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Comment by johnklos | Hacker News Reader

It makes for an excellent litmus test to ask, sometimes literally out loud, whether someone who advocates for the legislation of a specific religion's rules would be OK with being forced to comply with a different religion's rules and tenets.

A secondary litmus test is whether a person can even understand the reasoning behind the idea of the separation of church and state. Unfortunately, there are too many people who are either so willfully ignorant or just incredibly dim that they can't understand that it's hypocritical to want to do to others what they would not want done to themselves.

Sigh. At least these people are showing us exactly who they are.

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Many of the people pushing for these new rules are Christian Nationalists, and explicitly reject the separation of church and state. Some pastors are getting in trouble with their congregation if they try to remove an American flag from the podium, for example. It also fits in neatly with the Trump Bible that he released recently, which included a copy of the constitution, pretty explicitly rejecting the Christian belief of not adding or removing anything to the Word of God.

But this hypocrisy has been a core part of American culture since its founding, check out the book Money Cult to trace the origins and see more about how church is essentially big business in many of these states.

[1] The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream

[2] https://www.threads.net/@revjsreeder/post/C8W9cR8O1sg/?xmt=A...

This is a bit of a tangent, but you mentioned removing an american flag from the podium in a church. This makes me think, we care about removing religion from government, but do we care about removing government from religion and places of worship? Protecting government from religious influence is an obvious win but does it matter if patriotism is in churches?

I'm interested if anyone has any more formed thoughts to share on this, because my initial reaction is that separating church out of state is what's very necessary and desirable, but separating state out of church probably doesn't really matter, does it?

On a legal basis I’m not sure, but on a theological basis many people find it very important to separate patriotism and allegiance to a particular government from theological beliefs, which is why many saw Trump’s Bible as heretical.

It’s also worth pointing out that rejecting state influence over religion is the original reason for the concept of separation of church and state, at least in America. It was was far from the norm at the time.

[1] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/establishment-clause...

[2] https://goodfaithmedia.org/heresy-of-the-trump-bible/

It doesn't matter as long you don't (or are allowed not to) participate in church.

It's an ongoing conversation in the eastern orthodox church you might find something interesting there. Historically it was the state church of the byzantines, later (and still officially) greece and russia. There are liturgical gestures and phrasing that indicate an entanglement with the state that is not really true in most places today.

There are factions that openly consider this the "ideal" form of the church and think we should return to it. Others think that was an embarrassing political necessity and are happy to be free of it. There was a lot of meddling in church affairs by the soviets that showed people the downsides. But the allure of power is still there I suppose.

You also run into interesting stuff about like, what is the state from the church's point of view. In liturgy we pray for "the president, armed forces, and all civil authorities." So for example during the russo-japanese war, was a russian orthodox mission in japan praying for russia's enemies? The canonical answer is yes and this makes almost everyone uncomfortable one way or another.

I was interested, so I went on a wikipedia tangent. It was brought up in the courts in Reynolds v. United States in 1878, when the Mormons were saying that anti-bigamy laws were unconstitutional (they did not convince the court, and it continues to be illegal now).

More recently, it's also been used to say that the bans on peyote use were illegal, because of the folks that use peyote in religious ceremonies. Because of that it's now legal in all 50 states if using it in a traditional Native American ceremony.

So yeah, it might not be as commonly talked about, but it's still come up in the courts, and there are plenty of folks who care.

What is a “Christian nationalist?” How is it different from a Christian Democrat (a common political orientation in Europe)?

Well, we’re talking about the US for one.

The U.S. was founded by Christians and remains an overwhelming Christian majority country. So the question remains: what’s the functional difference between “Christian nationalism” (as it’s used here) and Christian democracy as is widespread in Europe?

To use an example: Germany’s dominant party has long been the Christian Democratic Union. Its policies are motivated by Christian theology. Is that Christian nationalism?

A Christian nationalist is a person who believes that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should maintain a strong Christian identity in its laws, government, and culture. [1][2] Christian nationalists typically seek to promote Christian values and influence in the political sphere, often with the goal of shaping the country's laws and policies to align with their interpretation of Christian doctrine.[1][2]

In contrast, a Christian Democrat is a political orientation common in Europe that emphasizes social justice, subsidiarity, and the role of the church in society, but does not necessarily seek to establish a Christian state or impose Christian doctrine through the government.[3] Christian Democrats generally believe in the separation of church and state and advocate for policies that support the common good and the dignity of the human person, rather than explicitly promoting a Christian nationalist agenda.[3]

The key difference is that Christian nationalism is a political ideology focused on establishing a Christian identity for the nation, while Christian Democracy is more focused on applying Christian social teachings to the political realm without necessarily seeking to create a Christian state.[3]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Reformed/comments/17u7r9r/what_are_...

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/february-web-only/...

https://christoverall.com/article/longform/what-is-the-spect...

If you take out the circular cross-references in your definitions, they sound the same:

> Christian nationalists typically seek to promote Christian values and influence in the political sphere, often with the goal of shaping the country's laws and policies to align with their interpretation of Christian doctrine

> Christian Democracy is more focused on applying Christian social teachings to the political realm

Christian doctrine is all about "the common good and the dignity of the human person." That encompasses both the stuff secular liberals like (such as "provide for the poor") and the stuff secular liberals hate (such as "human life has dignity at conception" or "sex is for procreation").

I think there is a clear line to be drawn when you talk about a "Christian state"--a state that restricts the right of religious minorities to freely practice their religion. That, I think could properly be called "Christian nationalism." But very few people want that.

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Monroe have entered that thread, and would like to remind you that they were Deists and not Christians.

Most of the founding fathers were conventional Christians. Most of the rest would be best be characterized as “Christian desists.” In particular, they believed in a God that was active in the world of man. Franklin, in his own words: https://www.americanheritage.com/benjamin-franklin-his-relig.... They were closer to Unitarians than what we would call “deists” today.

Jefferson was probably the only one of those who didn’t believe in something like the Christian God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_nationalism

they have been for quite some time now

> It makes for an excellent litmus test to ask, sometimes literally out loud, whether someone who advocates for the legislation of a specific religion's rules would be OK with being forced to comply with a different religion's rules and tenets.

This overlooks the difference between majority religions and minority religions. If the majority want to legislate a rule, it shouldn’t matter what is the rationale behind that rule. Everyone relies on moral frameworks based on non-falsifiable axioms to formulate political opinions.

In the German state of Bavaria, all public buildings are required to display Christian crosses: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43892329. This is a reasonable exercise of democratic will in a Christian-majority place.

A better question is to ask the same person how they feel about legislation motivated by religious principles in a country where the majority follow that religion. I expect you’d find that most American Christians don’t care if India wants to legislate based on Hindu principles.

> A secondary litmus test is whether a person can even understand the reasoning behind the idea of the separation of church and state

A better litmus test is whether someone can identify where in the Constitution it says anything about “separation of church and state.”

American Christians don’t care what India does for a large part because they don’t live there. But they do care when it leads to rights abuses of minorities.

> American Christians don’t care what India does for a large part because they don’t live there

But that’s the critical distinction. Democracy means that people who live in a place get to decide what kind of place they want to live in.

Complaining about what Hindus are doing in India is hypocritical and none of American Christians’ business.

That's not actually how the world works. You can be sovereign all you want but when you are doing human rights abuses people are well within their rights to call you out on that.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Please explain where the prohibition from religious based law (that is, the separation) is vague.

That says that:

1) Congress cannot create an official national church or regulate the official state churches that existed at the time the First Amendment was written. (The term "establishment of religion" is not an old-timey way of referring to religiously-motivated laws, but instead refers to "established churches": https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/established-churches...)

2) Congress cannot prohibit individuals from exercising their religion freely.

Neither of those provisions prohibits the majority having religious motivations for otherwise-permissible laws. For example, the government can obviously commerce. If the majority wants to use the government's power over commerce to ban the sale of alcohol on Sundays, that's totally permissible. The fact that people's motivation for doing that is based on Christianity makes no difference.

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