more concerned with the church harming the state than vice versa. (Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, p. 1159.) Of course, Barton completely ignores Roger William's reference 150 years earlier to the "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of church and the wilderness of the world." (Perry Miller, Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition, p. 89.) It is clear that Williams, a Baptist pioneer, saw the advantage to the church of a clear boundary erected between itself and the state. More than that, he thought this wall was mandated by the very principles of Christianity. To that end, he wrote:

"All civil states with officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are... essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of Spiritual, or Christian, State and worship ... An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." (Stokes, supra, p. 199.)

Thus, Williams and Jefferson understood the benefits to both the church and state of keeping those two entities separate and distinct.

Yet Barton has suffered little of this kind formal critique, and little mainstream or alternative press coverage, his prominent role in the GOP notwithstanding. Also lacking is a sufficiently accessible and credible narrative of American history that answers Barton and his ilk, and seizes the high ground based on sound history and a popular appeal to values we share or can come to share in common.

We need a widely agreed upon narrative of how religious pluralism and respect for the right to religious difference emerged in American history. Instead, political consultants demand that mainstream politicians speak of their "faith journey," or excoriate "religious political extremists," or denounce unnamed "secularists" who are said to be driving mainstream and progressive "people of faith" from public life. Such soundbite-ism seems to be the only narrative framework from which most of our national leaders operate, even as they make the customary paeans to religious liberty and the genius of the Founding Fathers, and other such disengaged platitudes.

Christian revisionist-influenced political breezes are even blowing in the Democratic Party. Prominent campaign consultants are advising their clients not to use the phrase separation of church and state because it raises "red flags with people of faith" and because the phrase does not appear in the Constitution. This is an excellent example of how successful Christian revisionists have been in their efforts to delegitimize the term as part of their efforts to shape and control public discourse in their direction. This is also symptomatic of the way that our political leaders are so far away from being able to articulate a compelling narrative of the story of religious liberty in America, that some are conceding the ground and listening to campaign consultants who say that it is better to say nothing.

Continue reading:  History is Powerful: Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters