The government’s adoption of the language of Christian nationalism clashes with the moral logic of the Reformation.
The government’s adoption of the language of Christian nationalism clashes with the moral logic of the Reformation.
P resident Trump’s “Message on Reformation Day” was a worthy effort to remind Americans of the cultural debt that our democratic republic owes to the Protestant Reformation. Unfortunately, the administration seems strangely unaware of the actual results of Martin Luther’s protest against the Catholic Church: the introduction of the concepts of freedom of conscience, religious pluralism, and the separation of church and state.
The president’s message correctly observes that Luther’s Reformation inspired the work of William Tyndale, who — 500 years ago, in 1526 — produced the first English translation of the New Testament from the original Greek. Because of Tyndale’s influence over the revered King James Bible, virtually every argument for political and religious freedom in the 17th and 18th centuries drew upon Tyndale’s translation. The democratization of Bible ownership became an agent of political liberation in the English-speaking world, the cultural equivalent of the splitting of the atom.
Thus, the administration is on solid historical ground when it states that the Bible “helped form the religious convictions that formed our young Nation’s founding ideals of God-given rights and individual liberty.”
Yet the presidential message quickly slips into a quagmire of Christian nationalist doublespeak: “Guided by an unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, my Administration is working to restore the moral and religious foundation that have sustained our republic for generations.” On its face, the claim that any presidential administration could be composed entirely of Christians and guided by the Christian faith is unrealistic. If it were true, it would mean that the Trump White House had put in place a religious litmus test for employment — a bald violation of Article VI of the Constitution. Trump’s proclamation must also come as a surprise to the Jews serving in the administration, including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Ambassador to France Charles Kushner.
Here, in a presidential message, is the language of Christian nationalism — an outlook completely at odds with the moral logic of the Reformation. Team Trump would be well advised to read Luther’s “On Secular Government,” in which the reformer assaulted the Catholic notion of a singular Christian commonwealth.
“But first take heed and fill the world with real Christians before ruling it in a Christian and evangelical manner,” Luther wrote. “This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian. . . . Therefore it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, nay even over one land or company of people, since the wicked always outnumber the good.”
By asserting the sacred nature of individual conscience in matters of faith, the Reformation made possible a cultural transformation in the West, in which religious freedom and religious pluralism became foundational to its democratic political creed. Like no other political society in the world, the Protestants in colonial America embraced Luther’s insight and converted it into a constitutional reality.
James Madison — who studied theology under Protestant clergyman the Reverend John Witherspoon — was the architect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. In a letter to the Reverend F. L. Schaeffer, Madison gave a nod to Luther as he praised America’s institutional separation of church and state: “It illustrates the excellence of a system which, by a due distinction, to which the genius and courage of Luther led the way, between what is due to Caesar and what is due God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations.”
The president’s Reformation Day message muddles the distinction between these two realms. If history is any guide, a national government that claims to be led by “an unwavering faith in Jesus Christ” is as likely to trample the rights of its citizens as a government committed to militant atheism. If the Trump administration seeks to “restore the moral and religious foundations” of our democracy, they should attend to Luther: “Here God’s Word must strive; if that does not accomplish the end it will remain unaccomplished through secular power, though it fill the world with blood.”