America’s previous longtime consensus for universal religious freedom is fraying.
asserted
consensus → fray → freedom
Policies that targeted traditional Christian merchants who would not cater to same-sex nuptials or shuttered Catholic adoption agencies for similar reasons foreshadowed the end of the consensus.
asserted
shuttered → target → consensus
Those challenges came from the secular left.
asserted
challenges → come → left
Now some religious conservatives are disputing America’s traditional commitment to religious freedom for all.
asserted
conservatives → dispute → all
In recent years, small numbers of often highly educated young men have embraced Catholic integralism or Protestant confessional statism, sometimes self-identifying as Christian nationalism.
asserted
numbers → educate → nationalism
The former aspires to a society that, as in medieval times, makes the Catholic Church paramount, including in matters of civil law.
asserted
Church → aspire → law
The latter, often romanticizing John Calvin’s Geneva or Puritan New England, wants a government specifically committed to their version of Christianity.
asserted
latter → romanticize → Christianity
Both groups would restrict non-Christians and punish blasphemers and heretics in civil law.
asserted
groups → restrict → law
Both groups think “liberalism,” with its assumption of legal equality and freedom of speech for all, has failed.
asserted
liberalism → think → all
Both groups have gained outsized attention thanks to our current “postliberal” political moment.
asserted
groups → gain → moment
Postliberal Catholic integralists typically think American democracy, founded on Protestant and Enlightenment principles, was flawed from the start.
asserted
democracy → think → start
Postliberal Protestant Christian nationalists try to claim the founders were fine with religious establishments and legal privilege for Christians.
uncertain
founders → try → Christians
These arguments had seemed confined to the margins of religious conservatism.
asserted
arguments → seem → conservatism
But recently, Al Mohler, president of America’s second-largest seminary, has aligned with their cause.
asserted
Mohler → align → cause
In 2024, Mohler shared a platform at the annual National Conservatism Conference with Doug Wilson, the patriarch of Protestant confessional state Christian nationalism.
asserted
Mohler → share → nationalism
“I want to maximize the Christian commitments of the state,” Mohler said at the National Conservatism convo.
asserted
Mohler → want → convo
“I call that ‘acknowledgment.’
asserted
I → call → that
I’m not claiming that every citizen will be a confessing Christian, but that does not mean they are not obligated to the acknowledgment of the Christian structure of this civilization.”
asserted
they → claim → civilization
Mohler said America’s Christian origins should be written into the Constitution, that office holders should be required to uphold this recognition, and blasphemy should be punished in civil law.
asserted
blasphemy → say → law
“I believe they [U.S. laws] should be acknowledged as Christian and they should be legitimately Christian based upon the very ontological affirmations that were necessary for the American experiment to begin,” Mohler said in August as part of a panel of the book’s contributors at Wilson’s college in Moscow, Idaho.
asserted
Mohler → believe → Moscow
Denying God’s role in America is “blasphemy against the state,” he said, which, in the book, he said should be criminalized.
asserted
he → deny → book
This development stunned many, since Baptists are historically champions of religious freedom.
asserted
Baptists → stun → freedom
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were motivated to overturn Virginia’s state church in favor of religious freedom for all by the imprisonment of unregistered Baptist preachers.
asserted
Madison → motivate → preachers
The Southern Baptist Convention has a specific teaching against religious establishment and laws against blasphemy.
asserted
Convention → have → blasphemy
The longtime former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, Richard Land, himself a prominent conservative religious leader, wrote that Mohler’s view contradicted the Southern Baptist Convention’s “Faith and Message.”
asserted
view → write → Faith
It says: “The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind.”
asserted
state → say → kind
And Land noted that under a Christian religious test for public office, “Thomas Jefferson, a Unitarian, would be disqualified from holding office, much less being president.”
asserted
Jefferson → note → office
Responding to the brouhaha, Mohler announced that he “blew it” in backing civil laws against blasphemy.
asserted
he → respond → blasphemy
He wrote, “As a Baptist, I would never want to coerce religious belief — period.”
asserted
I → write → belief
It’s unclear whether he still supports writing Christianity into the U.S. Constitution.
uncertain
he → ’ → Constitution
Either way, the episode shows that touting legal privilege for Christians is now entering mainstream conversation.
asserted
touting → show → conversation
In 2023, Wilson’s Canon Press, published The Case for Christian Nationalism, which argued that state establishment is historic Protestant teaching.
asserted
establishment → publish → Nationalism
Its author, Stephen Wolfe, said civil punishment for blasphemy and heresy could include the death penalty.
uncertain
punishment → say → penalty
In 2025, James Baird, ordained in the mainstream conservative Presbyterian Church of America, published King of Kings: A Reformed Guide to Christian Government, which also argues for state establishment and anti-blasphemy laws.
asserted
which → ordain → establishment
Baird’s denomination in June released a preliminary report rejecting this form of Christian nationalism, saying: “The church is not called to direct the affairs of the state, nor the state the affairs of the Church.”
asserted
state → release → Church
Can careful denominational reports counter-bracing, more revolutionary influencers, who often have a wider reach? Clearly these arguments for legally privileging Christianity are not going away anytime soon.
asserted
arguments → brace → Christianity
Last October, Wilson told Ross Douthat in The New York Times that he’s fine to wait 500 years for a Christian confessional state in America.
asserted
he → tell → America
In March, he told a Catholic podcaster that, ideally, Catholic Marian processions would be illegal since they are, according to Wilson’s brand of Calvinism, idolatrous.
uncertain
they → tell → Calvinism
In February, Wilson preached at the Pentagon, hosted by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, who belongs to the denomination Wilson founded.
asserted
Wilson → preach → denomination
We can only hope that with time, George Washington’s famous reassurance to the Jews of Rhode Island that the U.S. government “gives to bigotry no sanction” will again prevail by consensus.
asserted
government → hope → consensus
…and 4 more, not listed.
The Aporia
