Theocracy for Dummies

If you want church-state fusion, the Founders would like a word with you.

America Was Never a Christian Nation

Every time someone insists America is a “Christian nation,” remember that Thomas Jefferson once sat down with a razor blade and literally cut Jesus’ miracles out of the Bible. Water into wine? Gone. Virgin birth? Snipped. Resurrection? Tossed. Jefferson’s DIY scripture, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was basically “Jesus, Life Coach”—no magic, just morals. He read it nightly, privately, like a man who respected the carpenter’s wisdom but had zero patience for the priests’ fairy dust.

This wasn’t an isolated quirk either. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison—none of them fit neatly into the “Christian nation” box. They were Deists, skeptics, or, in Jefferson’s words, in “a sect by myself.” The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) even says it out loud: “The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Ratified unanimously and signed by John Adams. Period. Full Stop. The End.

And yet here we are, two centuries later, still pretending the Founders were closet megachurch pastors.

Schism is the American Religion

If you want the real founding story, start with the Puritans. They broke from the Church of England in the name of religious freedom—only to arrive here and begin excommunicating each other like it was a sport. Massachusetts banishes Roger Williams (abracadabra, Rhode Island!), Quakers got whipped in Boston, and the Massachusetts charter of 1691 allowed liberty of conscience to “all Christians,” except Catholics. The national pastime isn’t baseball; it’s schism.

Multiculturalism: Easy to Say, Harder to Do

This schismatic tradition is the superstructure of our multicultural society. And it’s not just about coexisting languages and cuisines—it’s also about coexisting gods. The result? The promise of freedom of belief always smashes up against the loudest pulpit in the room.

Look at our history: Catholics and Protestants rioted in Philadelphia. Mormons were driven out of Missouri at gunpoint. Mosques were torched after 9/11.

And in the few other countries founded on multiculturalism, the same problems exist. For example, in Israel today, the notion of Jewish democracy clashes with multiple cultural traditions: Orthodox vs. Reform vs. atheists, Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic, and Muslim Arabs often being treated as second-class citizens.

The Real Holy Book

All of which is another way of saying that today’s Christian-nationalist cosplay is absurd. Jefferson cut the miracles out with a pocketknife, and now we’ve got politicians trying to edit the First Amendment out with a Sharpie.

So if you want a theocracy, plenty of those exist. Just not here. Not in our Constitution, anyway. Here, the only altar that matters is the one holding the Bill of Rights. And if America has a national religion, it’s this: you’re free to believe whatever you want, and free to tell your neighbor he’s full of it.

That’s not a flaw in the system—it is the system. Schism is in our DNA. The miracle, if there is one, is that we’re still here, still fighting, still trying to make the experiment work.