The Constitution Does Not Protect Religion

It protects religious freedom instead.

Prior to the 2024 election, Politico published an article titled “The Religious Right’s Grip on the GOP is Weakening,” arguing that “[Donald] Trump is less dependent on the evangelical vote than is commonly assumed.” Maybe that is the case, but the continuing overwhelming support for President Trump among conservative evangelicals ain’t chopped liver.

According to Pew Research in 2024, 59% of all Protestants align with the Republicans, but 85% of white evangelical Protestants so align. As of this past April, Pew reports that while 40% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of his presidency, 48% of Christians do, 50% of Protestants do, and 72% of white evangelicals do.

Such figures reflect the increasing overlap between the Republican party and what was originally called the Christian or Religious Right. Of course, not all Republicans are members or supporters of the Religious Right, but an overwhelming majority of the Religious Right align with the Republicans.

Much of the rise of the Religious Right stems from hostility to the cultural changes of the Sixties, a reaction that has led opponents of the Religious Right to believe that many conservative evangelical Christians cannot stop attempting to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else.

For example, a Politico article from May 2025 introduces readers to Doug Wilson, who, it states, “is, by his own description, an outspoken proponent of Christian theocracy — the idea that American society, including its government, should be governed by a conservative interpretation of Biblical law.”

The Atlantic quotes a Christian-nationalist musician named Sean Feucht as saying “We want God writing the laws of the land.” More ominously, according to a December 2023 article in Rolling Stone, “Nick Fuentes, the hate leader who dined at Mar-a-Lago last year with Donald Trump and Kanye West, is calling for a genocide of ‘perfidious Jews’ and other non-Christians. ‘When we take power,’ he said a Dec. 8 livestream, ‘they need to be given the death penalty, straight up.’”

Perhaps these are just extreme outliers. Yet if you’re a New York Times subscriber, be sure to read the recent October 14 analysis titled “Inside a New Bible-Infused Texas English Curriculum,” which states that “the Texas version features new content on Christianity, the Old and New Testaments and the life of Jesus, according to a Times analysis of thousands of pages of teaching guides and activity books.” Jesus, the analysis says, is mentioned 87 times.

In my last column, I set out what observers consider to be the basic tenets of Christian Nationalism. Without going any further, I suggested that, agree or disagree with them, these tenets are flatly inconsistent with the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Why?

Well, God is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, and the various mandatory declarations of allegiance to the Constitution are all cast in terms of “Oath or Affirmation.” An oath is an essentially religious act (see here), but the Constitution expressly allows officeholders to affirm rather than swear their allegiance. There is no “So help me God” in the president’s oath or affirmation, and the “no religious test” clause in Article VI is quite curious if we are to be the religion-based political system some imagine.

One can spend an enormous amount of time attempting to detail the religious orientations of the Founding Fathers and their occasional personal views as to the importance of religion in general and Christianity in particular. What counts, however, is the actual text of the Constitution.

The religion clauses in the First Amendment state: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . . .” The former clause is known as the Establishment Clause, while the latter is known as the Free Exercise Clause.

The essence of the Establishment Clause is that affirmation of or adherence to a particular religion or set of religious beliefs cannot be a requirement for full citizenship in the U.S., while the essence of the Free Exercise Clause is that that rejection of a particular religion or set of religious beliefs cannot be a requirement for full citizenship in the U.S.

The United States is thus not constituted as a religious order itself, but rather as a political order that protects the religious freedom of individuals and groups, guaranteeing them a space to make their own choices regarding religious beliefs, values, and prac­tices. Religious identity inheres in the individual, not the nation.

Consequently, any attempt on the part of some citizens to use the machinery of the government to impose their religious beliefs and practices on other citizens is in fact a rejection of the fundamental American commitment to equal rights, including our equal right to religious liberty.

Government can threaten religious liberty not only when it requires you to reject or deny your religious beliefs or values, but also when it requires you to affirm the religious beliefs or practices that are not your own. That is a denial of religious liberty as well.

As startling as it might sound, therefore, I have argued at length elsewhere, is that on our best understanding of the mean­ing of the religion clauses in general and of the Establishment Clause in particular, the purpose of the religion clauses of the American Constitution is to protect not religion, but religious freedom. The Constitution creates a country, not a congregation.

Any attempt on the part of contemporary theocrats to turn the U.S. into a Christian political order, then, amounts to a direct attack on the Constitution. If you are a true Constitutionalist, you can’t buy what they’re selling.

It is truly un-American.

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