American Thinker

by Charles J. Russo

    When discussing the nature of the fledgling United States in 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel, an influential socialite in Philadelphia, asked Benjamin Franklin “[w]ell, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy ” Franklin famously responded that the United States is “a republic, if you can keep it.”

    At the dawn of 2026, a similar question lingers amid controversy over the nation’s religious status following recent remarks by President Donald J. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. More specifically, it thus seems fair to ask, without putting too much emphasis on Christmas, whether the United States is a Christian nation. We can respond enthusiastically “yes, if we can keep it.”

    At the same time, I must hasten to add that the recognition and acceptance of the United States as a Christian nation, a notion with which most American Christians agree, does not mean other faiths are, or should be, excluded because all religions are welcome in our democratic republic. Rather, my position is that an acknowledgement that even in the increasingly religiously pluralistic United States, a nation founded at least in part on an imperfect notion of freedom of religion typically reserved for members of the dominant Christian traditions in the American colonies, religious freedom remains a fundamental right, a first among equals.

    Vice-President J.D. Vance made the first of the two statements that generated controversy about religion on December 20, 2025, in a speech at Turning Point’s USA’s AmFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Vance declared “we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation,” adding fuel to the controversy over the status of Christianity in the United States.

    A week later, reacting to President Trump’s religious Christmas greetings, on December 27 the woke editors of the Washington Post published a column, “Trump aides’ official religious messages for Christmas draw objections.” The Post decried Trump’s words as a departure from recent government practices such as under the faux Roman Catholic Joseph Biden who openly violated many key the teachings of his professed Church, especially on matters involving sexuality, and nominal Christian Barack Obama, who had an ornament of Mao Zedong, hardly a supporter of Christian or any other religious values or freedom, disgracefully displayed on White House Christmas tree in 2009.

    The Post preferred the secular, non-Christian messages of the previous administrations which typically focused on seasonal joy, peace, or Santa Claus imagery. The Post’s editors apparently refuse to celebrate December 25, the day on which Christians, representing 62% of the American population, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center report, celebrate Christmas Day, a federal holiday, honoring the birth of Jesus Christ.

    Responding to the Post’s baseless criticisms, President Trump retorted that “[t]he First Lady and I send our warmest wishes to all Americans as we share in the joy of Christmas Day and celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Along with President Trump’s commemorating Christmas, officials at the Department of Homeland Security posted salutations on X proclaiming “Christ is Born!” and “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior,” along with religious images such as a manger scene and crosses on its website.

    Not surprisingly, the prejudice of woke anti-Christian media outlets exemplified by the Post and/or the unfounded fears of others on the Left warning that the attitude and actions of the Trump administration will lead to an unclearly defined “Christian nationalism,” to the exclusion of other faiths aside, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, this manufactured controversy is about how critics at the Post and elsewhere ignore religious freedom and Christianity’s contributions to American life.

    Among the many times the Supreme Court recognized the importance of religion is 1952’s Zorach v. Clauson. Justices William O. Douglas’ opinion upheld the practice of New York City officials who allowed public school students to leave class early to attend sessions provided by educators from the faiths of their parents to receive religious instruction. The Court reasoned that “[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

    Critics who oppose mentions of religion in American public, especially Christianity, rely on the repudiated so-called wall of separation between Church and State. Often credited to Thomas Jeffersons 1803 “Letter to the Danburry Baptist Convention,” this metaphor was actually created in 1644 by Roger Williams, a Puritan pastor in Massachusetts. The Supreme Court first used this metaphor in 1878’s Reynolds v. United States in upholding a federal statute banning polygamy in the then Utah Territory, explaining that while people are free to practice their faiths, those beliefs must comply with American law.

    The Supreme Court did not use the wall metaphor again until 1947 when Justice Hugo Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, introduced it in Everson v. Board of Education as a Trojan Horse of sorts in allowing New Jersey to provide publicly funded transportation for students in faith-based, largely Roman Catholic schools. However, the wall morphed into a Trojan House because the Court used it for decades to deny most aid to religious schools, often displaying anti-Catholic animus.

    In 2016 the Supreme Court repudiated the wall’s anti-religious discrimination, granting equal treatment to faith-based institutions and individuals. At the heart of its judgment, writing for the Supreme Court in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that “the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran Church from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.” Consequently, the Court, and the Trump administration independently acknowledged the important role religion plays in American life and history.

    Moving forward, hopefully people of good will accept that neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court forbid Christianity from playing, and continuing to have, an important place in American life as long as all religions are treated fairly and equally. To this end, in 1968’s Epperson v. Arkansas, invalidating a law from Arkansas mandating the teaching of the Genesis account of creation in all of the state’s public educational institutions, Justice Abe Fortas, author of the majority opinion, noted that “[t]he First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”

    In light of Fortas’ comment, the objections of the Washington Post notwithstanding, it is hard to see how Trump’s wishing Christmas cheer or Vance’s remark could be viewed as violating the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom. Rather, Trump’s warm words merely displayed courtesy and good cheer of the Christmas season to others, qualities sorely lacking in our public discourse, while Vance’s reflected lived reality in the United States.

Charles J. Russo, M.Div., J.D., Ed.D., is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law in the School of Law at the University of Dayton, Ohio