The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” This means that church and state are separated. There is no official religion in the United States, at least not yet. 

Separating church and state was a revolutionary idea back in 1776 when King George of England, who ruled American colonies, was also the head of the Church of England.

It took the American Revolution and the adoption in 1791 of the First Amendment to the Constitution to accomplish this great step forward for humankind.

The wall between church and state as declared in our founding document is crumbling, even faster now with the implementation of the Trump regime.

There are over 800 billionaires in our country with a total net worth of more than $6 trillion.  Trump has 13 billionaires in his cabinet and as his closest advisors. Three billionaires in America own as much as the bottom half of our population. This makes democracy impossible.

Trump has no ideology himself. He’s all about power and money, which is another form of power. A huge part of Trump’s base, however, are white Christian nationalists. They do not believe in the separation of church and state and work actively to tear down what Thomas Jefferson called “the wall.”

Their heretical form of Christianity is being forced upon us. It is super-masculine, homophobic, misogynist, nationalist, white, supremacist, and racist.

It is Christian in name only. The radically egalitarian Jesus who preached the values of the Sermon on the Mount is not a part of their religion.

The Christian nationalists want to use the power of the state to impose on us their brand of Christianity. It is not the solidarity of humankind.

Michael Steven Smith is a retired New York City attorney. He’s the co-host of the radio show Law And Disorder on WBAI-99.5 FM and the co-editor with Zachary Sklar of the forthcoming book Fascism, American Style: From the Cross to the Flag.

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