Threat of Imposing Religious Law in America Isn't From Muslims, It's Christian Nationalism

Nearly 250 years after the founding of this nation, the United States finds herself at a crossroads, asked to choose between two different visions of what it means to belong to the American family.

One path leads to a Christian nationalist rebranding of America based on the alluring myth of religious and national purity, where Christian and American identities are synonymous, and where Christians are tasked with holding authority over all essential aspects of American civic life.

The other path is a return to America's pluralistic roots and the endeavor to create a society in which people from diverse religious traditions can freely bring their gifts and aspirations to bear on a shared diverse democracy.

Christian nationalists pit Muslim Americans against USA. Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican who has proclaimed that "America is and must always be a Christian nation," recently posted on X: "Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie."

According to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute, 1 in 3 Americans adhere to or sympathize with Christian nationalism. Close to half of White Christians fall into the Christian nationalist camp. Christian nationalists are more likely than other Americans to sympathize with authoritarianism and to subscribe to the "great replacement theory."

The specter of imposing religious law on America isn't coming from Muslims; that threat is actually coming from Christian nationalists. It wasn't Muslims who swarmed the U.S. Capitol trying to overturn a democratic presidential election.

Our founders accepted religious diversity as essential to the pluralistic fabric of the new nation. George Washington promised a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that this new government "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Thomas Jefferson insisted that the rights of many religious communities should be respected, including "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."

Pluralism represents America's foundational vision for intentional collaboration and cooperation across differences. And it sees Muslims and the rich diversity of America's religious communities not as a problem to be solved – but as a promise that points to a more perfect union.