Jefferson’s Warning, Christian Nationalism, and the Battle for America’s Soul
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800.
Life has an odd yet beautiful way of unfolding its plans through us, if we are willing to listen.
I was raised in right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. I studied under pastors and teachers who sincerely believed they possessed absolute truth. Ironically, as a child I hated history. I dreaded long lectures about the Reformation, my religion and my nation, and the only periods that ever really captured my imagination as a child were World War II and the Vietnam War. My grandfather, a Vietnam veteran, would share the stories he brought home with him. He spoke of the horrors he witnessed, the men he served alongside, the cost of blind obedience to authority and many other tales of America’s history, leaving an impression that stayed with me long before I understood the weight of history itself.
Somewhere along the way, life brought me to the very place I once resisted.
History became my life’s work. Not the polished version that fits neatly into textbooks, but the forgotten history. The uncomfortable history. The history buried beneath institutions, politics, and propaganda.
I could not be more grateful to stand where I stand today. As Joan of Arc said, “I am not afraid… I was born to do this.”
The more I studied, the more I realized something deeply unsettling: The greatest atrocities in history are rarely committed by people who believe they are evil. They are committed by people convinced they are righteous.
I have spent years studying the transformation of Christianity from the fourth through sixth centuries and beyond. I have watched the progression of an “oppressed movement” become an institution capable of oppression itself. I have read of libraries burned, dissenters silenced, temples destroyed, cultures erased, and human beings stripped of their dignity—all while convinced they were carrying out the will of God.
Jesus, in the canonical Gospels, taught people to love their neighbor. Yet for centuries his name has also been invoked to justify persecuting that very neighbor. That contradiction should disturb every honest believer. The history of Christianity is far more complicated than most people realize. Before there was one unified orthodox tradition, there were dozens of Christian movements scattered throughout the Roman Empire. They disagreed over theology, scripture, authority, and even who was permitted to lead. Many of those earliest communities included women as patrons, teachers, prophets, missionaries, deacons, and leaders.
The New Testament itself names Phoebe as a diakonos of the church, Junia as “outstanding among the apostles,” and Priscilla as a teacher alongside her husband. Quebec within and outside the New Testament writings you have Mary Magdalene, who became known as the Apostle of the Apostles and one whom Jesus loved above all the rest.
As Christianity became increasingly institutionalized during the second through fourth centuries, authority centralized. Bishops became gatekeepers of doctrine. Councils determined orthodoxy. Movements that embraced broader participation by women, mystics, and alternative theological traditions were increasingly marginalized or condemned as heretical. This transformation was not only theological. It was political and it was institutional. It was about who possessed the authority to speak for “God.”
By the medieval period, many influential theologians reflected the patriarchal assumptions of their cultures and of their early Church fathers. Women were frequently portrayed as more susceptible to deception, temptation, or disorder. Those assumptions became woven into church law, practice, and centuries of religious tradition. Even during the Protestant Reformation, many of these attitudes remained.
Martin Luther celebrated marriage and motherhood as women’s primary vocation, yet also wrote that if women became exhausted or even died in childbirth, “let them die in childbirth; that is why they are there.” Statements like these remind us that institutions often preserve the assumptions of their age long after those assumptions should have been questioned.
Recognizing this history does not necessarily require one abandoning Christianity. It requires recognizing that institutions are shaped by culture, politics, and power as much as they are by faith. The history of the Church is not merely a story of belief. It is also a story of authority, of empire rebranding and merging itself into a sect of Christianity and of who was permitted to define truth.
And today… I fear we are watching history repeat.
Christian nationalism is steadily attempting to rewrite the American story. “We are a Christian nation.” The phrase is repeated so often that many assume it has always been true. But history tells a different story. The Constitution never declares Christianity to be America’s national religion. It never mentions Jesus or Christianity.
The First Amendment begins by prohibiting Congress from establishing any religion.
Later, Thomas Jefferson described this principle as creating a “wall of separation between Church and State.” In his letter to the Danbury Baptists. Not because he despised religion. But because he understood history. He understood what happens when governments claim divine authority. Government becomes insulated from criticism because to question political power becomes equivalent to questioning God. Religion, in turn, ceases to be conscience. It becomes a weapon.
Kings have done it, empires have done it, Modern day pastors and government officials are doing it.
Ancient Mesopotamian rulers wrapped themselves in divine legitimacy long before Israel emerged. Pharaohs, roman emperors, and medieval monarchs have as well. History has watched this pattern unfold for thousands of years. And now we are watching voices on national television coming from within the White House Administration argue that separation of church and state was never intended to exist, that it has merely been used to “attack people of faith.”
But that principle was never invented by modern secularists. It comes directly from one of America’s Founding Fathers explaining the purpose of the First Amendment. The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. “In God We Trust” became the official national motto in 1956 and appeared on paper currency shortly thereafter during the Cold War. Those phrases are undeniably part of American history, but they are not part of America’s founding.
The First Amendment was never designed to protect Christianity from everyone else.
It was written to protect everyone from a government powerful enough to choose one faith over another. Freedom of religion means nothing if it only protects the majority. The moment one religion begins writing laws because it believes its theology should govern everyone else… Religious liberty quietly becomes religious privilege.
And history has shown us exactly where that road can lead. The Founders understood this, Jefferson understood this. Perhaps the real question is whether we still do.
History is not dangerous because it tells us where we have been.
History is dangerous because it refuses to let us pretend we have never been there before. The greatest threat to liberty has never announced itself as tyranny. It has almost always arrived calling itself righteousness.
Defend your right to believe whatever your conscience compels.
But never surrender the freedom of another human being in the name of your own. Because the moment the government decides whose “God” belongs in the Constitution… It has already decided whose freedom does not.
— Finn
