All Hail — Fascism and Gospel Teachings

I truly believe that a person does not go out of their way to be bad. I know that there are expressions of ecumenicalism throughout the United States—across many different faiths—that reflect that. Yet we also see the same tradition invoked to justify the prosperity gospel, the rationality of slavery, alt-right and white nationalist ideology, and anti-gay and anti-woman sentiment. How does an ideology built on loving thy neighbor, feeding and clothing the sick, and the idea that material wealth on earth is the furthest from heaven a person can be get bent into its opposite?

When good people do evil: belief as the lever

Sam Harris argues in The End of Faith that the only time an otherwise sane, rational, and good person is led to commit atrocities is when their faith in their cause or dogma convinces them it was right. It isn’t that evil is done only by evil people. Belief is what allows otherwise good people to commit evil without remorse.

That’s a claim we can test against history and psychology: when identity and dogma fuse, in-group loyalty and sacred cause can override the same moral intuitions that would normally hold people back. The point isn’t to condemn faith as such—ecumenical and humble practice exists across traditions—but to notice when certainty in one’s cause becomes the permission slip for harm.

The disconnect: Gospels vs. modern Christian expression

The Gospels record a set of teachings that are hard to miss: love thy neighbor; care for the least of these; the rich man and the needle’s eye—material wealth on earth as the furthest from heaven; rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s; a kingdom not of this world; service, not domination. Whatever one’s theology, the texts themselves emphasize neighbor-love, solidarity with the poor and sick, and skepticism of earthly power and wealth.

Yet “Christian” in public life often signals something else: prosperity gospel (wealth as blessing), historical and sometimes ongoing rationales for slavery, alt-right and white nationalist rhetoric wrapped in Christian symbolism, and anti-gay and anti-woman sentiment framed as biblical. There is a visible disconnect between what the Gospels say and how the label gets used.

How the bend happens

How does an ideology rooted in love of neighbor, care for the sick, and suspicion of wealth get bent into prosperity gospel, slavery apologetics, and authoritarian nationalism? The mechanisms aren’t mysterious: selective reading, power interests, and the human tendency to use identity and scripture to justify what we already want. The same book that says “love your enemy” has been used to justify conquest; the same tradition that elevates “the least of these” has been used to rationalize hierarchy and exclusion. That’s not a critique of Jesus or the texts—it’s a critique of how easily teachings get weaponized when they’re fused with political and tribal loyalty.

All hail: fascism and fealty

Fascism and strongman politics demand “all hail”—unquestioning loyalty to the leader and the tribe. That demand is the opposite of the Gospel picture of a kingdom not of this world, of rendering to Caesar only what is Caesar’s, and of serving the least rather than worshipping the powerful. When Christian symbolism is draped over that kind of loyalty, the gap between the teachings and the practice is not a small one. Naming that gap is not anti-religious; it’s evidence-based. What do the texts say? What is being claimed in their name? The contrast is the story.

Historical context vs. modern trends

The United States was not founded as a Christian theocracy. The founding generation had lived under or studied European states where established churches enforced doctrine, persecuted dissent, and entangled religious authority with political power. The move they made was the opposite: to build a republic on the separation of church and state, so that no sect could use government to impose its creed. Today we see a counter-movement—a push toward public religiosity, “Christian nation” rhetoric, and policy framed in explicitly religious terms. That shift is not a return to what the Founders built. It is a turn away from it.

The Founders on Christianity, faith, and God

Many of the key Founders held deistic or broadly rationalist views: a Creator or “Nature’s God,” but skepticism toward revelation, miracles, and sectarian dogma. They valued reason and evidence; several were deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. That doesn’t mean they were atheists—they often invoked “Providence” or “the Almighty”—but they did not ground the new government in Christian doctrine or biblical law.

Jefferson cut his own “Bible” that kept the moral teachings of Jesus and stripped miracles and divinity—a project in reason and ethics, not orthodoxy. Madison and Jefferson led the charge against religious establishment in Virginia and later at the national level. Washington wrote of “every one conducting himself as a good citizen” regardless of “religious professions and worship.” Adams described the government as “made for the people” and “founded on their authority,” not on divine right or scripture. The Constitution itself contains no mention of God or Christianity; the only religious clause is the First Amendment’s prohibition of establishment and guarantee of free exercise. The design was secular government—neutral among faiths—so that belief could flourish without any one faith ruling.

Thomas Paine: religion and reason

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense helped galvanize the Revolution; his The Age of Reason (1794–1795) applied the same appeal to reason to religion. He argued for a Creator accessible through nature and conscience, and against revelation, miracles, and institutional religion as sources of authority. He was not alone among the era’s thinkers in treating reason and evidence as the standard—and treating claims that “God said it” as insufficient without reason and moral consistency. Paine was attacked for his views, but his influence on republican thought and on the idea that citizens could think for themselves in matters of belief was real. The nation’s origin is bound up with that strand of rational, anti-dogmatic, and anti-establishment thinking—not with the claim that America was founded as a Christian state.

What the nation was founded on: separation of church and state

The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Founders had seen established churches abroad and in some colonies; they chose to bar the federal government from picking a faith or favoring one sect over another. Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” and Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom framed the principle: belief is a matter of conscience; government has no business imposing or endorsing religion. That is what the nation was truly founded on in this dimension—not on Christianity as state creed, but on the separation of church and state so that no religious faction could use the state to enforce its doctrine. Free exercise protects the believer; establishment clause protects everyone from a state-sponsored faith.

Theocratic oligarchy or democratic collapse in the name of God

When political power is justified by “God’s will” or “biblical law” rather than by the consent of the governed and the equal rights of citizens, the door opens to theocratic oligarchy—rule by a group that claims divine mandate and treats dissent as sin or treason. History is full of such regimes: established churches, religious tests for office, persecution of heretics and minorities. The American experiment was meant to avoid that by keeping state and sect apart. When we hear calls to “restore” America as a “Christian nation,” to base law on one tradition’s reading of scripture, or to treat nonbelievers or the wrong kind of believers as less American, we are not hearing the Founders. We are hearing a move toward the very thing they designed against: the use of government to enforce one faith’s vision, which is a form of democratic collapse—replacing pluralism and rights with “in God’s name.” The risk is not religion in public life; it is religion as the basis for who rules and who is excluded. That way lies theocracy, not democracy.

Where this goes next