Freethought-Now

Justice Neil Gorsuch recently said something the Freedom From Religion Foundation has documented for decades: The United States was not founded as a Christian nation.

That’s encouraging. The problem is that many of Gorsuch’s own Supreme Court opinions have helped empower the very Christian nationalist movement he now says misunderstands America’s founding.

In a recent interview on PBS’ “Firing Line,” Gorsuch rejected the Christian nationalist narrative increasingly promoted by political figures such as Vice President JD Vance, who argue that America was founded on Christian principles.

“We were founded for religious pluralism and the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way,” he said. “We were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion.”

He also dismissed claims that the country shares a single religious heritage as “demonstrably not true,” adding: “We have a First Amendment, for crying out loud. No established religion.”

If Gorsuch truly believes that America was founded on religious pluralism and that the First Amendment forbids any established religion, shouldn’t his opinions reflect those principles? Instead, his jurisprudence has emboldened the very Christian nationalist movement he now appears eager to distance himself from.

For years, Gorsuch has been one of the Supreme Court’s strongest advocates for dramatically expanding religious exemptions while weakening the constitutional separation between state and church. Although he now publicly states that America “was never supposed to be a nation that was about one religion,” his opinions have steadily dismantled longstanding First Amendment Establishment Clause protections and created a legal environment in which the Christian nationalist agenda flourishes.

The clearest example is Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the decision Gorsuch authored involving a public high school football coach who led highly visible midfield prayers after games. Gorsuch, writing for the majority, abandoned decades of Establishment Clause precedent that recognized the problems with school staff engaging in religious activity while on the clock. He and the majority ludicrously promoted a false narrative portraying Kennedy’s prayers as private religious expression not directed at students. In doing so, the court replaced a well-established framework for protecting religious neutrality with a far narrower view of what constitutes governmental religious endorsement.

The Kennedy decision did more than protect one coach’s public professions of faith. It signaled to school districts across the country that courts would be increasingly receptive to overt religious activity by public officials. The ruling has quickly become one of the most frequently cited cases by Christian nationalist organizations seeking to expand religious influence throughout the government.

The Kennedy judgment is hardly an outlier. In Carson v. Makin, Gorsuch joined a decision requiring taxpayers to fund religious education. In Groff v. DeJoy, a case in which FFRF filed an amicus brief, he joined a ruling that significantly expanded employers’ obligations to accommodate religious employees at the expense of employers and co-workers. Taken together, these decisions reflect a consistent judicial philosophy that broadly elevates religious claims while steadily eroding longstanding protections for public school students, taxpayers and the separation of state and church.

We’ve already seen these decisions cited as precedent to defend mandatory Ten Commandments displays, expand bible instruction in public schools and justify increasingly aggressive efforts to inject Christianity into government institutions.

Christian nationalist legislators and outfits are drawing exactly the lesson the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have invited them to draw: that the government is increasingly free to privilege Christianity.

Whether or not Gorsuch intended that outcome is beside the point. His opinions have become foundational legal tools for a movement that openly seeks to erode a founding principle of America: a secular government.

State/church advocates would welcome Gorsuch’s change of heart. It is encouraging to hear a Supreme Court justice publicly reject the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation. That myth is historically false and fundamentally incompatible with the First Amendment.

But, unfortunately, constitutional principles are protected by judicial opinions, not television interviews.

If Gorsuch genuinely believes that the United States was founded on religious pluralism and that there is “no established religion,” then his future votes or written decisions should reflect those commitments. He should work to restore meaningful protections for the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment instead of continuing to expand government favoritism toward religion.

Christian nationalism will be defeated when courts consistently enforce the constitutional principle that Justice Gorsuch himself described: that government may not prefer religion over nonreligion or one religion over other faiths.

Until then, Christian nationalists will continue citing Gorsuch’s opinions, not his interviews.

Disclaimer: The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

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