Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on UnsplashThe late Sen. Dianne Feinstein sparked a national firestorm in 2017 when she expressed concern that judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s religious views might influence her legal rulings. Her comment, “The dogma lives loudly within you,” was quickly twisted into a rallying cry for the Christian right. What was intended as a fair and necessary question about the influence of religious ideology on judicial impartiality was painted as an attack on faith itself.
Yet today, Feinstein’s observation echoes with chilling relevance.
We are no longer speculating about whether Christian nationalism is creeping into our courts and cabinets — we are watching it take root in real time. Those in power are intentionally blurring the line between church and state, and Christian nationalist litmus tests are being substituted for legal qualifications in judicial and executive appointments.
Just a few years after the Feinstein controversy, Amy Coney Barrett was elevated to the Supreme Court, a move the Freedom From Religion Foundation warned would cement a Christian nationalist majority on the court for decades. That prediction quickly came true. Barrett has voted with the extremist majority to:
- Overturn Roe v. Wade
- Allow a high school football coach to pray on the field after games
- Permit taxpayer-funded discrimination by religious groups
- Exempt Catholic-affiliated nonprofits from Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance program
- Let religious parents opt their kids out of LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula
- Uphold state bans on gender-affirming care for minors
Last month, President Trump, who has made no secret of his alliance with the Christian right, advanced two slates of judicial nominees who pose a clear threat to the Establishment Clause.
These federal judicial nominees include:
Whitney Hermandorfer (6th Circuit): As the director of the Strategic Litigation Unit at the Tennessee Attorney General’s office, Hermandorfer prioritized a Christian nationalist legal agenda, including defending the state’s abortion ban and fighting federal protections for transgender students. She clerked for Justices Alito, Barrett and Kavanaugh, and supported efforts to abolish birthright citizenship — a direct challenge to the 14th Amendment.
Joshua Divine (Eastern & Western Districts of Missouri): Divine has a history of espousing Christian nationalist views. In college, he wrote a series of op-eds reflecting this perspective: proclaiming that it is “impossible” for Christians to leave their religion at home and that they are “obliged ethically to impose their beliefs on others,” arguing for a ban on abortions with no exceptions for rape, and comparing homosexuality with bestiality and polygamy. Divine (talk about an apt name!) has been a staunch defender of discriminatory laws as Missouri’s solicitor general and director of special litigation.
Zachary Bluestone (Eastern District of Missouri): A former fellow at the James Wilson Institute, which promotes “natural law” based on religious doctrine, Bluestone is tied to a network of scholars defending Christian nationalism and rejecting the principle of state/church separation altogether.
Maria Lanahan (Eastern District of Missouri): Missouri’s deputy solicitor general, Lanahan has worked alongside the Alliance Defending Freedom, an influential Christian nationalist legal group, to defend conversion therapy for minors.
Jordan Pratt (Middle District of Florida): Pratt, currently a judge on Florida’s state-level 5th District Court of Appeal, is a former attorney for the First Liberty Institute, a Christian nationalist legal organization.
These backgrounds are no coincidence. These individuals were not selected despite their religious agendas. They were nominated precisely because of them.
Christian nationalism is no longer an undercurrent. It is a political strategy, a litmus test for loyalty and, in many cases, a job qualification. Judicial nominees and cabinet officials are being chosen not only for their experience or credentials, but for how comfortably they align with a Christian nationalist worldview, one that seeks to privilege conservative Christianity in every facet of American public life.
Take Russell Vought, who was recently reappointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He’s a leading architect behind Project 2025, a sweeping plan to infuse Christian nationalist ideology into the federal government. Vought openly calls for America to be a “Christian nation” and sees his role as a divine mission. Yet, in 2017, when Sen. Bernie Sanders pressed Vought on his past writing declaring that non-Christians “stand condemned,” Sanders was the one accused of religious intolerance rather than Vought.
Christian organizations denounced Sanders’ questioning as amounting to a religious test for public office that would disqualify millions of people.
It is not religious belief itself that disqualifies someone from public service. Millions of Americans are motivated by faith and our secular Constitution protects that freedom. The concern arises when religious belief is elevated above constitutional duty — when public officials are guided not by the law or evidence, but by divine mandates and sectarian dogma.
Christian nationalism is not just about personal faith. It’s about power. It’s the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nation, and that our laws, schools and institutions must reflect a specific conservative religious vision. That vision is anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ-plus, anti-science and anti-pluralism.
And when judges or cabinet secretaries are chosen precisely because they’re seen as soldiers in a religious culture war, we must question how their dogma will impact their decision-making.
We cannot keep pretending that asking about religious motivation is off-limits. When someone is nominated for a lifetime judicial appointment or a position of national authority, we routinely ask about their views on law, precedent and political ideology. But when we ask how their religious beliefs might shape their decisions, especially if they’ve said publicly that their religious beliefs should shape public policy, critics cry foul.
That double standard is dangerous. It gives a free pass to those who are deliberately working to undermine our secular government. And it leaves the rest of us vulnerable to the consequences: reproductive rights eliminated, LGBTQ-plus protections rolled back, public education distorted by religious indoctrination and the very foundation of our secular government crumbling.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has long warned about the rise of Christian nationalism in American politics. What once felt fringe is now mainstream. If we don’t ask about religious motivation now — if we don’t vet nominees and officials for signs of Christian nationalist allegiance — we risk losing what little remains of the secular democracy our founders envisioned.
Sen. Feinstein’s warning was dismissed back in 2017. But she was right. The dogma does live loudly — and if we fail to question it, it will live even louder in our courts, our schools and our laws.
One Response
President Trump was quite clear in 2024 when he said that all he needed was this one term more and everything would be settled forever, in other words Jesus Christ would be everybody’s Lord or they ‘d be second class or even out. This is a clear statement with no uncertain meaning witch is war against the secular state. It needs to be addressed as war, not meaning tanks and airplanes and guns, but meaning the seriousness of their intent is to kill secularism and do away with all who are not Christian as in a non Christian’s Holocaust. Of course they would leave the Jewish people alone. So the real question is what can be done more than our amazing freedom from religion group is doing? And I’ve seen your statements of what can be done and it makes sense. We can become more involved but still we cannot beat a federal judge can we?