On Friday, filmmaker Tobiah Powell released a documentary called "What is Christian Nationalism?" The film featured a variety of far-right activists and pastors—including Andrew Isker, Joel Webbon, Joshua Haymes, Stephen Wolfe, Calvin Robinson, and Brian Sauvé—offering up their thoughts on the need to impose Christian nationalism on the country.
The general message of the film was aptly summed up by Christian nationalist pastor Dale Partridge, who asserted that it was "a really bad idea" for the Founding Fathers to create a nation that guaranteed the freedom of religion.
"I think that when the Founders founded America, the unfortunate reality is they used the word 'religion' instead of Christianity," Partridge said. "I believe when they talked about freedom of religion, they're talking about freedom of denominational choice ... The focus wasn't a freedom over choosing which gods to worship."
"Freedom of religion is, in all intents and purposes, a really bad idea," he continued. "I don't want freedom of religion because I don't think Jesus wants freedom of religion. I don't believe he's interested in the freedom of religion. I think it's a violation of the first commandment to have the freedom of religion. There shall be no worship of any other gods."
"A great way to love the culture is to make sure that society is ruled by Christian rulers and under a Christian government,'" Partridge asserted. "A great way to hate your neighbor is to make sure that they are ruled by godless people or by pagan people or people who hate God and are passing laws that are out of step with his holy and righteous law. "
"So, should mosques be legal in America?" Partridge asked, rhetorically. "I don't think so. I believe that America has a firm Christian identity in its founding. I believe that it's a violation of the first commandment to have the worship of other gods in our land. We can't sing 'God Bless America' and at the same time expect that God won't curse America for the permission of allowing other people to worship gods on our soil."
For the record, the country’s founders had every opportunity to create a “Christian government” when they wrote the U.S. Constitution, but they instead gave us an explicit ban on any religious test for public office and a First Amendment that guarantees religious freedom and forbids government establishment of religion. As for Patridge’s claim that the founders were only thinking about “denominational choice” for Christians, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, a precursor to the First Amendment, “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”