Christian Nationalists – Who Are These People Anyway?

They are the people who want to take away your religious freedom in favor of their own.

Did you notice that the Vice President of the United States decided to air the religious divide in his household by publicly stating that he hopes that his wife Usha, an Indian Hindu by birth and practice, will someday become a Christian?1

Vance’s public statement might surprise you less if you knew that the Vice President has been described as “the most publicly religious member of the second Trump administration,” and “an emissary between this White House and the right-wing Christian communities that form a core pillar of the MAGA tent.”2 Right-wing Christian communities are not known for their embrace of religious pluralism. On the contrary, their view is that you are only truly an American if you adhere to the Christian faith.

Chief among these right-wing Christian communities in the “MAGA tent” is the Christian Nationalist movement, whose members believe that the United States should be a nation dominated by fundamentalist Christian principles. And they mean Christian principles derived from their reading and understanding of the Bible, and no one else’s.

JD Vance is not the only sympathizer or outright supporter of Christian Nationalism in the current administration. Consider the following individuals:

Russell Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and architect of Project 2025, admitted in an interview that he is a close as you can get to a Christian Nationalist: “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism,” Vought said. “That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”

Pete Hegseth – Secretary of the renamed Department of War, is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches co-founded by avowedly Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, whom Hegseth says he supports.

Mike Johnson – The Christian Nationalist ties of the current Speaker of the House of Representatives are detailed in a report prepared by the Congressional Freethought Caucus (CFC) in 2024.3 Johnson takes a very narrow view of First Amendment religious freedom, contending that it only means that the government can’t establish an official religion. Preferring Christian groups over other religions is fine by him, though.

Christian Nationalists are not nation builders; they are government destroyers. Russell Vought has stated that Christian Nationalists need to “deconstruct” the current government and reconstruct it making the presidency the dominant branch (they use the term Unitary Executive), no longer co-equal, but instead, dominant and more powerful than either Congress or the Supreme Court. In effect, the president would be an autocrat or dictator.

Vought wrote that to accomplish this would require “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and identifying OMB as the means of enforcing the president’s agenda. They must “break” the non-partisan bureaucrats and replace them with true believer partisans so that orders will be followed without question or resistance.

Christian Nationalists are not patriots trying to “form a more perfect union” or “promote the general welfare,” or “secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity.” These are power-hungry, nihilistic anarchists who don’t like two of our three branches of government nor most of the loyal Americans who are government employees. They want to destroy our very successful government and replace it with a dictatorship. AND they want to do it in the name of religion.

The founders specifically stated that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…,” and the freedom of religion is linked to the countervailing principle of the separation of church and state. They did this because as students of history they knew the pain, suffering, and chaos that had been wrought over the centuries by religious differences and conflicts in Europe. They were obviously trying to avoid similar problems besetting their new nation.

As a result, the government of the United States was intended to be, and has been for 250 years, secular. This is important in a country determined to operate under the rule of law and the separation of church and state. The problem is, Christian Nationalists cannot do what they want to do so long as the government remains dedicated to secularism. In order to accomplish their goals they must overcome existing laws and traditions, crush the secular government, and replace the non-partisan employees with their hand-picked religious zealots. But will those zealots be followers of this man?

Jesus was a peaceful, radically nonviolent revolutionary who wasn’t American, never spoke English, who hung around lepers, hookers, and crooks, never sought tax cuts for rich Nazarenes, was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer too. Never asked lepers for a co-pay, never called poor people lazy, never even slightly anti gay, never mentioned abortion. Supported paying taxes and was a long-haired, community-organizing, authority-questioning, anti-slut shaming, brown-skinned, Palestinian, unarmed, homeless Jew. But only if you believe what’s actually in the Bible.

— John Fugelsang, author of “Separation of Church and Hate”

If a person claims to be a follower of Jesus, ask these questions: Are they uniters or dividers? Are they builders or destroyers? Are they givers or takers? Are their actions kind or cruel? And finally, are they worthy of our trust and support? Obviously, I think the answer with respect to Christian Nationalists such as Vought, Hegseth, and Johnson, is a resounding, “NO!” But you have to decide for yourself.

In closing, I find it interesting that the least religious president in recent history is surrounded by people like Vought, Hegseth and Johnson, who wear their Christian identity on their sleeves and talk about their devotion to Christian principles while their commander in chief either carries out or condones some of the cruelest acts ever committed by a president of the United States.