Opinion

Exvangelicals, none's, secular Americans are undertapped in fight against Christian nationalism

(RNS) — Just because they’re no longer invested in a better Christianity doesn’t mean they aren’t a crucial part of the battle for a better country.

In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, violent rioters storm the Capitol, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Blake Chastain
November 5, 2024

(RNS) — In January 2024, Pew Research published a study showing 28% of U.S. adults are now religiously unaffiliated, making the “nones” (as they’re nicknamed) the largest religious cohort in the country, outnumbering Catholics and evangelical Protestants. Yet when it comes to the groups trying to resist Christian nationalism, you’d be hard-pressed to find adequate representation of this demographic. This is an unfortunate oversight, and one faith-based and secular advocacy groups alike should seek to correct.

For nearly a decade, on my podcast “Exvangelical,” I have spoken to people who have left the evangelical church. While some discovered new forms of faith-based community and beliefs in more liberal Christian denominations, Buddhism and so on, many found religious spaces untenable altogether and migrated toward a wholly secular worldview.

Progressive Christians are fortunate to find representation and participation in politics through campaigns such as Christians Against Christian Nationalism and the Faith & Democracy Tour. But these initiatives tend to spend as much time trying to reform conservative Christianity and reaffirming liberal faith as they do trying to repudiate far-right agendas. Secular exvangelicals with zero interest in trying to rescue Christianity get left out of the conversation

This is a problem because Christian nationalist groups are tightly organized, well-funded and well-represented in both the media and the government. Opposing such forces will require more than vying for reform in faith communities — it will require a strong coalition of both religious and secular people.

Those who have exited religion completely form a key part of this coalition. Whether they’ve left evangelicalism, Catholicism or other faith traditions, they have a deep well of knowledge and personal experience to offer the movement. Many were directly harmed by Christian nationalism, and so intimately understand the threat it poses. They’ve experienced firsthand the decades of partisan politicization of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, the staunch opposition to gender equality and the resistance to reckoning with racism and endless abuse scandals. Just because they’re no longer fighting for a better Christianity doesn’t mean they aren’t a crucial part of the fight for a better country.

In fact, exvangelicals and other formerly religious embody one of the traits that’s essential to defeating Christian nationalism: the ability to change one’s mind. They prove that you don’t have to keep identifying with a toxic set of beliefs once you understand the harm it causes. And while shifting to a benevolent form of faith is valid, it’s equally valid to opt out of religion altogether. People who have done so (increasingly women more than men) still have as much at stake as anyone else and still belong in the political conversation.

Chrissy Stroop, co-founder of the feminist media collective The Flytrap, says, “As a queer exvangelical atheist who advocates for pluralism, I often feel left out by those who have the largest platforms to talk about American secularization and the roles of religion in our society. Too many liberal and progressive Christians give lip service to pluralism without checking their Christian privilege and continue to treat secular Americans like second-class citizens. For us to work well together, respect must be mutual and reciprocal, which would require giving secular Americans a meaningful seat at the table.”

Stroop argues that instead of emphasizing shared belief, interfaith coalitions must emphasize shared values such as democracy, social justice and pluralism.

Andrew L. Seidel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, whose membership is roughly split between religious and nonreligious members, agrees: “I would rather have a drink and a chat, maybe split some guacamole, with a group of Christians who value anti-racism and social justice than [with] a group of anti-equality atheists (there aren’t many of those, but they exist and they are loud). But here’s the capper: shared values matter far more when we as a nation face an existential threat like white Christian nationalism.”

Tori Douglass, creator of the anti-racist education initiative White Homework, was raised evangelical and now identifies as atheist but sees opportunity in forging alliances between “nones” and religious groups. They told me over email that “as an antiracism educator, about half of the groups I work with are faith-based. These groups have already done a great deal of work around community-building, which is great! I love working with faith-based groups because they bring the same sense of urgency to the work that I do. They understand the threat that Christian nationalism poses to our fragile democracy in a way that secular groups don’t always see.”

Douglass also recognizes the importance of joining together on the basis of values rather than beliefs. “A meaningful approach for faith-based and secular groups to collaborate with religious nones in opposing Christian nationalism would center on shared values rather than religious identity or beliefs. Recognizing our common interest in pluralism and the value of democracy, regardless of belief in a higher power. By focusing on values like democracy, human rights, and social justice, we can find common ground and stop Christian nationalism in its tracks.”

With the final day of voting concluding Tuesday (Nov. 5), the stakes are high regardless of its outcome, and a failure to build an inclusive enough coalition could have grave consequences. Seidel puts the situation in stark terms: “Our country is on fire. Our democracy isn’t slipping away, it’s being stolen. The republic is being strangled. Those of us who share values like equality and justice and truth and fairness must come together to stop the arsonist, the thief, the murderer. And that means coming together and fighting Christian nationalism.”

By inviting exvangelicals and “nones” to participate fully in advocacy, faith-based and secular groups gain allies. This is all the more important in a world where people require the freedom to shift in and out of religious groups and beliefs as they see fit — a freedom that is under threat by Christian nationalists who seek to privilege their own way of life above all others.

(Blake Chastain is author of the book “Exvangelical & Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That’s Fighting Back” and host of the “Exvangelical” podcast. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

State ecumenical groups ramp up efforts to combat Christian nationalism

(RNS) — Church members are seeking ways to respond to family members, friends and neighbors taken up with Christian nationalism. Ecumenical and interfaith groups on the state level are offering some tips.

James Gailliard, the pastor of Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, N.C., takes questions from the audience after a screening of the movie “Bad Faith,” which examines Christian nationalists’ quest for power. Seated on stage in back are Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, left, and the Rev. Jennifer Copeland, executive director of the North Carolina Council of Churches. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron

Yonat Shimron
November 5, 2024


ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (RNS) — After watching a documentary on the threat of Christian nationalism on a Tuesday evening last week, members of Word Tabernacle Church, a predominantly Black congregation about 55 miles east of Raleigh, had lots of questions.

Mostly, they wanted to know how to confront the movement’s adherents who have so distorted their faith.

“What’s one concept or two that we can really engage in conversation with people who may be under the chains of this way of thinking to help them start to transition to a free space?” asked Kyle Johnson, whose title is next generation pastor at Word Tabernacle Church.

That concern is shared by many who are grappling with an ideology that has rooted itself at the heart of Republican Party politics and in the candidacy of Donald Trump. Christian nationalists deride anyone outside their movement as evil and hell-bent on stripping Christianity from the public square.

The Rev. Jennifer Copeland, executive director of the North Carolina Council of Churches who sponsored the event, offered one answer that many were searching for.

“I would say the answer to the question is, love God, love your neighbor,” she said. “If we can think of ways to engage in conversations with our neighbors by calling on the great themes of Scripture, by reminding people that God is the God of the vulnerable, that God always tells us to look out for the people in our communities who are most vulnerable. And then maybe you can begin to ask some of the harder questions, like, do you see this policy as good or bad for the vulnerable, do you think the minimum wage is really enough for vulnerable people to support their families?”


Members of Word Tabernacle Church hold hands and pray before watching a documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism on Oct. 29, 2024, in Rocky Mount, N.C. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron

Church members, such as those in the 4,000-member Word Tabernacle Church, want to better respond to family members, friends and neighbors taken up with Christian nationalism — the ideology that holds the United States is a country defined by Christianity and that Christians should rule over government and other institutions — by force, if necessary.

While many white evangelicals and members of nondenominational charismatic movements have been swayed by the ideology, mainline Protestants, Black churches and some Roman Catholics are now attempting to challenge its tenets. Church councils and interfaith groups have published resources, voter guides and educational materials on the subject. Some have bought licenses to screen documentaries such as “Bad Faith,” directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher J. Jones, which examines the origins of Christian nationalism leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (The documentary is streaming on multiple streaming services.)

RELATED: With Bible verses and Baptist zeal, Amanda Tyler offers how-to for dismantling Christian nationalism

After receiving an anonymous gift of $100,000 to combat Christian nationalism, the Rev. Jeffrey Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Council of Churches, convened a meeting of his fellow church council executives earlier this summer to decide how to use it.

“We spend a lot of time talking about, how do we humanize this? How do we avoid demonizing people? How do we present our case in nonacademic language?” Allen said.

Fourteen council leaders ended up applying for a mini grant of $3,000 to $7,200 to provide programming on Christian nationalism.

The fight against Christian nationalism has become a wide-ranging effort drawing in dozens of nonprofit groups across the nation, some of them faith-based. Among them are national groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Interfaith Alliance.

“Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy.”

 Poster courtesy of film site

But state councils of churches and interfaith groups are rooted in particular places and better able to address the ways Christian nationalist ideology may be affecting local races and issues. For example, Christian nationalists may be pushing state legislatures to beef up educational funding for private Christian schools, passing laws requiring prayer in schools or displaying the Ten Commandments outside of public building

Their local work can help people of faith draw connections between national ideology with no recognizable leader and the way it may be implemented in their state.

They do so not to debate their opponents but to talk to one another.

“The people in the room are already thinking about Christian nationalism as a problem,” said Copeland. “What they seem to be most grateful for is that they’re in a room full of people like themselves, where often they might feel like they’re the only person that thinks that way.”

The North Carolina Council of Churches has across the state sponsored seven screenings of the documentary “Bad Faith,” with a discussion forum after the screening. Copeland often invited Duke University historian Nancy MacLean to join her on her talks to church groups in part because understanding Christian nationalism requires a historical and political understanding of the rise of the far right.

Members of Word Tabernacle Church appreciated the event, which was also livestreamed to 300 members at home. The church, started in 2005 as a Southern Baptist-affiliated congregation, is now nondenominational. As such, it is not a member of the state’s Council of Churches, which is composed of 18 denominationally affiliated congregations. But its pastor, James Gailliard, a former Democratic state legislator, said he wants to work more closely with the council.


Lorenza Johnson of Rocky Mount, N.C., a member of Word Tabernacle Church, expressed some thoughts after watching the movie “Bad Faith.” RNS photo by Yonat Shimron

Lorenza Johnson, a church member who attended the screening in person, said he appreciated what he learned and said he felt mobilized to do more.

“We can be happy in here and shout in here and be safe and go to heaven,” said Johnson, who lives in Rocky Mount. “But in reality, we still have another generation that’s gonna be here. And if we don’t find out the power of a vote and get the right people in place, then we may be going to heaven, but we can be living in hell while we’re here.”

Although much of the effort of state councils of churches will conclude after the presidential election, several others have decided to keep going.

The Wisconsin Council of Churches, for example, is putting together a sermon series for Lent, which begins on March 5, and soliciting hymns, songs and other artwork that address ways of countering Christian nationalism.

“So often, people look at these large election cycles and they think, ‘OK, we’re, we’re going to pay attention to this issue and then once the election cycle is over, we all calm down,’” said the Rev. Kerri Parker, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches. “We need to pay attention to these moral and ethical issues all along.”

The Arizona Faith Network, an interfaith group, is also going to continue exploring the issue in 2025, with a focus on religious nationalism in other faith traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Allen said he thinks these efforts at the congregational level may be the most meaningful.

“People who are feeling lonely and left out and connecting with folks who are manipulating them,” said Allen. “I think the church can provide an alternative to that — an authentic community that doesn’t seek to take anything from them, but instead to give.”

(This story was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)

We tried Christian nationalism in America. It went badly.

(RNS) — Nostalgia for a ‘Christian America’ overlooks the realities of religion in the founding era — which included taxes, jail time, exile and even public hangings for anyone who defied state-run churches.

Mary Dyer being led to her execution on Boston Common, June 1, 1660. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)
Bob Smietana
October 30, 2024

NORTH MIDDLEBORO, Mass. (RNS) — The Rev. Jason Genest loves God and his church.

He also loves U.S. history.

Which is why he gets nervous when he hears people talk about America being founded as a Christian nation. Or wanting to make America Christian by using the power of politics.

America tried that in the past, he said. It did not go well — including for the founder of Genest’s own church.

First Baptist Church of North Middleboro, Massachusetts, was founded by Isaac Backus – a champion of religious freedom in the 1700s — who often found himself at odds with leaders of the Congregational church, which at the time was the official religion of the Bay State.


The Rev. Jason Genest. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

So-called New Light Baptists like Backus, who were followers of the famed evangelical preacher George Whitefield — a leader of the First Great Awakening who stressed the need for personal conversion — were seen as troublemakers and threats to public order by leaders of the official church, which was essentially a state bureaucracy, said Genest.

New Light Baptists questioned social institutions, by claiming the baptisms — and sometimes the marriages — of the unconverted were invalid. They also set up rival churches to draw worshippers away from parish churches and, more importantly, refused to pay taxes to support those parish churches. That led to government crackdowns, with some gatherings of New Light Baptists banned as illegal.

“When you get along with a state bureaucracy, it’s great,” Genest said. “When you disagree, you have problems.”

Today, as America has grown both more secular and more religiously pluralistic, there has also been a rise in Christian nationalism — an insistence that America was founded by Christians and should be run by Christians. But the founding era was not a religious utopia, where Colonists were free to choose their faith. Instead, disputes between different kinds of Christians were fierce in the Colonies that became the United States. Those Colonies often had official churches that used government power to collect taxes, enforce doctrine and crush their rivals.

Catherine Brekus, a religious historian at Harvard, says there’s a powerful myth that the early American Colonies were founded on the idea of religious freedom.

“That is not true,” she said.

“We think that religious freedom was enshrined from the beginning, and instead it was a long and hard fight,” she said.



Portait of Isaac Backus at First Baptist Church of North Middleboro, Mass. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

In the 1700s, some Christians, like Backus’ mother and brother, ended up in jail. Others found constables at the door, hauling their possessions away for back taxes — taxes meant to subsidize the state church. Still others were banned from meeting altogether in so-called illegal churches.

Backus’ concerns about the power of government to dictate what people believed — and to punish those who disagreed — fueled his efforts to separate the church and state in Massachusetts. (This became reality in 1833, nearly three decades after Backus died.)

While Genest believes churches should be active in public life, that’s different from trying to mandate what people believed. When the government has that power, bad things happen, he said.

“I hate to say we use God, but I think God is often used as a means of people getting what they want,” Genest said.

RELATED: What is Christian nationalism, anyway?

About 30 miles west of North Middleboro stands another First Baptist Church — also known as the First Baptist Church in America — with its own story of clashing with Christian nationalism

This year on Oct. 13, the guest speaker at First Baptist was John McNiff, a retired national park ranger and historical reenactor who often portrays Roger Williams, the church’s founder. Williams was exiled from Massachusetts in the 1600s because of his “dangerous ideas” about religious freedom.

Among those ideas: State leaders should not use civil power to make people go to church or observe religious rules. During his talk, McNiff pointed out that none of the worshippers in the service were there because the law required them to be.

Historical reenactor John McNiff portrays Roger Williams at the First Baptist Church in America on Oct. 13, 2024, in Providence, R.I. (Photo by J. Stanley Lemons)

“These politicians, these rulers, were compelling people to a faith that they did not believe in,” he said, drawing from Williams’ writings. “The civil sword can make a nation full of hypocrites, but not one true Christian.”

That fear of state-run religion was shaped in Williams’ childhood, said Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, a professor of history at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

“Williams grew up in a world of religious turmoil, where the ‘official’ state religion changed on the whim of a monarch,” Carrington-Farmer wrote in a 2021 book chapter about religious freedom and Williams, who was born in England.

When he arrived in New England, Williams realized he had not come to a place where people were free to worship.

“When he gets to Massachusetts, he’s horrified,” said Carrington-Farmer, editor of a forthcoming collection of Williams’ writing, called “Roger Williams and His World.” “He’s seen the same persecution, just under a different umbrella.”


“The Banishment of Roger Williams” by Peter F. Rothermel, circa 1850. (Image courtesy of Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Williams became an outspoken advocate for religious freedom, often holding meetings in his home to advocate for his ideas. In particular, he believed government should have no right to enforce religious rules. That put him at odds with other Puritan leaders such as Gov. John Winthrop and clerics who felt it their God-given duty to keep their community holy.

Tired of Williams’ “diverse new & dangerous opinions,” a Boston court banished him on Oct. 9, 1635, giving him six weeks to leave — or else government officials would remove him by force. He eventually fled the state during a blizzard that winter, going to Narragansett Bay, where he founded the town of Providence and later, First Baptist.

Carrington-Farmer said Puritan leaders had tried to avoid banishing Williams, whom they held in high esteem, and tried to get him to moderate his views. But Williams would not compromise

Puritan leaders, she said, felt caught between a rock and a hard place. They had experienced persecution for the faith in England and wanted to create a new community that was faithful to the Bible and Christianity — which, as John Winthrop put it, would be a city on a hill. They feared troublemakers like Williams would put that vision at risk. The Puritans believed God would punish them if they allowed sin and dissent to flourish.

Ironically, in being banished, Williams was lucky. Several decades later, Mary Dyer, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Leddra and William Robinson—all members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers — were hanged on the Boston Common for defying the power of the established church.

On a sunny afternoon in early September this year, a pair of tourists who identified themselves as descendants of Williams stopped in the church he started, to have a look. After settling them in to watch a short video about the history of First Baptist, the Rev. Jamie Washam, the church’s current pastor, sat on the church stairs for a conversation about Williams’ legacy.

The Rev. Jamie Washam. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

Washam, the pastor of First Baptist since 2015, said she worries that the hard-won lessons of Williams’ life have been forgotten.

“The story and legacy of Roger Williams reminds us that it has always been a struggle to advocate for religious liberty,” said Washam, sitting on the church steps. “We continue to fervently believe that that cost is worth it.”

She’s skeptical of the idea that voting for the right candidate will make America more Christian.

“Better legislation doesn’t make us better Christians,” she said. “Being more faithful and loving and just people make us better Christians.”

Some Christians, however, worry something essential is being lost as the country becomes less religious. That’s the case for Jerry Newcombe, executive director of the Providence Forum, which has produced a series of videos about the Christian origins of the United States.

“I feel like there’s been a great deal of misinformation and forgetting,” said Newcombe, whose organization seeks to “preserve, defend and advance the Judeo-Christian values of our nation’s founding.”

First Baptist Church in America in Providence, R.I. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

While he fiercely promotes the idea that America was founded on Christianity, Newcombe admits things did not always go well — especially for religious groups that clashed with political leaders over matters of faith.

“It’s not as if everything was Shangri-la, especially if you were a nonconformist,” he said in a phone interview.

“In retrospect, we don’t agree with that,” he said. “But don’t throw God out of the whole equation.”

Other conservative Christians go much further, saying America must return to its Christian roots or perish. Josh Abbotoy, head of American Reformer magazine and an investor who wants to rebuild a Christian America, has suggested the U.S. might need a “Christian Franco” — a reference to the longtime Spanish Catholic dictator — to restore Christianity to its rightful place in American society. Others, like the National Conservatism movement, believe the government should use Christianity to shape society. During a recent Nat Con event, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, praised the Protestant empire that built America — saying that religious foundation must be restored.

“I want to say that I do not believe this nation and all that it represents can survive abandoning its theological roots. We will recover those roots and commitments or lose everything,” Mohler said earlier this year.

Conservative activists such as Charlie Kirk have called for a return to America’s Christian roots, praising the fact that the early Colonies had religious tests for office and were run explicitly by Christians.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk speaks before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit, July 26, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“One of the reasons we are living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation but we have a Christian form of government. And they are incompatible,” said Kirk, in advocating for an end to the separation of church and state and a return to a Christian America during an online panel discussion.

Douglas Winiarski, professor of religious studies at the University of Richmond and author of “Darkness Falls on the Land of Light” — which details the end of established churches in New England — said that nostalgia for a Christian America can overlook how complicated religion was in the founding era.

He said that by the early 18th century, the Congregational church — which had descended from the Puritans — had become fairly tolerant, allowing space for dissenters as long as they paid their taxes and didn’t cause trouble.

That tolerance ended, however, with the rise of New Light Baptists and others who disagreed with the teachings of the Congregationalists and refused to submit to their authority on religious matters.

Ironically, Congregationalists, who had dominated religious life in Massachusetts and other New England states for two centuries, would learn the downside of having a state religion, with the rise of Unitarianism in the early 1800s. Residents began electing Unitarian ministers to lead parish churches over the objections of Congregational church members, who were Trinitarians.

That led to court battles over church property, with the state Supreme Court siding with Unitarians in 1821. As a result, the Congregationalists found themselves losing the buildings and congregations they had controlled since the 1600s.

First Baptist Church of North Middleboro, Mass., was founded in 1756. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

Eventually, because of the efforts of Backus and others like him, Massachusetts allowed a kind of moderated religious freedom, in which the taxes paid to the state church were diverted to other congregations — including Baptists and the breakaway Congregationalists. But it was an uneasy peace and led to the disestablishment—the end of official status—of a state church in Massachusetts.

The archives from First Parish in Cambridge — which was an official government church from the 1600s to the early 1800s — were filled with letters from residents of that city, requesting their taxes be sent to other churches in the 1800s, said Gloria Korsman, a First Parish historian and a Harvard librarian. At that time, the clerk of the parish church — a state church that eventually became Unitarian — was responsible for collecting taxe=s.

Korsman said she can’t imagine why anyone would want to go back to that time.

“I don’t know what there is to long for,” she said. “During the time of disestablishment, neighbors were against neighbors on this issue. It wasn’t like a peaceful time or a time when people were unified. There was a lot of division.”

(Photo by Brad Dodson/Unsplash/Creative Commons)

RELATED: Whose Christianity do Christian nationalists want?

This story was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.