Editor’s update: On June 25, more than two dozen organizations that advocate for religious freedom, including AU, Interfaith Alliance, the Sikh Coalition, religious denominations, nonreligious groups and civil rights organizations, sent a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) urging him to condemn Rep. Mary Miller’s comments. The letter explains that the U.S. isn’t a Christian nation and this episode demonstrates why the Christian nation myth is so harmful. America’s promise of religious freedom ensures everyone is treated equally regardless of their beliefs.
A lot has been going on at Americans United lately. Last week, AU filed two important lawsuits, one against the Trump administration, asserting that the Department of Veterans Affairs is violating federal law by refusing to fulfill AU’s public-records request for information on how it’s responding to President Donald Trump’s mandate to investigate alleged anti-Christian bias within the VA. We also filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging an Arkansas law mandating display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom and library.
“The Wall of Separation” blog will have more about these legal actions later this week. But today it’s important to step back and take a deeper look at something else that occurred recently, a disturbing action that shouldn’t be overlooked.
In a press statement issued June 6, Americans United criticized U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) after she used social media to attack a Sikh man who had been invited to deliver a prayer before Congress.
Miller, who initially misidentified the man, Giani Surinder Singh, as a Muslim, insisted that his prayer “should never have been allowed to happen” because the United States was “founded as a Christian nation.” She called the prayer “deeply troubling.”
There are several problems here. Most glaringly, Miller is wrong about the United States being founded as a Christian nation. It was not, as our secular Constitution makes clear. Miller would do well to read this section of AU’s website.
Second, Miller’s comments are nothing more than rank bigotry. Americans United does not support official prayers before Congress or any government body, but the courts have allowed them, and that means these invocations must represent the true diversity of America. Only the most intolerant Christian Nationalist would find it “deeply troubling” that Americans belong to a variety of faiths, creeds and philosophies. That diversity, which was made possible by the founders’ embrace of separation of church and state, is something sensible Americans celebrate.
Miller was far from the first to express this type of ignorance. In 2000, after a Hindu priest was invited to deliver a guest invocation before the U.S. House of Representatives, the Family Research Council (FRC) published an article online bemoaning that “it has become necessary to ‘celebrate’ non-Christian religions – even in the halls of Congress” and incorrectly asserting, “Our founders expected that Christianity – and no other religion – would receive support from the government…” (After Americans United criticized the comments, FRC officials insisted, rather implausibly, that the article had been published without authorization and removed it.)
In 2007, Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain, was invited to deliver an invocation before the U.S. Senate. Three extremists disrupted the event and had to be removed by Capitol Police. In 2015, three members of the Idaho Senate refused to enter the chamber until Zed was done offering a guest invocation.
For years, Christian Nationalist organizations fought in court to protect government-sponsored invocations. Did they really believe that in a country of hundreds of different faiths, the prayers were always going to reflect their own narrow slice of our country’s broad religious diversity? If they did, they’re either very foolish or just plain bigots.
Neither is a good look.
Photo: Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images
