Funding for “To the Contrary,” provided by: It's an old movement, but we have seen a troubling resurgence of Christian nationalism.

At Americans United, we think of this document as a threat, regardless of what happens to the election.

This is a long-term plan document.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to “To the Contrary,” a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives This week, Project 2025, through the lens of the separation of church and state.

The presidential transition project developed by Trump advisers and a number of right wing think tanks, including the conservative Heritage Foundation, is seen as a wish list for a second Trump presidency.

Still, Donald Trump continues to distance himself from it.

Joining us today is Mariko Hirose of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Welcome to you, Mari.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me, Bonnie.

So let's start with your organization.

It is one that works to keep a wall between church and state.

What is the history of that issue in American history or politics?

Well, the wall between church and state has been an important issue in American history since the very founding of the country.

The framers of the Constitution made sure that in founding the new country, it will be one, that is, where the rights are governed by the Constitution and where the country is a place that welcomes people of all faith and of no religion as well.

So that's been, a critical component of American history since the very beginning.

And we should say that back when the country was formed, the British Crown was essentially the lead speaker for Anglicanism and the so-called rebels who founded this country rebelled against the British putting religion into their laws, correct?

That's absolutely right.

They rejected the theocracy that many of the founding generation and their forefathers had fled.

So tell me about Project 2025, please, and what it would do to the separation of church and state.

Project 2025 is a 900-plus page put together by the Heritage Foundation and others, and it's a plan to restructure the federal government to advance a Christian nationalist agenda.

And, to be clear, when I say Christian nationalism, that is not the same thing as Christianity.

Many Christians reject Christian nationalism as inconsistent with their faith and with democracy.

I myself grew up Catholic, and Christian nationalism is absolutely contrary to the main message that I inherited from my Christian upbringing.

Christian nationalism is an extremist political movement that believes in the lie that America was founded and must remain a Christian country, and that our laws and politics must ensure that white Christians hold on to power and privilege.

It's an old movement, but we have seen a troubling resurgence of Christian nationalism.

We've seen its flag fly during the January 6th insurrection, in the halls of Congress, and at a vacation home of a Supreme Court justice.

And at Americans United, we think of this document as a threat, regardless of what happens to the election.

This is a long-term plan documen for Christian nationalists.

Tell me about how it would change the laws, how it plans to change the laws to allow the president, to make to, tear down the wall between church and state.

There are a few signs of that in the pages of Project 2025.

Right in the opening pages, the authors lay out that the project's core, one of project's core promises is, to quote, “secure our God-given individual rights to enjoy the blessings of liberty.” But the source of our rights in this country is not God.

It is the Constitution.

And this may seem like a small thing, but it does make a difference throughout the pages of the document.

And the project focuses not on securing people's rights, but taking away the rights of those who do not believe in the same view of the world as the narrow view of the world envisioned by Christian nationalists.

So some of the examples of this, Project 2025 seeks to impose narrow Christian fundamentalist viewpoints on a whole range of policies.

For example, the view that life at conception and ends at natural death, which leads to a whole host of policy proposals that will restrict our reproductive rights.

Prioritizing, and Project 2025 actually says this explicitly, that it would want to prioritize, quote, “biblically based family structures.” And that's not just anti-LGBTQ+ families.

That's also against other religious or nonreligious families.

So, for example, Americans United is currently fighting a lawsuit right now over taxpayer-funded Christian adoption agencies refusal to work with a couple who is Jewish.

And Project 2025 endorses that type of discrimination that this couple faced.

How likely do you think that this is going to become law in the future at some point?

Well, we're already seeing some of these efforts roll out in various states.

So just like the lawsuit that I just mentioned, where this Jewish couple is already facing discrimination from this use of religious liberty as a weapon.

And in places like Oklahoma and Louisiana, we have seen efforts, by Christian nationalist legislators to try to infuse Christianity into public schools, into the classrooms and into the curriculum.

So that's what we are fighting now.

Christian leaders, Christian nationalist leaders, I should say, sometimes complain to the media about having their rights trampled on.

Does Americans United believe Christians rights are trampled on in this country at this time?

The Constitution protects Christian values as much as it protects the values of other faiths and no faith at all, also.

And that's what the wall of separation between church and state is intended to do is to protect people of all religions and nonreligions.

And that's why we work with faith leaders from the Christian communities as well as other faith communities, to fight for and to safeguard that wall of separation.

Tell me about, and we should say you're new at Americans United, and your job is to educate the public about Project 2025, among other things.

But what has happened even before Project, way before Project 2025 might become law that is already going over, going through the wall separating church and state?

I think, for example, of public funding, taxpayer funding for, you mentioned Christian adoption agencies, but also for Christian schools, for clinics, so-called clinics that aren't really clinics, don't have medical staff offering to counsel women seeking abortions and then try to, you know, show them videos of the fetus or the zygote and then make them feel guilty for wanting to have an abortion and trying to talk them into not having an abortion, an explicitly religious message.

Yes.

Well, those Christian nationalists who would like to topple the wall between church and state have been gaining momentum in the halls of power for a while now in the courts and in legislatures across the country.

So, you know, when I graduated from law school over 15 years ago, church state separation seemed like a fairly settled Constitutional principle.

And when I represented a lesbian couple who was discriminated against in their wedding planning about 10 years ago, it seemed really clear that claims of religious liberty should not and cannot be used as an excuse to discriminate by businesses that are supposed to be open to the public.

But the Supreme Court has gutted the protections against public money being spent on religious, on private religious education.

And it's allowed religious freedom to be a weapon to discriminate against people, rather than as a to protect believers.

And, lately, the drumbeat of news seems to be getting faster.

So we are in Oklahoma.

We have been fighting an effort to start a first religious charter school in Louisiana.

The legislature passed a first bill, requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public school classrooms.

AU is working with our partners to challenge that law.

And there will be a hearing coming up in September.

But that is a law that would be obviously unconstitutional under existing law.

But, recently, Justice Sotomayor said in a dissent in a church state separation case, what a difference five years makes, and that really resonates to me.

This is a very important moment for church state separation.

Is the majority on the court, many of whom are Trump appointees from when he was president in 2016 through 2021, or 2017 through 2021.

Is that, are those justices, in your view, likely to have a majority against throwing out that Louisiana law?

We can't.

No, I think what we know is that the precedent is very clear that there should not be religion in public schools.

And what really is striking about the Louisiana law is that it also specifies the exact version of the Ten Commandments that should go up in the classrooms.

So that's also excluding people of faith that do believe in the Ten Commandments but not the version that is supposed to go up in the classrooms.

So we have a group of both religious and nonreligious plaintiffs who are, before the court, arguing about how the law both establishes religion in contravention of the Constitution and also tramples on their right to religious freedom.

And you were giving me other examples of how Project 2025 seeks to break down the wall between church and state.

I interrupted you to ask you about that Louisiana case, so please go on with what you were going to say about other ways that Project 2025 could do that.

It really touches on so many of the civil rights issues that I've worked on in my career Project 2025 is seeking to cut back on reproductive rights based on the narrow Christian fundamentalist view that life begins at conception.

It is trying to make LGBTQ+ people and couples second-class citizens.

And that's another area where, you know, I was part of the LGBTQ+ rights movement when we defeated the Defense of Marriage Act and we were on our way to winning marriage equality.

And the Christian nationalists are trying to push back on those wins by carving out exceptions from discrimination laws and by saying that they would prioritize certain kinds of families that align with their views over others.

What else would Project 2025 do to separate church and state in public schools?

It's not just posting the Ten Commandments on public school walls, correct?

Right.

So Project 2025 focuses on the federal government.

So it doesn't talk explicitly about posting the Ten Commandments, although the throughline is clear that what the Christian nationalists want is more religion in schools.

The way that Project 2025 talks that is encouraging public taxpayer dollars to go to private religious education, through vouchers, increased vouchers, and other methods that will take away money from public education, which has really been the force that integrates and brings people together in this country.

What, do you have any idea how much taxpayers money is going to fund religious school, private religious schools right I don't have that number right now.

And, of course, things are in flux with the Supreme Court rulings of the past 10 years.

Supreme Court rulings of the pas 10 years.

We are also in Oklahoma, like I mentioned, fighting the states, fighting the establishment of the first religious charter school in that state.

We did win an opinion in a case that was brought by the attorney general, saying that there cannot be a religious charter school.

So that's a win, but we're still monitoring the situation.

And what about other areas?

What about prisoners rights?

What about what is going on, if anything, about the fact that preachers in primarily evangelical Christian congregations are not only lecturing their congregants about how to vote but, in some cases, handing out preprinted, preselected ballots of how they should vote?

Isn't that a violation of the separation of church and state?

And why are they allowed to keep their tax exemption, while this goes on in plain sight?

Yeah, that is explicitly a violation of the Johnson Amendment that applies to all nonprofits that prohibit organizations and churches from taking partizan positions.

But this is all part of the strategies of the Christian nationalists to take over power, knowing that their positions are actually in the minority.

And that's why they need to take these strategies.

That's also why they're very focused on religion in public schools because that's a way to influence young people who are more impressionable.

And that's why it's really important that we keep our eyes on our public schools and on ensuring that they become a place for learning and for diverse viewpoints, not a place to impose religion, a certain religion, on the students.

But why have no court cases been brought by your organization, by others, possibly challenging the rights of church that preach politics in violation of the Johnson Law, as you said, and essentially the Constitution, challenging their tax-exempt status and getting rid of it?

Is it because, for example, at least with the current Supreme Court, a case like that would most like get thrown out?

It's certainly among the many issues that arise in this area that we work on.

And we have, over time, done advocacy around it.

We have alerted the IRS.

We received complaints in our complaint line about this happening, and we do take action.

But why hasn't a lawsuit been brought?

I'm not trying to single you out.

I'm just saying, why hasn't anybody brought a lawsuit?

Yeah, I think there have been lawsuits on this.

But, of course, there are lots of challenges to be brought.

Our docket lately and our work has really been, there's been a lot on public education that we've been focused on.

There's been work around reproductive rights as well.

And the way that Christian nationalism has been driving the reproductive rights debate.

So there's a lot of work to be done, for sure.

Yeah, a lot of work and underfunded nonprofits, I'm sure to do it.

So moving on to voting rights.

What would Project 2025 do on voting rights issues, and what have states done, if anything, to limit voting rights in the view of Americans United?

So voting rights is kind of an umbrella issue.

Much like how we think of church state separation.

It's something that's really crucial for democracy.

And what Project 2025 proposes to do is to cut down on those democratic frameworks in many different ways.

And for the issues that we see as most related to Christian nationalism, what we see is that this effort to infuse the federal government with Christian nationalism, nationalist beliefs, is itself anti-democratic because a theocracy is just not with the idea of democracy.

So that quote that I read to you at the beginning about securing individual rights given by God, that itself is really contrary to the idea of democracy where rights are given by laws that are voted on democratically.

Have states limited voting rights in any way so far?

And why is it considered to be a limitation of voting rights?

For example, if a state decides that it doesn't want to do mail-in ballots anymore or it doesn't want to do, want to extend voters various capabilities of voting in an electronic age.

And why are those considered to be limitations on voting rights when they didn't exist 50 years ago?

All of us who believe in democracy want more voting options for more people.

Because that is the way that we can involve the most number of our citizens in the policymaking in our country.

So to limit people from options that exist right now that's really cutting back on people's right to participate in our democracy And any other areas you want to get into that we haven't gotten into so far in the three minutes or so we have left?

Well, the one other area that I would touch on where I see a real connection between Christian nationalism and the Project 2025 is immigrants rights.

And that's an area that I was involved in right before I started this job.

And 10 years ago, we were a country that where we were very proud of are the principle that we would welcome refugees and immigrants who are fleeing persecution.

Now that really became contentious because of the discomfort of Christian nationalists, that we were now starting to welcome more Muslim refugees into the United States as a result of the global refugee crisis.

And that's what led to the Muslim ban, which the Supreme Court ended up endorsing and leaving a gaping hole in our immigration laws through which the executive can discriminate, including against people of certain faith.

But, to be clear, Trump's ban was on Muslims from certain countries where I suppose he thought, I don't want to put words in his I obviously don't know what's going on inside his mind, but he only put bans on about seven or eight countries, like Sudan, places where it was believed that a lot of terrorists were getting into the United States.

But the fact that preceded that ban or that, as a candidate, the former president had said that he wanted to ban Muslims.

And then, he said that he got advice on how to do that and how to do that was to frame it in terms of geographies.

So the Muslim ban was exactly what the government at that time said they wanted.

And it had that effect of banning many people of Muslim faith who wanted to be here, who otherwise would have been here, to be with their families, to pursue education.

So many lives were really harmed by that ban.

And in Project 2025, you definitely see signs of similarly using immigration laws to discriminate against populations that the government may not like.

Thank you so much, Mariko Hirose, this has been an incredible boost to knowledge of what is going on in terms of separation of church and state or what might go on.

That's it for this edition of “To the Contrary.” Keep the conversation going on our social media platforms, reach out to us @tothecontrary and visit our website at the address on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

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