Eight years ago today, we got a glimpse of what a white Christian Nationalist America would look like: lawless, cruel, dystopian. The newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed the first infamous “Muslim Ban” then. Families, students, refugees and others were detained, separated from loved ones and deported for their faith.
When President Joe Biden revoked the Muslim ban, he condemned it as “inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.” But the white Christian Nationalists are back with a vengeance.
The original Muslim Ban, Executive Order 13769, banned people from seven Muslim-majority countries from the United States and shut down the refugee program, which had in recent years welcomed growing numbers of Muslims. The refugee ban had a telling exception for “religious minorit[ies]” – i.e., Christians, given the unfolding refugee crises in Muslim-majority countries.
The Muslim Ban followed a campaign in which Trump fanned anti-Muslim hatred, equated all Muslims with violent extremists, and called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” When asked during a debate whether he intended to ban Muslims, he stated that he will be calling it “extreme vetting.” He later said, “We’re having problems with the Muslims, and we’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country.” On the day of the executive order, Trump confirmed that he intended to prioritize Christian over Muslim refugees.
The Muslim Ban was a low point for America’s commitment to church-state separation and a victory for white Christian Nationalists. Among the most fervent white Christian Nationalist, known as “adherents,” 77% would prefer to live in a country primarily made up of Christians and 81% believe in the “replacement theory” that immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”
Americans United fought the ban in court, and continued to fight until Biden revoked it.
But now the white Christian Nationalists are back in power, and they are again manipulating immigration law to advance their vision of the United States as a country for white Christians. The 2024 Republican Party platform foreshadowed as much, promising to not only bring back the Muslim Ban but also to use immigration laws and “extreme vetting” against “foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists” and “jihadist and jihadist sympathizers” (a term that Trump deploys as an epithet for all Muslims).
An executive order that Trump signed last week lays that groundwork. It again calls for extreme vetting and requires agencies to identify nationalities to ban from the United States. Even more ominously, the order targets those who “bear hostile attitudes towards [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” and those who “seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment.”
We should all be very concerned. Just last week, Trump attacked Episcopal Bishop the Right Rev. Mariann Budde for a sermon she gave in the exercise of her free speech and religion. U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) tweeted that the bishop “should be added to the deportation list” – even though she is a U.S. citizen. When the white Christian Nationalists say they will use immigration laws against people with hostile attitudes toward America, they mean anyone who disagrees with their agenda.
As we saw in the energy of the crowds protesting at the airports after the first Muslim Ban, this is not the country that Americans want. We may be facing dark times, but when the white Christian Nationalists overreach, Americans will rise up against them. We do need a wall – and it’s the wall between church and state. That’s the best way to stop the white Christian Nationalist agenda.
