LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
American religious history scholar Randall Balmer said religion flourishes when the government stays out of it. “My field is American religious history,” Balmer said. “This keeps me employed. I am very, very happy about this.”
At 2 p.m. Monday in the Hall of Philosophy, Balmer — Episcopal priest, John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee — delivered a lecture on “irreconcilable differences, Christian nationalism and the First Amendment.” He began by citing quotations from politicians that demonstrate opposition to the separation of church and state — first from President Donald Trump, then Vice President JD Vance.
Balmer’s lecture was structured as first identifying sources of justification for Christian nationalism — defined as the notion that the United States is, always has been and should only ever be a Christian nation — and refuting each of these claims with evidence throughout history.
Balmer explored the question of who’s propagating Christian nationalism, calling David Barton “the main culprit.” Balmer said the author and evangelical Christian political activist “claims to be a historian who has been able to ‘figure out’ that the United States was founded as a Christian nation by Christians.” Balmer said Barton wrote a book that was “so riddled with errors,” which included quotations both out of context and “fabricated out of thin air,” that his conservative publisher withdrew it from publication in 2013, and The New York Times withdrew it from its bestselling list.
“Think about how bad a book has to be to be withdrawn from The New York Times bestselling list,” Balmer said.
Nonetheless, Balmer said Barton “has the ear of many very powerful people.”
Balmer discussed historical refutations for Christian nationalist rhetoric. As a counter to Barton’s claim that U.S. founders were overwhelmingly evangelical Christian, Balmer cited quotes from Thomas Jefferson that express opposition to the “corruptions of Christianity.”
“None of the founders would be welcome in any of the churches now agitating for Christian nationalism,” Balmer said.
Balmer described the discussions the U.S. founders had in order to decide the configuration of church and state. Balmer quoted James Madison, who at the time of the nation’s founding, said, “Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world by vain attempts of the secular arm to extinguish religious discord by proscribing all difference in religious opinions.”
Recognizing other nations’ religion-based conflicts, Balmer said they sought to avoid this with what he called a “radically new idea” — separation between church and state.
Giving evidence of religious diversity early in U.S. history as another piece of evidence that challenges Christian nationalist arguments, Balmer tied all of his counterpoints to the “16 words” he deems as “transformative” and “America’s best idea”: the first portion of the First Amendment.
“I like to say I wish the current Supreme Court had half as much deference to the First Amendment as it does to the Second,” Balmer said, adding, “Do you think they heard that?”
He mentioned the “National Reform Association” and “Woman’s Temperance Christian Union” to exemplify attempts to subvert the First Amendment and separation of church and state that gained traction but were ultimately shut down once they reached federal review.
Regarding Christian nationalists today, Balmer talked about their strategy of working through Republican-led states to enact legislation that favors the supermajority. He said that activists for Christian nationalism continue to mobilize and plan to enact policy change at various levels.
Balmer said the separation of church and state is practical and works well. He said a Christian nation would prohibit abortion, same-sex marriage, divorce and perhaps individual voting rights. He said while support of these principles lean “more radical,” Christian nationalists’ underlying belief is that U.S. code should be rewritten according to biblical law; this would entail capital punishment for crimes such as adultery and homosexuality, he said.
“I think the First Amendment, separation of church and state, has shielded
the government from religious factionalism and contestation.”
He said the U.S. founders’ concepts of church and state separation built on the writings of Roger Williams, 17th-century Baptist theologian and founder of the Rhode Island colony. Balmer cited a foundational quote from Williams: “When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself … and made His garden a wilderness as at this day.”
He said this quote’s representation of the state as “wilderness” indicates Williams’ principle concern, which is protecting the integrity of the faith. He said Williams recognized the risk of faith being “trivialized” and “fetishized” in public and governmental spaces.
Balmer ended with a quote from former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. Sandra Day O’ Connor about removing the separation of church and state: “Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
