Anti-Muslim Bigotry Betrays America’s Founding Promise

On April 30th, Interfaith Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council hosted the webinar, “Countering Anti-Muslim Hate in an Era of Christian Nationalism.” The panel hosted speakers from Interfaith Alliance, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), and the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign to discuss the underexamined ways in which Christian nationalism fuels anti-Muslim bigotry.

Below, we are publishing Dr. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons’ remarks from the event.  

Christian nationalists love to talk about the United States’ founding, and they tell a particular story: this nation was supposedly established as a Christian nation, by Christians, for Christians. Anyone else here is a guest of the rightful Christian rulers. It gets told with confidence, and now with the power of the federal government behind it. Just this morning, the Department of Justice issued a report on the nonexistent threat of domestic anti-Christian bias in the United States, and in it perpetuated this historical narrative of the founding era.

But the myth of a Christian nation isn't true.

While we are a majority Christian nation in a demographic sense, the founders were not building a Christian theocracy. They were fleeing one. They had watched what happens when governments fuse religious identity with political power, and they wrote the First amendment specifically to prevent it.

The Christian nation myth is not just an attack on our secular democracy, but a gross distortion of the Christian faith that most Christians in the U.S. – myself included – don’t support.

Let’s go back to the founding era though. Jefferson was explicit about who "everyone" meant. In his autobiography, writing about the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the model for the First Amendment, Jefferson wrote this:

"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

From the very beginning of our country’s religious freedom tradition, Jefferson named Muslims by name as people this country's founding religious freedom guarantee was written to protect.

Christian nationalists have to rewrite this history because the actual history destroys the argument. Religious freedom – as imperfectly enacted by the founding generation – is the founding ideal. So the revision is necessary: elevate a narrow understanding of Christianity, and pretend the founders were establishing a faith-based hierarchy rather than dismantling one.

Christian nationalism is not a theology. It's a power arrangement. It's about restoring a social order where one religious identity confers belonging and authority, and everyone else exists on sufferance. The anti-Muslim bigotry we’re discussing today is a core function of Christian nationalism. It draws the boundary and names who is on the outside.

So when Christian nationalist politicians question Muslim Americans' loyalty, treat Islam as foreign to American identity, or use their platforms to say vile things about Muslim communities, they are making a claim about who this country belongs to. And they are directly betraying the founders they claim to revere.

David Barton, the architect of today’s resurgence of the Christian myth and intellectual forefather of Speaker Mike Johnson, has spent decades spreading lies about our founding as an explicit attempt to gain and maintain political power in Texas.

In a few weeks, we will mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. I'd argue the most genuinely patriotic thing any of us can do in this semiquincentennial year is to be honest about what the founding actually promised and refuse to stop fighting until we've lived up to it. The promise of religious freedom must include American Muslims or it is a meaningless promise.

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Dr. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is the Vice President of Programs and Strategy at Interfaith Alliance

The views and beliefs expressed in this post and all Interfaith Alliance blogs are those held by the author of each respective piece. To learn more about the organizational views, policies, and positions of Interfaith Alliance on any issues, please contact [email protected].