In the 1990s and into the 2000s, I spent a lot of time infiltrating the meetings of Christian Nationalist groups like the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council and others. I often wrote about my experiences in the pages of Church & State.
These events tended to attract crowds that were — how shall I put this? — “uniform.” The attendees were overwhelmingly white and older. Just about all of them identified as fundamentalist Christians. If there were LGBTQ+ people there, they were doing the same thing as me — spying.
A spirit of fear and hate hung over these gatherings. I remember sitting in a cavernous ballroom in a Washington, D.C., hotel and listening to speaker after speaker drone on about the enemy du jour: feminists, liberals, members of the LGBTQ+ community, public school teachers, university professors, the media, non-believers and so on.
These events were designed to keep people in a state of agitation. Attendees were constantly told that the only way to keep America intact was to vote for the candidates favored by these organizations (always far-right Republicans). If you failed to do this, the country would literally fall apart.
The cognitive dissonance sometimes made my head want to explode. I heard people extol “family values” – and then a moment later talk about how they had cut off their own LGBTQ+ children. I heard speakers talk about the importance of education — and then advocate defunding public schools and libraries. I heard attendees claim to stand for “religious freedom” — and then push for policies that would enshrine their particular brand of Christianity into law and relegate everyone else to second-class citizenship.
For the past three years, Americans United has hosted the Summit for Religious Freedom (SRF), a gathering that could not be more different than those Christian Nationalist events I attended. The most recent SRF last month was like all the others: We welcomed our differences — heck, we celebrated them. We were young and old. We were Black, white and brown. We were straight, gay, non-binary and transgender. We were affluent, middle class and low-income. We were Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Wiccan, Atheist, Humanist, Hindu, unaffiliated and everything else.
At Christian Nationalist meetings, attendees cowered in fear of the words diversity, equity and inclusion. At SRF, we embraced those terms because we know they represent the best of America: We are diverse. We strive for equal treatment for all. We want everyone to be a full partner in the American experiment.
Rather than a program based on fear and hate, SRF offered stories and words of hope. We celebrated young people who have made a difference. We acknowledged brave citizens who are serving as plaintiffs in AU lawsuits. We energized local activists and lifted up clergy voices.
Make no mistake, at SRF we acknowledged what we’re up against. We need a clear-eyed assessment of the threats we face, and SRF provided that. And our speakers pulled no punches when it came to calling out the threat of Christian Nationalism.
But it struck me that the one thing missing from SRF was the idea of exclusivity. At the Christian Nationalist gatherings I’ve attended, the message is, “We (right-wing, fundamentalist) Christians founded this nation. We assume all privilege. We will control the government. You will live under our theology’s rules. Whatever rights you have come at our sufferance.”
There’s a lot wrong with that, of course. (For starters, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation.) It also stands in stark contrast to SRF’s inclusive message. Our message is, “Come on in! Join us. You are welcome here.” Our message is that your religion/philosophy, your culture and your life experiences greatly enhance the American mosaic. We are a strong and mighty nation because of diversity, not in spite of it.
People often ask me if I am worried about the situation today. Of course I am. The Supreme Court is steadily rolling back the separation of church and state, and we are in for some rough years ahead, to be sure.
Despite all this, I remain optimistic that we will find our way back — although it may take some time. Here’s why: The America the Supreme Court is trying to foist on us doesn’t work. It fails to honor the promise of the First Amendment and protect the rights of everyone, Christian and non-Christian, religious and non-religious. Simply put, in a nation this diverse, no other way of ordering church and state can work for us. We will return to separation because we must.
Because it does not work, the combination of church and state long sought by Christian Nationalists may sputter along for a few years, but it cannot stand; it will fall. And at SRF, I met an amazing new generation of leaders who will spearhead the work of making sure it fails, and who will then rebuild the church-state wall.
I will be retiring at the end of the year, which means last month’s SRF is the last one I will attend as a staff member of Americans United. But in 2026, I will be there as a private citizen and a proud, dues-paying member of Americans United.
I’ll be there alongside people whose religious views I don’t share and be in solidarity with activists whose life experiences differ greatly from my own. That’s a good thing!
We won’t put those differences aside. We’ll talk about them, we’ll share our stories, we’ll learn from one another — and we’ll rejoice in what we do share: the knowledge that without separation of church and state, there can be no real religious freedom.
As we do this work, we’ll understand anew the great promise of America as exemplified in the phrase that served as our nation’s unofficial national motto for so many years: E pluribus unum, Out of many, one.
At SRF, we are many beliefs and traditions. We are many backgrounds. We are many genders. We are many experiences. And we’re amazing because of it. It unites us.
At the Christian Nationalist meetings I attended, a Christian would likely end up sitting next to, well, another Christian. Your denominations might differ, but chances are you’d have similar beliefs, you’d hate and fear the same people and believe the same lies about America.
At SRF, a Christian might end up sitting next to a humanist, a pantheist, a Pagan or a “none.” And when you got to talking, you’d find common ground but also lots of differences, which we see as a space to grow and learn. Christian Nationalists would call encounters like those “terrifying.” We at SRF call them “awesome.”
So now you know our not-so-secret weapon: Unlike Christian Nationalists, we at SRF embrace and celebrate the wonderful, imperfect and often noisy diversity of true religious freedom. We lift up an America that is not to come but that already is: a nation marked by freedom without favor, equality without exception.
That America is too much to give up, and we simply won’t let it slip from our grasps. Americans United won’t let that happen.
We could always use more voices. Add yours!