Photo illustration of a preacher holding a Bible
America is not a Christian nation. Yes, I know what they say. But we're not, and it's not because history and the Constitution say so. It's because the people who call themselves Christian, especially the supporters of Donald Trump, are often so ignorant of their religion. How can we be a Christian nation when Christians here don't know much about Christianity?
The question occurred to me while reading an essay by Hannibal Hamlin in the Pittsburgh Review of Books in which the Ohio State English professor said that though we're called the most religious nation on earth, "Americans are ill-informed about even their own religion."
According to a 2010 Gallup poll, only just over half of Americans knew that the Golden Rule was not one of the Ten Commandments, and just under half could name the four Gospels. A meager 16 percent knew that salvation through faith alone is a Protestant rather than Catholic doctrine. I once had to point out to a student, a Catholic school graduate, that I didn’t think belief in transubstantiation was optional for Catholics. A number of evangelical pastors have recently reported shrinking congregations, as their parishioners discovered, to their irritation, that Jesus asked them to turn the other cheek.
But ignorance of Christianity and the "Judeo-Christian tradition" are only one reason we are not a Christian nation. More important, I think, is the fact that so many Christians do not mind it when Donald Trump does something spectacularly obscene. I don't mean his rampant womanizing, bottomless greed and breathtaking corruption. Those are topics for later. What I mean is actions that are tantamount to slapping the Christian God in the face.
For instance, in a recent rally in Michigan, in support of the Republican Senate candidate there, and for reasons that are still unclear to everyone, the president addressed the youth in the audience in order to say: "I've done more for you than your parents, OK? Your parents are good. I'm not gonna knock your parents. But I have been better to you than your parents."
Perhaps, as Hamlin suggests in his essay, we are so used to the "casual blasphemy" of the Trump administration that few noticed the monstrous blasphemy of this statement. However, the Christians among us should have noticed. Indeed, it should have been like the shot heard around the world to those who demand that public schools erect monuments to the Ten Commandments. The fourth one – less important than keeping the Lord's day holy but more important than the prohibition of murder – is "honor your father and mother." And indeed, informed Christians know what Jesus himself said about the consequences of breaking it. "For God said [through Moses], ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of or insults or treats improperly father or mother is to be put to death.’"
To Christians, there should not be anything casual about Donald Trump's blasphemy, but here we are. No worries. We're not really a Christian nation. We just like to say we are.
Regular readers won't care for this argument. If anything, they tend to believe religion is something to avoid, especially Christianity, as that's the chosen faith of the Republican adversaries. So when it comes to countering the claim that America is a Christian nation, there is a preference for reasonable arguments grounded in history and Constitutional law, and what the founders actually said, rather than what Christian nationalists say they said.
I think that's fine and more power to them. However, I also think secularists should be aware that by overlooking the tenets of their religion, they end up giving these Christians too much credit. They don't really want to live by their own system of morality. To be sure, they want the rest of us to! They love the Ten Commandments, and believe all public spaces should display them, but do not love the Sermon on the Mount with equal passion. The teachings of Jesus Christ demand to much from them. Their true religion is their sincere belief in rules for thee, not for me. Revealing that truth begins with refusing to take them at their word.
So yes, they always declare that we are a Christian nation, but they also always ignore the fact that the man most of them chose to be its leader is in the habit of insulting and mocking God, or worst of all, in the habit of claiming the power and the glory that are God's alone.
How can we be a Christian nation when most of the Christians here don't mind it when the president uses the Holy Bible as a cheap, convenient, political prop; when he puts his signature on it, as if the word of God were his personal property; when he sells signed copies of "Trump Bibles," as if profiting from the word of God were his right; and when he sells them in "presidential, first lady and vice-presidential editions," as if the word of God can be reduced to such mundane human conditions? Trump often forces Christian followers to choose between him or God, and most choose him every time. A vast majority of Christian nationalists and evangelical Protestants support him, according to PRRI, despite his habitual violation of the first and most important of commandments: "Worship no god but me."
That we are not a Christian nation is also illustrated persuasively by the fact that Donald Trump claimed to be the equivalent of Jesus, or perhaps the second coming of Jesus (it's hard to say), and suffered none of the consequences that you would expect in a Christian nation. It began in May of last year when the new pope was being decided. The president posted an AI-generated image of himself as the next pontiff. That sparked a reaction from his Catholic base, but instead of retreating fully, Trump doubled down, posting another AI-generated image, this one of him dressed as Jesus performing the miraculous healing of a sick man.
There was backpedaling. The images were taken down. The White House offered reams of rationalization. Trumps said he thought it was a picture of himself as a doctor, not Jesus, but everyone knows the truth, and every Christian damn well knows it too. They also know you cannot apologize for such obscenity. It's done. Very conservative Protestants believe there is no possibility of forgiveness for it. Yet Trump's Christian followers appear to have chosen to doubt their lying eyes, which might have come as a shock even to a man as cynical and nihilistic as the president. As Hannibal Hamlin said in a sentence that leaped at me: "Could even Trump have imagined the Jesus picture wouldn’t generate a tsunami of backlash?"
The thing about being a Christian, when you're serious about it, is that it demands a lot from you. It's hard walking the straight and narrow when beset on all sides by evil, especially evil that merely looks like stuff that everyone else is doing. While it's sometimes difficult to know whether you're doing Christianity right, there's no mistaking when it costs you. There is no such thing as a righteous man if his righteousness comes easy and with little consequence.
And yet here we are, with a president who claims to be Christian, and who claims to speak for a Christian nation, who has never felt the consequences of either succeeding to live up to the exacting standards of the faith or failing to live up to them, even when those failures have been as spectacular as his. Donald Trump's sales pitch has always been getting what you want without any of the sacrifice that goes into getting it. Though that easily translated to a Christian nationalist audience, even he could not have predicted how strong and enduring the demand has been for having the glory of the struggle without paying any price for it.
If you want to make a secular argument against the idea that America is a Christian nation, that's fine. Go for it. But don't give proponents of that idea too much credit. They want the status of being called Christian, but don't want the hardship of living their faith. They want you to obey by their rules, but be free to break them if they wish. Trump is the purest expression of their true religion. America is not a Christian nation. His election is proof.