There's a battle raging for the soul of our nation. It's a fight over who we were and who we're allowed to say we were. Secularists insist America was founded by Enlightenment deists who never intended Christianity to shape our laws, and that anyone who argues otherwise is peddling “revisionist history.” We're told the Founders built a “wall of separation” between Church and state.
But that phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution, and legal scholars still call the Establishment Clause's original intent “the most contentious and misunderstood provision” in the document. Even the progressive Political Research Associates has conceded the point indirectly.
Quoting Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs: “Neither the words ‘church state separation’ nor ‘wall of separation’ appear in the Constitution … it's a metaphor for the spirit of the First Amendment.” PRA then argues society needs to “craft a compelling and shared story” about religion's role in our history. It’s a remarkable admission that the dominant narrative is, in fact, a narrative, not a transcript.
That project has produced an all-out assault on Christian values, weaponizing the term “Christian nationalist” as a slur to silence anyone who points to the Christian foundations that undeniably shaped this country.
I got a stark reminder of just how undeniable it is recently, when Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler sparked a debate over blasphemy laws — first through a debate on Christian nationalism, then through a book project featuring five authors from different Christian traditions — that sent me down a rabbit hole of 19th-century court cases. His fellow Southern Baptist, Dr.
Richard Land, pushed back in his column for The Christian Post, arguing there should be no religious test for office.