The Wall Still Stands

Trump’s Extremism Test Gets the Founders Exactly Backwards

Donald Trump has made clear that he sees Christianity not just as a faith but as America’s official identity. From Bible-brandishing photo ops to promises to “defend Christian values,” his message is blunt: Christianity belongs at the center of American life, and those who dissent are suspect. The line lands as both red meat and red flag. He isn’t just rallying evangelicals — he’s quietly redrawing the First Amendment with a Sharpie.

In Trump’s telling, liberty is no longer a shield for all. It’s a padded suit for one tradition: Christianity. If you cheer it, you’re patriotic. If you critique it, you’re suspect.

The Founders — those deeply flawed men with powdered wigs and unnervingly strong opinions about freedom — would have raised an eyebrow and maybe a musket. They knew the perils of binding faith to government. They had seen inquisitions, state churches, and wars fought under banners of holy certainty. Their solution was radical: protect all beliefs by protecting none officially.

Trump’s error is not just political. It’s historical malpractice.

Jefferson’s Wall, Not Trump’s Fortress

Thomas Jefferson, rarely subtle, told the Danbury Baptists in 1802 that the First Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church and State.” He wasn’t waxing poetic. He was drafting blueprints for liberty.

His Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom went further: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” Jefferson understood the paradox — that religion is safest when government stays out of the pulpit.

In Trump’s hands, that wall becomes a fortress with a moat: Christianity inside, everyone else left rattling the gates.

Madison’s Three-Pence Rule

James Madison, the Constitution’s architect, had little patience for half-measures. In his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785), he thundered that even “three pence” of public money spent on religion violated liberty.

Madison knew that once government starts picking favorites, freedom shrinks. His warning wasn’t anti-Christian. It was pro-freedom. He understood something Trump doesn’t: protecting Christianity requires protecting everyone else, too.

Washington’s Pluralist Patriotism

George Washington, the least verbose of the trio, gave us the cleanest line. In his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, he promised that America “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

This wasn’t lofty rhetoric. It was the American sales pitch. Jews, Catholics, Quakers, skeptics — all were safe here. Imagine Washington, the man who led troops across the Delaware, listening to Trump elevate Christianity as America’s default. He’d probably need a stronger drink than Madeira.

The Courts Tried to Remember

At their best, the courts have carried this pluralist torch. In West Virginia v. Barnette (1943), the Supreme Court sided with Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to salute the flag, reminding us that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”

In Engel v. Vitale (1962), it struck down state-written school prayers, underscoring that devotion cannot be scripted by committee. Even the much-mocked Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) gave us a usable guardrail: laws must have a secular purpose and avoid entangling church and state.

The pattern is clear: liberty includes both freedom of worship and freedom from compulsion.

Trump’s Extremism Test

With Trump’s reframing, dissent becomes danger, satire becomes subversion, and critique of Christianity is suddenly a red flag.

That’s not constitutional fidelity. That’s identity politics in ecclesiastical drag. It’s a performance — one that mistakes religious liberty for religious privilege.

And it’s contagious. Once you brand criticism of Christianity as disloyal, what stops the next politician from doing the same for Islam, atheism, or even political parties? Extremism becomes whatever offends the powerful.

The Sensible Middle

Here’s the paradox the center-left understands: you don’t have to dislike Christianity to see the peril. The point isn’t to strip faith from public life; it’s to keep the government from strapping it on like a campaign prop.

Pluralism is not weakness. It’s the messy genius that lets 330 million Americans — believers, doubters, seekers, and skeptics — share a roof without burning it down. Jefferson’s wall is not an act of hostility toward religion. It’s an act of protection for everyone.

To elevate one faith above others is to shrink that roof until it cracks.

Liberty’s Broader Creed

The Founders, for all their contradictions, left us a radical inheritance. Jefferson’s wall. Madison’s vigilance. Washington’s tolerance. They built a republic where faith could flourish precisely because the government would never enforce it.

Trump’s framing betrays that inheritance. It turns liberty into loyalty tests, dissent into danger, and religion into a political costume.

America’s genius has never been in baptizing one creed but in refusing to baptize at all. The wall still stands — but only if we stop mistaking partisan theater for principle. Because once you punch holes in that wall for convenience, you don’t have a wall anymore.

You have rubble.