The False Gods of Power: What Both Sides Get Wrong About Church and State
How both the secular left and the Christian right are using the same false dichotomy to keep us divided, distracted, and disarmed.
In part one of this series, I defined Christian Nationalism as a very real movement manipulating churches and Christians in ways few recognize—a movement that is neither truly Christian nor constitutional.
As this series unfolds—beginning especially with part three—I will show how this movement can be traced back to the early intelligence era, including the origins of the CIA, and how it functions as a continuous nudging of the Overton window designed to divide, confuse, and radicalize the faithful.
This infographic summarizes the key points from part one. For more context and detail, please read that installment first.
Here, in part two, we turn to the concept of Separation of Church and State, and how it is being used as a Marxist dialectic—a psychological weapon—to divide and confuse us. I’ll expose the key misconceptions propagated by both the left and the right, and show how these distortions serve as narrative tools in the broader war for our minds.
The Lie (and Partial Truth) from the Left
The predominantly non-Christian—and often anti-Christian—left correctly recognizes that there is something dangerous in the movement I described in part one. But that recognition has been weaponized. The left has been conditioned to fear that Christian nationalists will use the machinery of government to impose religion on them.
Christian nationalist thought leaders feed that fear.
Take, for example, Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, who openly advocates for laws against blasphemy. Even the reddest states are unlikely ever to pass such laws, which raises the question: Is Wolfe sincere—or simply providing the left with “fear porn” fodder?
The left has now been driven into a paranoia so deep that many Democrats genuinely believe that if any elected official or public employee so much as expresses a Christian conviction, they must be a “Christian nationalist.”
That is absurd—and it is itself a form of secular dominionism: the belief that government should be the exclusive domain of the non-religious, or that religious people must conceal their faith to participate in public life. This belief is not only unconstitutional but incompatible with biblical Christianity.
The First Amendment clearly protects the right of every citizen—Christian or otherwise—to express and practice their faith, so long as it does not infringe on another person’s protected rights. At the same time, it protects non-Christians from being coerced by the state through laws against blasphemy or enforced religious observance.
The Lie (and Partial Truth) from the Right
Meanwhile, the political right sees “Christian nationalist” used as a slur and assumes the entire concept is just a left-wing smear. That’s a mistake—and it provides cover for the intelligence-linked operatives promoting Christian nationalism as a deliberate psychological operation.
Their lie is that the Founders never intended any separation between church and state—therefore, merging them is both constitutional and godly.
When the left hears this argument, its panic intensifies. And so the cycle spins faster: fear and hatred on the left, defiance and counter-radicalization on the right. The result is a doom spiral—a nation deliberately divided against itself.
If we want to break that cycle, we must be willing to confront our own side’s errors as honestly as we confront the other’s.
A Brief History Lesson
John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke is widely recognized as the primary philosophical originator of the ideas that undergirded the American founding. He articulated the concept that governments exist to protect our inalienable, God-given rights—among them, life, liberty, and estate (which Thomas Jefferson later reframed as “the pursuit of happiness”).
Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Franklin all read and cited Locke directly. Jefferson even called Locke “one of the three greatest men that have ever lived.”
Locke also argued explicitly for the separation of church and state. In his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration, he wrote:
“The care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men. It is not, nor can it be, his business to prescribe articles of faith or forms of worship by the force of his laws. For laws are of no force at all without penalties; and penalties in this case are absolutely impertinent, because they have no power to convince the mind.”
He continued:
“The business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s goods and person. The care of each man’s soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself.”
That principle—the sovereignty of individual conscience—became the bedrock of the First Amendment, which declares:
“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.”
Later in the same essay, Locke made it unmistakably clear:
“The church itself is absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable.”
I’ve reviewed many writings by today’s leading Christian nationalist influencers, and none of them cite this passage. They omit it because it destroys their revisionist narrative.
The Founders clearly intended church and state to remain distinct: churches were not to become political organizations, and government was to protect their right to practice freely—so long as they did not infringe upon others’ God-given rights.
“…Made Only for a Moral and Religious People”
Our second president, John Adams, wrote to the Massachusetts Militia on October 11, 1798:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Christian nationalists love this quote—and use it as a weapon in their historical revisionism. Yes, Adams said it. But his meaning has been twisted. He was warning that liberty cannot survive without virtue; that self-government demands self-restraint.
He believed—and I agree—that true morality and self-restraint come only through dependence on God and obedience to conscience. Adams wasn’t calling for a church-run state. He was calling for moral citizens whose faith shapes their character, not their dominance over others.
As I wrote in part one, I share Adams’s conviction that moral and religious people should engage in the civic process. But when Christians do so rightly—when they are truly called to public service—their actions will display humility, patience, and sacrificial service.
What Adams was really hinting at, I believe, was the need for true public servants: people uninterested in worldly power, who fear only God. Christ calls His followers to this kind of leadership in every sphere—demonstrating sacrificial love, courage, and truth, not ambition or control.
Yet what we too often see today in the Christian nationalist movement—especially within certain state Republican parties and influencer networks—is the opposite: deceit, ambition, revenge, and hunger for wealth and worldly power. Adams warned us about this very thing:
“Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
And that, I will show, is exactly their objective.