“We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”
Right about now, if you’re a Christian Nationalist, you’re thinking that whoever said that is dangerous and you could never vote for him.
Well, you’re half right. You can’t vote for him because he died 20 years ago this June and the last time he ran for office was 40 years ago. Ironically, he was pretty much the first darling of the Religious Right back in the days when they called themselves the Moral Majority.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, his name was Ronald Reagan.
Whether you supported Reagan’s presidency or not — and I’ll admit I didn’t — I will certainly give the man credit for loving America as the founders created it.
He believed a little too much that rich people were rich because they were better people, although I believe he would have seen through Donald Trump, particularly the Trump who has become a religious figure to the Christian Nationalists.
Reagan didn’t attend church a significant number of times during his eight years in Washington, but he had a fairly reasonable excuse. He said if he went to a church on Sunday mornings, the amount of security required would be at least an annoyance if not a hardship for the other worshippers.
You can’t judge someone’s belief system by their attendance anyway.
Reagan would be persona non grata among the Trumpanzees anyway. He saw Russia as the great evil in the world and would never have had any use for Vladimir Putin. While he wanted immigrants to come into the country legally, he didn’t have a big problem with those who did whatever it took to get here.
After all, this was America.
And to Reagan, the beauty of America — among other things — was that people could believe what they wanted to believe. Or not believe. He himself said church and state are and must remain separate.
Anything else is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Most of the Founders were not Christians, and those who were did not expect this to be a Christian Nation. In fact, they went out of their way to say they had no problem with Mohammadans, the name by which Muslims were known back then.
Christian Nationalism isn’t about freedom. It’s about toeing the line as they see it. Following the rules.
That’s not the American Way.
Just ask Ronald Reagan.