Christian Nationalism has long been a problem in the United States, but it’s risen to the top of Americans’ political awareness with the rise and disastrous fall of Donald Trump. Trump made Christian Nationalism the core of his political strategy beginning in 2016. He gained a devoted following among Republicans by promising to use the power of the federal government to give special exclusive powers and privileges to Christians.

Over the summer of 2022, however, it became evident that Donald Trump may not be able to run for President again in 2024. Trump is in danger of going to prison because of business fraud, because of his illegal espionage against the United States, and because of his orchestration and support for the attempted coup d’etat at the end of his presidency in January 2021.

So, Christian Nationalists are looking for a new presidential candidate, in case Trump is finally held accountable for his crimes. The front runner to become the Christian Nationalist presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 2024 is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Like Trump, DeSantis has made promoting Christian Nationalism the foundation of his political agenda.

DeSantis has used his power as Governor to replace academically rigorous lessons on American history and civics with Christian Nationalist propaganda designed by radicals at Hillsdale College, a Christian Nationalist institution so extreme that it has failed to obtain national accreditation.

Governor DeSantis has been open about the purpose of the Hillsdale propaganda: The propaganda is there to encourage children in Florida public schools to be Christian, and it’s there to teach public school children that Christianity is more important than democracy.  At the National Conservatism conference in Miami, Florida this week, DeSantis said as much. He told the crowd:

Don’t just allow this language to glide easily over your mind. Sometimes, we get so used to hearing the language of Christianity that we stop processing what it’s actually saying. Take a minute to stop and think about what these words from Ron DeSantis are communicating.

In particular, I’d like you to consider what it means for Ron DeSantis to say that Americans’ legal rights come from the Christian god, not from the government.

If Americans’ legal rights come from the government, then we can be confident that our system of freedoms is accountable to the people of the United States. Our government is a democracy, after all. This is a vision of liberty that’s established by the people, for the people. It means that we get to have the freedoms that we believe are important. If our legal rights come from government, we know that there has been and will be a specific democratic process by which our rights have been created and maintained, and can be expanded when the need arises.

If, on the other hand, Ron DeSantis is right, and Americans’ legal rights come from the Christian god, then who has the power to determine just what those rights are? Immediately, if our rights are decided by the Christian god, 40 percent of the American population is disenfranchised. Under the DeSantis model, non-Christian Americans will be forced to follow Christian religious codes, rather than the Constitution and the system of secular laws it has established. Under the DeSantis model of legal rights, Christianity will have the sole authority to decide which rights we have, and which rights we do not have.

If Americans’ rights come from the Christian god, then they by definition do not come from the people of the USA. If our rights are decided by the Christian god, then there is zero accountability, and there is nothing that the American people can do when Christianity tries to take our rights away.

In short, if Ron DeSantis is able to achieve his goal, and Americans’ legal rights come from the Christian god and not from the people, then American democracy will have been destroyed.

If our legal rights come from the Christian god, then Americans will lose the ability to control the legal system to which they are subject. Under the Christian Nationalist vision of Ron DeSantis, every single law in the United States would have to be approved by the Christian god.

Don’t just accept the vague generalities of the idea of a nation governed by the will of the Christian god. Ask yourself this question: How would it work in practice? How would the specific, practical decisions of everyday government be made under such a regime?

Once you start thinking about the specifics of it all, the coherence of a god-centered government falls apart. How, after all, if the Christian god is to be accepted as the source of all our legal rights, and all of American law, could we know for certain which rights and which laws have been approved by this god?

In a democracy where legal rights come from the consent and active participation of the people, we know exactly what the process is. Secular democracy has the Constitution and the laws established by the US Congress and state and local legislatures. Everything is accountable and transparent in a democratic system.

Under the theocratic system of Ron DeSantis, there would be no accountability or transparency. The entire legal system of the United States of America would be controlled by just one person: The god of Christianity.

Perhaps you’ve detected the flaw in this plan. The god of Christianity is infamously inaccessible. Nobody really knows the mailing address or phone number of the Christian god. he god of Christianity has no office, or even a secretary to take messages.

The god of Christianity isn’t an American citizen.

Technically speaking, there isn’t actually any evidence that the Christian god exists. Tens of millions of Americans are fairly sure that the god of Christianity is an imaginary character. Even those people who believe that the Christian god exists as a literal being can’t produce any photographs, video, or audio recordings to back up their beliefs.

Practically speaking, how can the system of legal rights in America be founded upon someone who never shows up in person to conduct any business, someone who might not even exist?

For example, when there is a new category of digital media invented, something that is quite likely to happen, and Americans need to decide what kind of rights exist to access and control this media, how would the Christian god get involved in the process? When Americans finally reach Mars, and land and resource rights have to be determined, how could the god of Christianity inform everyone how those Martian rights for Americans on the Red Planet would work?

It couldn’t work, of course. When believers claim to hear from the Christian god, they do so through the murky means of signs and portents, of strange physiological quiverings, and of voices that appear in their heads that no one else can hear, voices that are disconcertingly similar to the obsessive, intrusive thoughts of schizophrenics. These vague psychological phenomena are not a reasonable ground upon which to build a just and reliable legal system.

Even professional Christian preachers are unclear and inconsistent about what their god wants. They tell their Christian followers that the Christian god works in mysterious ways. How can clear laws possibly be derived from a mysterious divinity? Every Christian preacher interprets the Christian bible in a different way. They claim to speak for the Christian god, but they disagree with each other about what the Christian god says and what the Christian god wants.

Ron DeSantis claims that “in the American system, our rights come from god, not from the government,” but the application of this idea is thoroughly incompatible with any actual system of law. A system of law is consistent, but Christianity is fractious and inconsistent because it’s founded upon vague ancient stories, subjective intuitions, and psychologically dubious prophecies.

A Christian government based upon the will of the Christian god would end up being a confusing system of competing priests, preachers, and prophets of Christianity, each one loudly proclaiming the ability to communicate with the god of Christianity. In the end, the most politically powerful of these priests, the one who could shout the loudest, would end up running the show.

Christian government inevitably leads toward dictatorship. Why wouldn’t it? The Christian god himself is a divine dictator, a being that makes all the rules and punishes whoever he likes for no other reason than that he has all the power.

The Christian bible is not a useful text for creating a system of legal rights in our time. Christian holy texts were considered ancient when the United States was founded, and now, nearly 250 years later, they are downright archaic. The Christian bible is based upon a profoundly limited awareness of the diversity of legal systems around the world, is from a culture that’s foreign to that of the United States in our time, and is downright cruel and unjust in most of its morality. The laws of the Christian bible vary widely from chapter to chapter, reflecting the nature of the text as a collection of documents from different authors in different historical contexts, reflecting inconsistent political agendas.

The legal rights of the government of the United States of America are in no sense derived from Christianity. The Christian bible preaches against freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The Christian bible has no concept of the press, or of fair legal trials. There is no sense of protection from self-incrimination or from unreasonable search and seizure in the Christian bible. The Christian bible never bans slavery, nor guarantees the right of anybody to vote. The idea of democracy is completely absent from ancient Christian texts. Fair jury trials are also not present in the Christian bible at all. A three-branch federal system with checks and balances is found nowhere in the Christian bible either.

The form of government promoted by the Christian bible is monarchy. The Revolution of 1776, and the Constitution constructed a few years afterwards, were firmly set against monarchy, and created a system of legal rights that rejected Christian biblical values.

When it comes to the founding principles of the United States of America and why the Constitution is structured the way it is, we need to be clear about this. The United States of America is not a Christian nation. Nothing in the Constitution refers to Christianity at all. The original core of the Constitution states that there shall be no religious requirement for any public office, and the first line of the first amendment to the Constitution forbids the government from establishing religion.

Every single government endorsed by the Christian god in the Christian bible is a king or an emperor. In the United States of America, we don’t have kings or emperors. The legal system of the United States of America was not inspired by Christianity. The legal system of the United States of America was written in reaction against traditions of Christian power.

The quality of thinking from this speech from Ron DeSantis is like what you’d expect from a Sunday School class for middle school children. It’s full of assertions that quickly crumble apart upon any serious consideration. They’re not intended for serious consideration, of course. Ron DeSantis is doing what Christian preachers do: He’s speaking to a crowd that’s learned to accept his position on faith, to agree and affirm what he’s saying because it feels good emotionally to do so.

The speeches at the National Conservatism conference were better suited to a church revival than to a gathering of conservative political professionals to discuss government policy. Unfortunately, the two are now one and the same. National Conservativism is Christian Nationalism, with some economic corruption on the side. The Republican Party has taken on the slippery character of a traveling tent revival show, complete with knowing hucksters working to make a quick buck from the gullible crowd.