Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

Christian Nationalism has seen so many victories with the makeup of the highest courts at both the state and federal levels. Time and again right-wing courts seem poised to enact theocracy by privileging religious belief over equality under the law and even basic human and civil rights.

These rulings and opinions are never based on reason or evidence but rather are special pleading for some vague “sincerely held belief” that seems to act as a get-out-of-jail-free card for religious individuals and organizations that circumvent civil rights laws. There are many examples in the not-so-distant history that point to this creeping assault on equal treatment under the law, but also rulings just this year that many people would likely be surprised to hear about.

Recently, a Virginia school board agreed to pay a high school teacher $575,000 to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit and purported free speech violations. In this case, said high school teacher refused to use the pronouns and name of a student because they were different than what was printed on their birth certificate.

The teacher, Peter Vlaming, cited his religious and moral objections to using the desired pronouns as that would be a “lie,” despite the school policy of using preferred pronouns to ensure all students felt safe and respected. Because of his repeated refusal to follow this policy and refer to a student by their desired name and pronouns, the district terminated Vlaming in 2018. He took the school board to court and his case was dismissed, as this was a clear-cut case of failure to follow school policy and to show respect to all students.

However, after some publicity and a renewed effort by the Alliance Defending Freedom (a theocratic legal organization), the Virginia Supreme Court reinstated the lawsuit. The school district then settled with Vlaming to avoid codifying this kind of religious supremacy into law, since they were now operating in a more hostile legislative environment under a rightward shift in the state legislature.

In this case, there was no threat against any religious creed, nor was the teacher singled out for his faith. The school had a reasonable policy—one the teacher had followed prior to this incident—that everyone should be called the name they wish to be called by and not have to attend a public school in a hostile environment.

The interesting thing is that the teacher, citing his faith and placing it above the respect of his students, ensured that he was in violation of the policy. He would rather cause distress and harm to children than exercise empathy and adhere to the school policy of equal treatment to all students. These facts were not in dispute in the case on either side. Yet right-wing judges felt compelled to protect this kind of behavior, not because it results in better schools or better outcomes, but because there was insufficient deference for Christians to ignore laws they may not like.

The judges saw fit to rule that Christian faith ought to be protected over secular policy because they inherently believe that it should be. This is how Christian Nationalism operates and how the wall between church and state is eroded: by using sectarian faith-based grievances to carve out equal or greater protection of theocratic and faith-based doctrine over the success, access, and well-being of our public institutions.

I am not the only one raising alarm bells regarding this kind of theocracy. To cite the dissenting Virginia justices in the case, this ruling “establishes a sweeping super scrutiny standard with the potential to shield any person’s objection to practically any policy or law by claiming a religious justification for their failure to follow either.” Essentially, once we open the door to a religious excuse from observing the law, we will not be able to close it. If religious belief is equal to or greater than any secular law passed, then there is no law that can’t be ignored in favor of religious belief.

Historically, the main avenue to avoid civil rights laws has been citing religious exemptions or “sincerely held beliefs.” We more recently saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic as churches used religious exemptions to continue holding Sunday meetups, refusing to take precautions against the spread of the deadly virus. How many more people fell ill or even died because religious groups were exempt from some pandemic orders?

In states like Arizona and Iowa, we see religious exemptions for public school attendance, that provide public dollars for sectarian private schools. If students see their public school closed and are required to attend a private institution specifically founded to avoid observing civil rights laws, what happens to those protected by those laws? Does it not raise an alarm that organizations and politicians are perfectly fine with revoking the rights of the public in the name of protecting and privileging religious belief? Remember, an entire denomination (Southern Baptists) exists largely because of a desire to avoid observing integration laws.

Where do these carve-outs end when we have a judiciary that privileges faith over facts? Every time we see an expansion of the rights of faith, why does it seem to always come at the expense of other groups, public institutions, or the public at large? Why do activist religious legal groups seek out these rulings? Why is this all coming to a head now?

The answers seem to lie in the judiciary and with stories like that of the Virginia school teacher. Religious groups know they will not be able to persuade the majority to support their right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ groups or defund public schools. But they can get their arguments in front of sympathetic judges who do not have to justify their decisions. Their goal isn’t to win every case. The goal is to stymie a small school district here, a state-funded program there. The goal is to throw out the use of reason and instead enshrine faith as a last resort of discrimination by attempting to codify it beyond reproach.

This is how Christian Nationalism takes root and why it is extremely important to call it out, stand against it, and vote against it. We must take notice when faith is being used as both a weapon and a shield in undermining the rights of our society and our ideals such as freedom of and freedom from religion. We must take notice when our courts seem more and more willing to give in to empty arguments from religious groups that if they can retreat to faith then they can retreat from observing the law.

Secular governance is the cornerstone of our democracy, and we must keep our government secular if we want to keep it a democracy.

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Top image by Billion Photos, available via Shutterstock.