The Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ignorant comments endorsing Christian nationalism.
Greene recently discussed religion and Christian nationalism in America on her show “MLG Live” in a program densely packed with misinformation. During Greene’s radio episode on June 2, she said that there is hopelessness all across the country and that “this hopelessness exists because America turned away from God . . . you can take it all the way back to when they took prayer out of school, when they took prayers away from the beginnings of football games, when they took prayers out of the PTA meetings . . . this was the beginning of the decline in America.”
Greene went on to explicitly endorse Christian nationalism, first conflating the term “nationalism” with patriotism by asking, “Is there something wrong with loving your country?” She continued: “Nationalism is a good thing. . . . We should be proud of nationalism . . . and, lastly, we should be most proud of Christianity. So if Christian nationalism is something to be scared of, they’re lying to you.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation strongly disagrees with such a perspective.
“Loving your country is not nationalism,” Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker write to Greene. “Nationalism is what led Europe into centuries of endless wars over imagined borders and notions of national superiority. Like the unification of state and church, this is an embarrassing misstep in European history that Americans should be proud we have learned from. Nationalism is inherently divisive and dangerous.”
Greene is falsely equating patriotism with piety and calling the United States a Christian nation. In reality, separating state and church is the Founders’ most uniquely American vision. The framers of the U.S. Constitution deliberately excluded any mention of a deity or Christianity, aware of the centuries of wars and crusades when state and aligned with church in Europe, and the persecution due to religion in most of the original colonies.
Further, Greene repeated a tired, long debunked trope about America “taking prayer out of schools” and blamed this for America’s “decline,” romanticizing a time when schools were segregated, women in the workforce were discriminated against, and same-sex relationships were criminalized.
A recent survey found that 21 percent of Americans born after 1999 are atheist or agnostic, and three in 10 adults have no religious affiliation. Greene represents all Georgians, including those who do not share her personal religious beliefs, and she should not imply that non-Christians are second-class citizens because of their religious identity or lack thereof, FFRF insists.
Read FFRF’s letter to Rep. Greene here.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 36,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 500 members in Georgia and an Atlanta-area chapter. FFRF protects the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism.
