The Christian nationalist threat has been growing for a long time.

The founders of the United States understood the importance of preventing religious power from seizing control of the secular government. They had watched Puritan colonial governments engage in the cruel persecution of other Christian sects. The United States emerged from a time when Europe was engulfed in Christian-on-Christian violence. The USA was supposed to be different.

The Constitution, even before the Bill of Rights was passed, prohibited religious tests for political office. The very first words of the very first amendment to the Constitution banned any government support of religion and forbid the government from getting involved in fights between religious sects. The Constitution is an entirely secular document that never mentions any god, church, or prophet.

In 1796, the United States Senate ratified and President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which declared that, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” It can’t get any more clear than that.

Nonetheless, Christian nationalists have long been engaged in a campaign of historical revisionism. It began in earnest in the middle of the 20th century, with the insertion of references to the Christian god into governmental ceremonies and the national currency. Christian nationalists began to push their agenda into public schools, seeking to indoctrinate the captive audience of children in their extremist religious ideology.

Although the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, it is the goal of Christian nationalists to change that. Christian nationalism aims to replace American democracy with a harsh Christian theocracy under which only Christians have full legal rights.

In the 1980s, Christian nationalists formed political organizations dedicated to the task of placing Christian nationalist judges on the bench at all levels of courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 2022, Americans were shocked with a series of extreme rulings from the US Supreme Court. The majority of American voters oppose these rulings, but then, voters don’t select members of the Supreme Court. The United States Senate, which disproportionately grants power to sparsely-populated rural states where Christian nationalist ideology dominates, has the power to approve or deny presidential selections of Supreme Court justices, who are granted seats on the court for life.

First, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the Supreme Court ruled to take away women’s right to abortion, imposing Christian religious prohibitions on huge portions of the country. Then, in the Carson v. Makin case, the court ruled that state governments are required to provide funding to private religious schools that engage in the most extreme forms of radicalizing religious indoctrination and discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation, religious practice, and political ideology. Then, in the Kennedy v. Bremerton ruling, the court declared that governments must allow government employees to conduct prominent public religious rituals while on the job that make it appear as if the government endorses a particular religion, while coercing people under their authority to participate in the rituals.

At the same time that these court rulings were being released, congressional hearings into the attempted overthrow of the U.S. federal government by a Christian nationalist mob on January 6 2021 were taking place. These hearings revealed that violent Christian nationalist militias organized the attack in coordination with top Republican officials in Congress and the White House, and even with Donald Trump, then President of the United States.

In the summer of 2022, the stakes became clear: Christian nationalists are actively planning the destruction of American democracy and the establishment of a militant Christian theocracy in its place.

The Christian nationalist threat is no longer theoretical, something to worry about in the future. In the courts, in the halls of government, and on the streets, Christian nationalist attacks are underway right now.

Stop Christian Nationalism is being organized to confront this growing menace, in defense of democracy and cultural pluralism in the United States. We will be sharing news of the Christian nationalist movement, providing links to organizations dedicated to resistance against Christian nationalism, and guidance for the best practices for citizen activism to stop the Christian nationalist takeover of the USA.