The Fourth of July is fast approaching, and with it the 250th anniversary of the adoption of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, a secular document rooted in Enlightenment principles of reason and natural law. On that day long ago, the nation’s Founders proclaimed a new era of freedom at a time when only white Christian males enjoyed the fullness of freedom. Many among them knew that freedom was destined to broaden its horizons; their Declaration opened that door of possibility for future generations.
Many Americans, though, were unwilling to wait. Immediately, some left standing on the threshold of liberty demanded freedom for themselves.
“I think it not hyberbolical to affirm, that even an African, has equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen,” wrote Revolutionary War veteran Lemuel Haynes in “Liberty Further Extended,” an essay composed shortly after the pronouncement of the Declaration. An African American formerly indentured before being granted freedom, Haynes criticized enslavers for proclaiming freedom for themselves while ignoring enslaved people. “Shall a man’s color be the decisive criterion whereby to judge of his natural right” to freedom?, he asked. Of course not.
In the centuries that followed, gradual freedom for more Americans — Black Americans and other people of color, women, LGBTQ+ Americans — was achieved through hard-fought advocacy and legal efforts that were themselves nothing short of revolutionary.
With each advance of freedom, white male patriarchy — often rooted in ancient religious customs — fought back. And in the face of that resistance, Americans of good will and great courage kept pointing the way forward to a more inclusive future.
And then came the 21st century, where today our nation finds itself on the brink of rolling back many generations of freedom’s advances. Determined to erase constitutional church-state separation and equal freedom of religion and from religion for all while elevating white Christian male supremacy to the highest levels of governance, Christian Nationalists are declaring that only their lives matter.
As you’ll read in this issue of Church & State, Americans United’s 2026 Summit for Religious Freedom clearly refuted such anti-freedom nonsense.
And as you’re seeing throughout this year of honoring — or dishonoring, on the part of Christian Nationalists — our nation’s Declaration of Independence, Americans United is working harder than ever in resisting authoritarian efforts to make American governance tyrannical.
There’s a chance you know someone who has abandoned freedom for tyranny falsely disguised as “freedom.” Too many Americans who have abandoned freedom for tyranny, in fact, ignore the still relevant reasons that sparked the penning of the Declaration.
In criticizing the tyranny of England’s King George III, the Founders leveled accusations including the king’s neglecting of laws “most wholesome and necessary for the public good”; invading “the rights of the people”; obstructing “the Administration of Justice”; “quartering large bodies of armed troops among us”; “abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments”; and exciting “domestic insurrections amongst us.”
Each and every one of those charges has resonance in the lived reality of today’s tyrannical, politicized white Christian Nationalists. They are today’s King George III, determined to suppress freedom’s rising.
The Declaration of Independence opposed tyranny of the past and tyranny of the present. It voiced an aspirational promise of freedom for all that succeeding generations advanced.
Today, freedom-loving Americans of all races, ethnicities, and religions see within that foundational document the enduring promise of equal freedom for all.
Tyrannical-minded Christian Nationalist leaders, on the other hand, ignore the aspirational freedom promises within the Declaration. They gaze backwards toward a theocracy that the Declaration and America’s Constitution both soundly rejected. They imprison the minds of their followers and poison public discourse. Their declaration of subjection envisions a future America marked by religious oppression and widespread despair.
That’s a tyrannical future of which no actual freedom-loving American is interested.
To the contrary, in this celebratory year of the Declaration of Independence and beyond, Americans United remains steadfast in firmly holding open the door of true religious freedom — the basis of all our freedoms at large.
For all, equally.
Without exception.