Ceremonial Deism Is Christian Nationalism
In 2021, Christian nationalists attempted the overthrow of American democracy. In 2022, Christian nationalists are threatening civil war.
To understand how America got to this terrible place, we need to zoom out and take the long view of Christian nationalism, and how Christian nationalist ideology has been surreptitiously implanted in the most powerful offices of the US federal government.
In the summer of 2022, it became painfully obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court has been taken over by Christian nationalist zealots. The swerve to into extremist Christian nationalism by the Supreme Court may seem sudden, but in fact it’s the culmination of a decades long plan, organized by radical Christian churches in collaboration with organizations such as the Federalist Society, to place opponents of secular democracy into high positions throughout the Judicial Branch of the US federal government. From these positions, Christian nationalist judges have been making small strategic rulings for years. Each one of these legal decisions has seemed minor on its own, but each was designed to create a crack in the wall of separation between church and state. When each one of these cracks was joined with the other cracks, it would undermine the entire structure of secular democracy, making it vulnerable to an eventual frontal attack.
This year, the frontal attack by Christian nationalists against secular democracy began, launched by the Christian nationalist majority on the US Supreme Court with its decisions of Kennedy v. Bremerton, Carson v. Makin, Shuttleff v. City of Boston, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Let’s rewind to the moment where it all began, nearly 40 years ago with the dissent of Justice William Brennan in the case Lynch v. Donnelly. The majority decision of the right-wing Supreme Court in this case concluded that a display of the infant divinity Jesus Christ along with his divine virgin mother, a magical supernatural star, and three magicians was somehow “secular”, and that displays of this thoroughly Christian religious message actually had nothing at all to do with an effort to promote Christianity.
The majority decision in Lynch v. Donnelly was a display of profound institutionalized Christian privilege and Christian normativity, but even the dissent in the case accepted the frame of Christianity as the cultural default in the United States. Brennan wrote that, “practices as the designation of ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow's apt phrase, as a form a ‘ceremonial deism,’ protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”
What is Ceremonial Deism?
The Ceremonial Deism is a religion that looks exactly like Christianity, uses Christian language to communicate Christian beliefs during Christian rituals but is, somehow, nonetheless not Christian.
There are no priests ordained in the practice of Ceremonial Deism. There are no seminaries that teach Ceremonial Deism. Search as hard as you like, but you won’t find any Church of Ceremonial Deism anywhere in the United States.
So, where is Ceremonial Deism practiced? According to the people who claim it’s a real religion, Ceremonial Deism is practiced in government meetings, in government-funded public schools, and nowhere else.
What does Ceremonial Deism look like? Here’s the kicker: Ceremonial Deism looks exactly like Christianity, every time it shows up. Ceremonial Deism involves prayers given in the Christian form. Ceremonial Deism demands worship of a monotheistic “god”, a word and concept that is historically centered in Christianity, not in other religions. Ceremonial Deism cites Christian holy texts.
Ceremonial Deism is an imaginary government religion made up by the Supreme Court in order to justify the promotion of Christian nationalism through the power of government. Judges invented the concept of Ceremonial Deism in order to justify the government establishment of religion in open defiance of the First Amendment, which clearly states that government establishment of religion is not allowed.
The judges who promote the idea of Ceremonial Deism are almost always Christian.
Consider the makeup of the Supreme Court that ruled in the Lynch v. Donnelly case that introduced the concept of Ceremonial Deism into legal precedence. Every single member of that Supreme Court was Christian.
The idea of Ceremonial Deism, as Justice Brennan wrote, is that when Christian language, images, and rituals of worship are repeated often enough, they somehow magically cease to be Christian because “they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”
It’s an odd argument that Justice Brennan makes, because no one supposes that when preachers repeat the same old rituals and language Sunday after Sunday, the content somehow loses its religious content through the repetition. Showing the same religious imagery over and over again doesn’t make it any less religious. Why would anyone suppose that the oppose would be true in the context of government establishment of religion?
According to the idea of Ceremonial Deism, when government meetings are opened with prayers to god using Christian ritual forms and language, nobody believes that it has anything to do with god. This pretense asks us to believe that when “In God We Trust” is printed on American money, when crucifixes are prominently displayed on government property, when children are forced to pledge allegiance to god every day, and when witnesses in court are forced to swear oaths on Christian bibles, it all has absolutely nothing at all to do with Christianity.
Ben Carson and the Lie of Ceremonial Deism
The claims that Ceremonial Deism has nothing to do with Christianity are obviously absurd. Not only is the content of Ceremonial Deism exclusively Christian, but the organizations that promote the maintenance of Ceremonial Deism are exclusively Christian. More than that, the people who insist that Ceremonial Deism be practiced in government meetings are followers of extremist Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalists are quite open with what Ceremonial Deism is really all about. Ceremonial Deism is nothing more than a foot in the door that introduces Christian worship into the daily routines of government in the United States. As is the case with every foot in the door, the purpose of Ceremonial Deism is to create a doorstop that enables a complete entry of Christianity.
Christian nationalist Ben Carson made this case quite plain in his speech at the CPAC convention last week. Carson said,
“This nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values and principles that show us how we’re supposed to think… We need to teach morals and values once again, and I think we made a big mistake in the 60s when we said god cannot be in our schools. You know, if, think about this: It’s in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. It talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, AKA god. Okay, it’s in our pledge that says we are one nation under god. Many courtrooms, on the wall, it says ‘in god we trust’. Every coin in our pocket, every bill in our wallet, it says, ‘in god we trust’, and yet you say you can’t talk about that in your schools.”
Ben Carson says out loud what Christian nationalist Supreme Court justices know but pretend not to know: The purpose of Ceremonial Deism is to create the appearance that government in the United States was created by Christians, and exists for Christians. Once the religious practice of Ceremonial Deism is in place, it becomes easy to point to its explicitly Christian content as evidence that the United States is a Christian nation, and that using the government to promote Christianity is not a problem.
Ben Carson admits it himself: Ceremonial Deism is a lie. Of course Ceremonial Deism is not a non-religious tradition. Ceremonial Deism is Christian worship practiced in government, with the intention of promoting the belief in and practice of Christianity.
Ceremonial Deism is Christian nationalism.
The tactic of Ceremonial Deism is to create multiple small cracks in the wall of separation between church and state. Each crack, the Ceremonial Deists promise, is insignificant, just a little Christian ritual established in government to make Christians feel comfortable. Surely, the Ceremonial Deists, say, nobody could object to that.
Of course, plenty of people do object to the obvious Christian establishment of religion in government in the form of Ceremonial Deist practices. These objections are dismissed, however, as voices from an unreasonable fringe that doesn’t understand “our traditions”. “Our traditions,” of course, are Christian traditions.
One after another after another, Christian Ceremonial Deist rituals are pounded into the wall of separation between church and state. Each time, the cracks are made a bit bigger, as the presence of each Ceremonial Deist bit of Christian worship is used as evidence that Christian worship in government is normal. The Pledge of Allegiance leads to “In God We Trust” on the nation’s money, which leads to Christian prayers to open the US Congress every day, which leads to prayers led by school employees at school events across the country, which leads to crucifixes and nativity scenes of the Baby Jesus on government ground, which leads to Christian flags flown over government buildings, which leads to mandatory government funding of private Christian schools, the criminalization of abortion, non-Christian religious expression being banned at public schools, a prohibition of Muslims from entering the United States, and Donald Trump clearing a crowd of protesters using tear gas so that he can march across Lafayette Park holding a copy of the Christian bible to declare himself anointed by the Christian god to lead America. It leads to communities closing down public libraries that refuse to censor books that disagree with Christian nationalism. It leads to political candidates for federal office declaring that the United States was made by Christians for Christians, and if people don’t like it, they can get out.
Ceremonial Deism creates the sense of Christian privilege that leads American Christians to feel entitled to special treatment. Ceremonial Deism leads to the claim that freedom of religion means the freedom of Christians to use the power of government to force everybody else to follow Christian laws and religious practices. Ceremonial Deism sets the stage for an unscrupulous politician to claim that he is above the law because he reigns in the name of Jesus.
Ceremonial Deism is a wedge that’s used to create cracks of small exceptions to the First Amendment, cracks that are widened over and over again as more and more small exceptions accumulate, hammered deep into the structure of government until they create the unavoidable appearance that Christianity is an inherent and fundamental part of American identity and American government.
The purpose of Ceremonial Deism is to undermine the First Amendment to the Constitution, and by doing so, to undermine the entire Constitution.
Ceremonial Deism is the opposite of culturally neutral, innocuous bit of tradition.
Ceremonial Deism is an ideologically extreme weapon that’s designed to penetrate the constitutional armor protecting American democracy.
Ceremonial Deism is the religious ideology that has brought the United States to the brink of a new civil war, with religious zealots in control of the Supreme Court cancelling basic liberties, Christian nationalists violently attacking the FBI, and a Christian nationalist ex-President stealing secrets about America’s nuclear weapons while Christian nationalists carry swastikas through America’s streets, vowing to overthrow the government, and doing it all in the name of One Nation Under God.
Ceremonial Deism is Christian nationalism.