When our nation’s Founders took the revolutionary step of creating a republic with no state religion, they likely never envisioned how religiously diverse the nation would become. Drive around my hometown of Fort Worth, or any populous Texas city, and you’ll see Muslim mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples, Sikh gurdwaras, and Jewish synagogues, as well as Christian churches of all sizes and varieties.
Once-predominant Christians now account for less than two-thirds of Americans, and their faith has fragmented into hundreds of denominations that differ over theology, morality, and politics. One out of 15 Americans now belongs to a religion other than Christianity. Almost a third of Americans don’t identify with any particular religion, yet belief still flourishes. Over half of Americans consider religion very important in daily life; that share struggles to reach 20 percent in other economically advanced nations.
As America grows more religiously diverse, the Founders’ decision to separate church and state looks increasingly wise. Though it’s easy to spot flaws in the Founders themselves and the Constitution they crafted (the Electoral College, for instance, or the three-fifths clause), what Thomas Jefferson called the “wall of separation” was one thing they definitely got right.
Two centuries on, it’s easy to overlook just how novel that wall was in its day. Whereas both America’s adversary (Britain) and main ally (France) in the Revolutionary War officially endorsed one religion (the Church of England and the Catholic Church, respectively), the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibited the “establishment” of such an official religion, instead guaranteeing individuals’ right to freely practice their own beliefs. The Founders also went against the grain in prohibiting any religious tests for holding public office, a requirement both in Britain and in many of the states at the time (North Carolina and Georgia, for instance, restricted public office to Protestant Christians).
As historian Steven K. Green notes, leading clergy of the day attacked the Constitution’s “irreligious” character—particularly the fact that, unlike most public documents of the time, including the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, it neither invokes nor mentions a deity.
Scholars and jurists have long debated how church-state separation should be interpreted and applied, but it remains a cornerstone of our democracy. And it’s one worth keeping, according to most Americans. Fifty-four percent want the federal government to enforce church-state separation; 69 percent believe the United States should never declare an official religion—and with good reason: Just imagine the mess if the government tried to foist one religious group’s beliefs on so varied a people.
Yet that’s effectively what Christian nationalists are attempting to do today. This largely white evangelical movement, which holds sway in GOP politics, especially here in Texas, seeks conservative Christian domination over law and public policy.
Despite contrary evidence offered by mainstream historians, many leading Texas lawmakers and politicos apparently agree with Aledo-based David Barton that church-state separation is a “myth” liberals and secularists concocted to conceal the Founders’ alleged intent to create an explicitly Christian nation. The Texas GOP has pledged to work “toward dispelling” this purported myth. Both Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and state Senator Mayes Middleton, a Galveston Republican, have declared there is “no such thing” as church-state separation.
At the Capitol, Texas lawmakers have sought to weaken Jefferson’s wall, especially in public education. In 2021, they required “In God We Trust” be posted in public schools. In 2023, lawmakers authorized school districts to hire chaplains as counselors, with no prohibition on proselytizing. In 2024, the State Board of Education gave its blessing to a “Bible-infused” K-5 curriculum featuring instructional materials more appropriate for Sunday school than public schools. And last year, lawmakers mandated that all public schools display one religious tradition’s sacred text—the Ten Commandments—and provide a daily period for prayer and Scripture reading.
These measures arguably promote one religion over others, and religion over non-religion, threatening to turn students, families, and teachers who don’t subscribe to Christian-nationalist religiosity into outsiders in their own public schools and communities.
As a recent book, Randall Balmer’s America’s Best Idea: Separation of Church and State, makes clear, what the author calls our “best idea” was no deus ex machina; it emerged from a particular history and particular coalitional forces. America’s “grand experiment of constructing a government without … an established religion,” Balmer writes, grew from an alliance of “two unlikely camps,” secular rationalists and—ironically—evangelicals.
The latter group had their own history of persecution under state religion. In colonial Virginia, where the Church of England was the established religion, “a sheriff brutally horsewhipped a Baptist minister,” Balmer recounts as an example. Quaker William Penn, persecuted in Britain by the Church of England, and Baptist Roger Williams, who suffered at the hands of Puritan colonial officials, worked to free people from the yoke of official religion; they established colonies (Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, respectively) that offered religious freedom, setting a precedent for the later First Amendment.
Secular, Enlightenment-minded Founders like James Madison had their own reasons for rejecting state religion. They needed to accommodate the religious diversity already present in the new nation, where religious groups “rang[ed] from Catholics and Moravians to Jews, Quakers, and Dutch Reformed—and perhaps hundreds more.” Moreover, Madison linked religious establishment with political tyranny and violence; he wrote that “torrents of blood” had been spilled in official religion’s “vain attempt” to proscribe religious differences.
In rejecting official religion, the Founders created what Balmer calls a “free marketplace of religion”: Since no religious group holds a state-sanctioned monopoly over religious life, “religious groups … compete for adherents on an equal footing.”
Pushback to the Founders’ free-market approach, though, does have a long history. In the 19th century, for instance, the elaborately named National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution pushed for explicit acknowledgment of Christ’s will as the law of the land. Though this group’s efforts failed, it foreshadowed today’s Christian nationalism.
Then and now, Christian nationalists threaten a system that has actually benefited both government and religion. Though Americans haven’t always lived up to the promise of religious tolerance, we have been spared widespread sectarian bloodshed. Meanwhile, “religion has flourished in America,” Balmer writes, “precisely because the government (for the most part, at least) has stayed out of the religion business.”
Separation has perhaps benefited no group more than evangelicals themselves. They have proved far more adept than other groups at adjusting to social and technological changes (think of their adroit use of digital media or their move to megachurches featuring multisensory worship experiences). And, of course, there’s the unprecedented political power evangelicals wield, especially here in Texas.
So why the eagerness of many evangelicals to kill the golden goose of separation? Balmer blames evangelical leaders’ (and President Donald Trump’s) “rhetoric of victimization.” However, he leaves unanswered the question of why they find such rhetoric so compelling. Other scholars offer possible answers. For instance, Glenn Bracey and my Baker Institute colleague Michael Emerson contend that Christian nationalists are defending a “religion of whiteness” against religious and racial diversity. Alternatively, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue that Christian nationalism is less about religion than the pursuit of power.
Like other bedrock principles of our democracy—say, the separation of powers or freedom of the press, both also under threat today—church-state separation was born of mixed motives, has not always lived up to its own promise, and remains subject to shifting interpretations. At times, it has functioned more as a hedge than an impermeable wall (as when a Cold War Congress made “In God We Trust” the national motto). Yet, it’s no myth. It has prevented any one religion from gaining a state-sanctioned monopoly in the religious marketplace, and that has served us well, fostering a pluralism that makes us stronger and freer. As Jefferson’s wall faces perhaps its most severe tests to date, it is up to all of us, religious and nonreligious alike, to speak out in its defense.
