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   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   Republicans Are Ready to Declare the United States a Christian Nation   
   Sixty-one percent of the party’s base now favors ending the separation of   
   church and state, as do a growing number of prominent Republicans.   
   John Nichols   
   Donald Trump poses with a Bible   
      
   US President Donald Trump poses with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church   
   across from the White House after police and National Guard troops used   
   tear gas to clear people protesting the death of George Floyd from the   
   area on June 1, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)   
      
   Newport, R.I.—Outside the Truro Synagogue in this historic New England   
   community stand markers that honor the legacy of one of the oldest Jewish   
   congregations in the United States. It was to the Jews of Newport that   
   George Washington, in his capacity as the nation’s first president,   
   confirmed the commitment of the new republic to respect all religions and   
   to maintain the separation of church and state that was outlined in the   
   First Amendment to its new Constitution.   
      
   “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud   
   themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal   
   policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of   
   conscience and immunities of citizenship,” wrote Washington in his 1790   
   letter to the Newport congregation. Washington relied on Old Testament   
   language in his message, assuring that “the children of the stock of   
   Abraham” would, like all believers in all faiths, “sit in safety under his   
   own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”   
      
   Determined to avoid the conflicts that plagued Europe, where monarchs   
   established and maintained favored state churches, Washington made it   
   clear that the United States would not be a land where one religion would   
   be favored while the followers of other faiths would be dismissed as   
   “dissenters.” “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it   
   were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the   
   exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of   
   the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no   
   assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should   
   demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their   
   effectual support,” wrote the president.   
      
   That is the American creed. It is this principle that has led presidents   
   to go out of their way to celebrate all religions, as Dwight Eisenhower   
   did when he dedicated the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., in 1957 and   
   declared that “under the American Constitution, under American tradition,   
   and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as   
   welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion.” And it is   
   this principle that led President Ronald Reagan to use a 1984 speech at   
   Temple Hillel in Valley Stream, New York, to affirm that   
      
       [w]e in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for   
   we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so   
   we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We   
   establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate   
   no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain,   
   separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice   
   a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to   
   speak of and act on their belief.   
      
   Eisenhower and Reagan were Republicans, but on this issue there was a   
   unity of understanding with Democrats such as John Kennedy and Jimmy   
   Carter.   
      
   Separation of church and state was sacrosanct. Both parties could agree on   
   that.   
      
      
      
   New polling suggests that the majority position of American Republicans is   
   that the United States should declare itself to be a Christian nation.   
      
   A national survey of 2,091 Americans, conducted in May by the University   
   of Maryland Critical Issues Poll group, asked, “Would you favor or oppose   
   the United States officially declaring the United States to be a Christian   
   Nation?” Sixty-one percent of the Republican respondents expressed support   
   for the declaration, while just 39 percent said they were opposed. In   
   other words, the party’s base voters are not divided on the question of   
   whether to toss aside the Constitution and declare the United States a   
   Christian nation. They overwhelmingly support the concept.   
      
   “Most Republicans in every age group favor designating the U.S. a   
   Christian nation, but even more so in older generations,” noted the   
   academics who conducted the survey, professors Stella Rouse and Shibley   
   Telhami, in a review of their research for Politico.   
      
   What this means is that, in a party where leaders have bent again and   
   again toward the most extremist positions of their electoral base, there   
   is a growing movement that is prepared to tear down the wall of separation   
   between church and state and declare the United States to be a nation in   
   which one religion—their own—reigns supreme.   
      
   While prominent conservatives such as Reagan and Barry Goldwater once   
   defended religious pluralism and distanced themselves from the far-right   
   fringe, former president Donald Trump has frequently amplified   
   antidemocratic and white supremacist memes that have long been associated   
   with Christian nationalism—going so far as to pose with a Bible in   
   Washington’s Lafayette Square after Black Lives Matter activists were   
   violently removed in June 2020. And US Representative Marjorie Taylor   
   Greene, a close Trump ally, has openly declared, “I’m a proud Christian   
   Nationalist.”   
      
      
   Christian nationalism has been mainstreamed to such an extent that it is   
   now the accepted faith of the party faithful. And Greene is not the only   
   elected Republican promoting the ideas associated with a movement that   
   Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) decries as “the American Taliban.”   
      
   Shortly after being nominated for a second term in a June primary,   
   Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert appeared at a church in   
   the state for a televised service, during which she announced, “I’m tired   
   of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the   
   Constitution.”   
      
   The representative dismissed President Thomas Jefferson’s explicit “wall   
   of separation” letter to Connecticut’s Danbury Baptists as “a stinking   
   letter” that “means nothing like what they say it does.”   
      
   “The church,” said Boebert, “is supposed to direct the government.”   
      
   Boebert’s wrong, as is Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug   
   Mastriano when he dismisses the separation of church and state as “a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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