I have read a few articles recently making the case for religion in the United States. A 2024 Gallup Poll found that 3 in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, which is down significantly from religious attendance just a few decades ago. Some people are apparently freaked out about that. In particular, I have noted that conservative politicians in this country are pushing for a “Christian” society. There are a lot of problems with that.

First and foremost, it is dangerous. This is an obvious ploy, an additional prong in the fascist attack on our entire system of governance. It ignores the fact that by law we have separation of church and state in this country. No one religion is mentioned or specified in our Constitution for a reason, and the only mention of religion at all states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In other words, our legislative body can neither dictate that we all follow one specific religion, nor can it prohibit anyone from practicing whatever religion they choose to practice. There is a lot of English history behind that, and it’s one of the reasons we founded a new nation–so no one could lose out on government or business positions based on the religion with which they were affiliated–a problem the Brits had after the establishment of the Church of England.

Moreover, what is astounding is the rank hypocrisy of the call for U.S. citizens to become Christian or behave in Christian ways coming from the most corrupt politicians in Washington–to whit, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Tom Cotton, Mike Scalise, Lindsay Graham, Pete Hegseth, Steven Miller, Karoline Leavitt, and others. Honestly, if a “just god” existed, he or she would have struck all of them down with lightening by now.

Second, religion has historically been used to control and manipulate the masses with ease. Fear is a powerful weapon. If you get people to believe in a vengeful god that will hurt them if they get out of line or damn them to hell if they don’t accept all his teachings, it is spectacularly easy to “interpret” the Bible from the pulpit in ways that actually align with whatever political winds are blowing. I have seen it in action. I was raised evangelical Christian. You’d be surprised how easy it is to justify discrimination against the gay community or the abuse and suppression of women. Women are, after all, temptresses, evil by nature, and of course men are to be the head of the household. If you weren’t raised with these false conceptions, what I just wrote sounds obnoxious and outlandish. But trust me, that is precisely what they believe. And if they feel the need to discriminate against black or brown people (in white evangelical churches), as well as trans people and others who just don’t quite fit in, they’ll do it. Eugenics is a thing with them too.

Before everyone gets there panties in a knot, to be clear, not every church behaves that way collectively, and I have many Christian friends who are incredible, loving people who would never subscribe to such beliefs or actions. They actually follow the teachings of Christ, which were inclusive of “the least of these.” They care for the poor and the sick. They live a life of service to their fellow humans. Not so in the church in which I was raised, and I’ve discovered there are a lot of churches like my old church around, which aren’t even hiding their discriminatory beliefs and practices.

Third, politicians and others on the right have consistently used religious objections to endanger women’s lives. Yes, I am speaking about abortion. When a woman does not have bodily autonomy, when the government in essence controls what kind of healthcare she gets and, frankly, whether she lives or dies, that is the essence of slavery and tantamount to femicide. But they frequently use religion as the underpinning of their argument for denying women the ability to make life and death medical decisions with their doctors. It is incredibly cynical for people who are trying to control women and essentially enslave them economically and physically, to tell them they need to “turn back to god.” How about you mind your own business and stop deliberately making our lives unnecessarily difficult?

A while back I watched an interview with a man by the name of Ross Douthat, author of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” (Don’t get me started on the childishness of the title alone.) He stated that politics have taken the place of religion for many people, asserting (and I believe this is may be true) that 60 or 70 years ago people worried about their daughter or son marrying someone from a different religion, and now they worry about their daughter or son marrying someone from a different political party. Mr. Douthat stated, “Politics has become a primary attachment in our lives, and religion a secondary one. And what that does, and you mentioned kids…kids in America, this is the first generation raised in large numbers…without any kind of direct connection to organized religion. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that out of that you get a generation that is more anxious, more depressed, and more worried in this fundamental way about what is a human being’s place in the universe. What is my metaphysical horizon. What is the point of life. Which are questions that in fact religion is there to answer.”

Mr. Douthat is apparently deliberately overlooking other factors: the rise of social media and the documented mental anguish and psychological harm it causes, the infiltration of video games and TikTok, the reduction of everything to 6-second soundbites, and the horrifically shortened attention spans. Not to mention the oft-unmentioned creeping understanding of the hypocrisy of our forebears who, when all is said and done, did everything they could to extract every last succulent ounce from our economy and society, then left us with the bill in a proverbial, “I got mine, you get yours.” People in their 20’s, 30’s, and even 40’s, who have what used to be considered middle-class jobs are no longer able to buy a home. Even with two incomes. Conservatives in this country have consistently, over the last 40+ years, shifted the system so the rich get richer and the burden to support society has increasingly fallen on the middle class. It has made it more difficult, year over year, for the middle class to succeed in any meaningful way. We are worse off than our parents. They did not leave us a better world, and we have to bear the brunt of their ruthless greed on a dying planet with few options left to fix it.

This leads to a lot of anxiety, depression, frustration, and anger. Social media exacerbates that. Companies, whose executives enjoy more benefits and higher pay by making their workers do more with less, and market to peoples’ miseries to sell more shit that may make them happy momentarily but push them further into debt in the long run. More anxiety. More depression. More fear, frustration, anger.

Religion doesn’t fix that. It alleviates none of that. It is a temporary reprieve at best, and in many cases it isn’t even that.

Fast forward to the most recent abomination of a National Day of Prayer–a Christian prayer rally and political event dubbed, “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving”–held on the National Mall on May 17, 2026, backed by the White House and aimed to, “rededicate America as one nation under God”. I have never witnessed a more blatant violation of separation of church and state, nor a more terrifying blurring of the lines in this country in my life. And I cannot find another similar example in our history. We are in uncharted territory now.

One of many reasons the rule of law needs to be secular and separate from religious practice is that the rule of law draws very distinct lines and cannot be swayed by religious argument, which is variable. The rule of law is more concrete and, in theory at least, applies to everyone equally. Of course this is not wholly true, but it is the aspiration which is more accessible than nebulous and variable religious law.

Consider this: it is estimated that there are between 45,000 and 49,000 of sects of Christianity worldwide. Why? Because people interpret the Bible differently, and it is dreadfully easy to do so. For instance, Baptists believe babies cannot be baptized because they are not old enough to make an outward expression of faith, which is what they believe a baptism is. But babies can be dedicated, which is a promise by the parents and members of the church to raise them in Christian practices and teach them “Biblical truth.” Lutherans baptize infants because they believe that creates faith in the heart of the infant. Methodists and Calvinists also baptize infants but for different reasons. This may seem like a silly, minor distinction to most, but to these people it is serious business. More importantly, however, all of them read the same Bible, and they all come away with different interpretations. And the permutations of differences on various topics are vast, hence the multiplicity of denominations.

Let that sink in as you contemplate exactly how a nation of “Christian” laws would function.

It would not, because everyone has a different idea of what Christianity is, even within each individual sect.

I believe this new push for becoming “religious,” a.k.a. becoming a Christian in the United States is a three-pronged approach. 1. Controlling the public under a centralized system of belief. 2. Suppressing women in particular, as well as minorities, which is easy to do if you ignore the teachings of Christ and focus on the letters from the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians and, of course, Leviticus. 3. Setting up a Christian version of Sharia Law in America to ensure dissenters are summarily punished and/or silenced, which causes everyone else to fall in line after the first few examples are made. Or so they, the powers that be, hope.

Once a person or group has consolidated power unto themselves, they are loathe to relinquish it. While George Washington willingly stepped aside when he could have retained control of the presidency of the United States, he is a rare albeit important example of appropriate behavior.

Powerful people have historically used religion as a mechanism for controlling the population. And when powerful people invoke “God,” it is difficult to overcome any argument they make when they have “God” on their side. How does a mere human overcome the Divine? Yet, overcome the argument we must if “we the people” are to live freely in a democratic republic. If the government controls religion, it eliminates the validity and purpose of religion by turning it into a tool for controlling a population, rather than a mechanism for conveying meaning and purpose to people. If religion controls government, it becomes an unruly abomination untethered by restraint, cloaked in divine will, unfettered by the boundaries of secular law, and free to commit atrocities. We have seen that repeatedly in human history. And that is why maintaining separation between the free practice of religion and a secular government is so important.