Christian Nationalism at the Catholic Crossroads: Can Protestants Let Them In?

The Founders of America despised the Roman Catholic Church and considered it an affront to liberty. Is there room for Papists in America's Re-founding?

Christian Nationalism is having its moment. It is energetic, unapologetic, and deeply resented by the usual suspects; woke evangelicals, regime media, and academic theologians more concerned with footnotes than fruit. Despite the constant barrage of lazy accusations, Christian Nationalists persist. They say what others only whisper. They speak the name of Christ without euphemism or embarrassment. And most refreshingly of all, they do not care what their enemies think.

For that reason alone, I sympathize with them. They get the arrows from every direction, often for things they never said. They are called fascists for suggesting fathers should lead their homes. They are slandered as racists for daring to care about the inheritance of their children. They are mocked as theocrats for quoting the Bible in political arguments. That kind of treatment would make any sane man dig in and double down.

So I say this not to join the pile-on, but to raise a serious and necessary question. One that even their defenders seem reluctant to ask. It is the most basic question of all, and yet the one rarely spoken aloud. It is this: what is Christian about Christian Nationalism

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CHRISTIAN? NATIONALISM.

If that seems obvious, then ask the next question: who counts as a Christian? The movement has embraced everyone from Baptists to Pentecostals to Anglo-Catholics to Latin Mass traditionalists. It has found allies in Postliberal Catholics, Eastern Orthodox meme lords, and even a few Jewish nationalists who like the aesthetics. But eventually, every movement must define its borders. And Christian Nationalism, if it intends to last, will have to decide whether Rome is in or out.

This is not a question of individual salvation, though many will try to make it one. It is not about who is going to Heaven. It is about who shares the theological and political foundation needed to build a Christian nation. The answers to that are not merely spiritual. They are historical, institutional, and civilizational. And if you think Roman Catholicism fits neatly inside the tent, you may be unaware of just how violently the American Founders rejected that idea.

They did not merely disagree with Rome. They did not offer mild critique. They loathed it. They viewed the Papacy not as an alternative expression of Christianity, but as its ancient enemy. They saw Catholicism not only as a false gospel, but as a political and philosophical system bent on destroying liberty and enslaving conscience. The Founders believed that any nation ruled by priests and Popes would be a nation without self-rule, without truth, and without peace.

If you think that sounds harsh, good. That is how they meant it. And if you call yourself a Christian Nationalist but are unsure where you stand on the Papist question, it may be worth considering how your Protestant forefathers answered it. They burned the Pope’s effigy in the streets. They barred Catholics from public office. They preached sermons naming the Pope as the Antichrist. They did not fear being called divisive, because they knew they were already divided. Light does not fellowship with darkness. And for them, Rome was not misunderstood—it was malignant

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.If Christian Nationalism is more than branding, it will have to wrestle with that legacy. Not merely whether it wants Catholics in the coalition, but whether it can include them without becoming something else entirely. Before the movement builds the house, it had better examine the foundation. Because the men who laid it did not build it for Rome. They built it in defiance of it.

THE FOUNDERS WERE NOT NEUTRAL

The notion that America’s Founders were religiously indifferent or broadly ecumenical is one of the more persistent myths in popular history. While many modern conservatives like to imagine the Founders as tolerant pluralists with a soft spot for civil religion, the reality is far more polemical. The men who declared independence, drafted state constitutions, and framed the republic were overwhelmingly Protestant—and not the squishy, sentimental kind. They were raised on Reformation polemics, preached at by anti-Papist ministers, and deeply committed to the idea that liberty and Romanism could not coexist. They did not merely see Catholicism as incorrect or misguided. They saw it as an existential threat to self-government.

This hostility was not a fringe sentiment held by a few cranky puritans. It was central to the American mind in the colonial and revolutionary periods. Anti-Catholicism was not some private prejudice they kept to themselves. It was written into their laws, shouted in their sermons, and expressed in the streets through public ritual. The most iconic of these rituals was the annual Pope’s Day celebration every November 5, when Protestant colonists burned effigies of the Pope and chanted anti-Catholic slogans. In Boston and elsewhere, these public spectacles were expressions of theological conviction and civic vigilance. They were warnings: Rome must never rule here.

The Founders understood that if Catholicism ever gained power in America, it would reproduce the conditions that had led to the burning of heretics, the suppression of conscience, and the political tyranny that drove so many of their ancestors across the Atlantic in the first place. Their writings reflect this fear with shocking clarity. They did not view the Papacy as a benign spiritual authority. They viewed it as a foreign monarch demanding the loyalty of American citizens. The theological problem of Rome was never severed from its political consequences

THEIR WORDS WERE UNMISTAKABLE

John Adams was among the most articulate and brutal in his criticisms. In a 1816 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams wrote, “If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth and in hell, it is this company of Loyola.” He was speaking of the Jesuits, whom he regarded as scheming political agents rather than sincere clergy. In the same correspondence, he questioned whether free government could even exist alongside Roman Catholicism, and suggested that the Church’s long history of tyranny made it incompatible with any form of civil liberty. These were not comments made offhand or in a moment of anger. They reflected Adams’ studied conviction.

Thomas Jefferson, though more deistic in orientation, echoed Adams’ concerns. In 1813, he wrote to Alexander von Humboldt, “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.” In his letter to Horatio Spafford the following year, Jefferson warned that priests had always been hostile to liberty and were natural allies of despots. He did not make an exception for the Roman clergy. Jefferson viewed the Catholic Church as a political system that demanded the obedience of souls and the silence of reason. Its influence, in his view, would erode the very foundations of republican life.

Samuel Adams, one of the most devoutly Christian among the Founders, was no less direct. In a 1774 letter to James Warren, he wrote, “I did verily believe, as I still do, that much more is to be dreaded from the growth of Popery in America than from the Stamp Act.” This was no small comparison. The Stamp Act was seen by American colonists as one of the most egregious acts of British tyranny. Yet Samuel Adams viewed the encroachment of Roman Catholicism as a greater threat still. He believed it would destroy the Protestant foundation of American liberty and reintroduce the hierarchies and coercions that the colonies had been founded to escape.

Alexander Hamilton, though not as prolific on the topic, moved in Federalist circles that regarded Romanism as politically subversive. Federalist newspapers and pamphlets frequently warned of the dangers of Catholic immigration, fearing that loyalty to the Pope would override constitutional allegiance. In both elite correspondence and popular agitation, the Roman Church was seen as a threat to the American experiment—not because it was foreign, but because it was feudal.

THEIR LAWS BACKED THEIR BELIEFS

It was not just rhetoric. The founders’ contempt for Rome was also codified into law. In colonial New York, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts, Catholics were barred from holding office. In some states, Catholics could not vote or teach in schools. Oaths of office often included clauses requiring the individual to renounce the Pope’s authority and affirm that transubstantiation was false. These were not isolated clauses from obscure documents. They were widespread and legally enforced in multiple states even after independence. The architects of American republicanism were not content to merely complain about Rome. They sought to wall it out of the republic through legal and political means.

Maryland, originally established as a refuge for English Catholics, shifted dramatically over the course of the eighteenth century. By the time of the Revolution, Maryland had enacted laws limiting the civil rights of Catholics and restricting their religious influence. Massachusetts passed legislation making it a criminal offense for a Catholic priest to enter the colony. These laws were not passed out of petty dislike but out of political principle. The colonists believed that permitting Rome to flourish would undo the Protestant character of their society and threaten its civic order.

In their view, the Catholic system was inherently monarchist. Its structure was top-down. Its theology demanded submission. Its hierarchy was closed and unaccountable. These features made it, in their eyes, an engine of tyranny. It was the theological mirror of European absolutism. If liberty was to survive in the New World, then Popery must be kept out of power.

Even where tolerance was legally granted for the sake of diplomacy, the suspicion of Rome remained. George Washington famously ordered his troops to refrain from burning the Pope in effigy during the 1775 observance of Pope’s Day. But this was not because he approved of Catholicism. It was a strategic move, meant to avoid offending Catholic allies in Quebec and France. Washington himself remained reserved toward the Roman Church. His writings contain no commendation of it, and the officers under his command made no effort to hide their continued distrust.

THEY SAW ROME AS A POLITICAL ENEMY

The Founders did not separate theology from political philosophy. For them, Rome was not merely a rival religion. It was an alternate civilization. The Pope was not a pastor. He was a prince. His system did not merely offer different doctrines about Christ. It imposed a different vision of law, order, and rule. It claimed authority over kings, dictated terms to magistrates, and demanded that citizens submit not only in spiritual matters but in the affairs of everyday life. The separation of church and state, in the Protestant tradition, was never meant to neuter religion. It was meant to prevent the return of Rome.

This conviction was not limited to the elite. Anti-Catholicism was a core element of colonial Protestant identity. The English had long regarded the Papacy as the Antichrist. Puritan theologians in New England preached against the Whore of Babylon with the same urgency they applied to local politics. When American independence was declared, it was celebrated not just as a rejection of George III, but as a rejection of every throne and altar that had kept men in chains—including the one in Rome.

To pretend this was accidental is to rewrite history. The American Founders, across denominational lines and regional loyalties, held Rome in contempt. They considered it a spiritual deception and a political disease. They knew its history. They had read its decrees. They had seen the burnings, the inquisitions, the silencing of conscience, and the slaughter of saints. And they resolved that it would not happen here.

If Christian Nationalists today wish to reclaim the legacy of the Founding, they must come to terms with this central fact. Protestant America did not merely resist tyranny from London. It resisted tyranny from Rome. The Founders did not believe that all expressions of Christianity were equally valid or equally compatible with liberty. They believed some were poison. And the one most poisonous of all, in their eyes, was the Church of Rome.

ROME’S POLITICAL STRUCTURE IS MONARCHICAL

The Roman Catholic Church is not simply a theological institution. It is a political system modeled after imperial Rome itself. Its head, the Pope, is not a ceremonial figure but a literal monarch who claims universal jurisdiction. The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed this in Lumen Gentium (1964), declaring that the Pope holds "full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered." The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 882) repeats this nearly word for word. These are not vague affirmations of moral authority. They are declarations of global governance. The Pope is not merely the Bishop of Rome. He is the supreme ruler of over one billion people who are expected to obey him in all matters of doctrine, discipline, and governance.

This structure is enshrined in law. Canon Law 212, section 1, states that the Christian faithful “are obliged to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith.” The Vatican is recognized by 183 nations as a sovereign state. It sends and receives ambassadors. It signs binding treaties. It maintains permanent observer status at the United Nations. There is no separation of church and state in Catholic theory. The Church is the state, or at least superior to it. This has not changed. It has only adjusted its tactics.

History bears out the dangers of this system. In 1801, Napoleon signed a Concordat with Pope Pius VII, allowing the Church to resume control over French education, clergy appointments, and public worship. In Spain, the Inquisition continued until 1834 under papal approval. In Austria, under Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, the Church was used as an instrument of state control while still enforcing censorship, heresy laws, and forced conversions. Even in modern times, the Vatican retains the legal power to create binding concordats with civil governments—agreements which often exempt it from local jurisdiction and tax law.

This is not a passive ecclesiastical structure. It is an empire with centuries of precedent. Its very existence challenges the sovereignty of nations and the liberty of conscience. When the Founders viewed the Church of Rome, they did not see a denomination. They saw a foreign government that demanded the obedience of their citizens.

ROME’S DOCTRINES ARE HOSTILE TO LIBERTY

The theological basis for the Founders’ fear of Rome was not ignorance. It was doctrinal clarity. Rome has never believed in liberty as Protestants define it. The Council of Trent (1545–1563), which remains binding to this day, anathematized the principle of salvation by faith alone, declared the authority of the Church to be equal to or greater than Scripture, and affirmed the necessity of sacramental mediation. More than that, it anathematized freedom of religion itself. Canon 14 of the Fourth Session condemned those who reject “unwritten traditions.” Canon 9 of the Sixth Session condemned those who believe man is justified by faith alone. These were not abstract disagreements. They were theological justifications for the persecution of Protestants for centuries.

In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors, a document explicitly condemning nearly every foundational principle of the American republic. Proposition 15 condemns the idea that every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he believes true. Proposition 55 condemns the separation of church and state. Proposition 77 condemns the belief that Catholicism should not be the only religion of the state. Proposition 80 condemns the idea that the Pope should reconcile with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. These condemnations were not symbolic. They reflected longstanding dogma and they have never been repealed.

Americanist Catholics tried to adapt to liberal democracy in the late 1800s. Pope Leo XIII responded with the encyclical Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899), condemning what he called “Americanism”—the belief in individual conscience, civic freedom, and the decentralization of church authority. He warned American bishops not to accommodate Protestant culture, not to prioritize freedom over obedience, and not to affirm any doctrine that diminished the supremacy of the Pope.

Even in the twentieth century, Catholic theology maintained its absolutist claims. The Second Vatican Council’s document Dignitatis Humanae (1965) appeared to affirm religious freedom, but carefully qualified it within “due limits.” It did not renounce prior doctrines. It did not retract the condemnations of the Syllabus of Errors. It merely rephrased them. The document also affirmed that all men are obligated to seek the truth and adhere to it once found, implying that true religious liberty is only possible through submission to the Roman Church.

This theological system has no room for Protestant liberty of conscience. It does not affirm the priesthood of all believers. It does not accept congregational self-rule. It does not believe Scripture interprets itself. Instead, it affirms that the Magisterium, led by the Pope, is the sole interpreter of divine revelation. That is not a spiritual conviction. It is a total claim of authority.

ROME HAS SUPPRESSED REPUBLICS

The Founders did not have to speculate about Rome’s political character. They had history as their witness. When the Revolutions of 1848 broke out across Europe, calling for constitutional government and liberty of the press, Pope Pius IX at first appeared sympathetic. But when Italian republicans declared the Roman Republic in 1849, the Pope fled and called upon Catholic France to crush it. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte sent 10,000 troops. They invaded, defeated the republican forces, and restored the Pope’s absolute rule. For the next twenty years, Rome governed the Papal States with censorship, military tribunals, and clerical police. Republicanism was punished as heresy.

This was not an isolated case. In Ireland, under Catholic rule, Protestant literature was banned, and state support was given to Catholic schools that enforced clerical loyalty. In Francoist Spain, the Catholic Church functioned as the ideological arm of the regime. Protestant churches were surveilled and sometimes closed. In Poland, even after the fall of communism, the Catholic Church lobbied for censorship laws to criminalize blasphemy and limit religious criticism. In Mexico during the early twentieth century, the Church backed counter-revolutionary forces against a constitutional republic, seeking to restore its legal privileges and land ownership.

Catholic states consistently enforced blasphemy laws, suppressed dissent, and punished nonconformity. The Index of Forbidden Books was maintained by the Vatican from 1559 to 1966. It banned authors ranging from Galileo to Descartes to Luther to Pascal. Books were not simply disputed. They were illegal. The Church claimed the right to decide what citizens could read, believe, or discuss. This is not the fruit of misunderstanding. It is the direct application of Catholic doctrine.

The United States escaped this fate because its founding was not Catholic. It was Protestant to the bone. The Founders knew what happened to nations under Rome. They had seen the Inquisition, the Counter-Reformation, the alliance with kings, and the burning of heretics. They wanted none of it. That is why they structured the country to exclude Rome from public power, and why they crafted laws that required public officials to repudiate foreign religious authorities.

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM MUST CHOOSE

If Christian Nationalism is going to be Christian in any meaningful, Protestant sense, it will eventually have to draw a line. The inclusion of Catholics may seem like a matter of strategy. But it is a matter of theology, history, and civilizational survival. The Protestant faith affirms liberty of conscience under the lordship of Christ alone. Rome denies that. The Protestant tradition affirms the sufficiency of Scripture. Rome places itself above it. The Protestant churches allow the governed to elect their elders. Rome appoints its bishops from above.

Including Catholics in a movement for Christian civilizational renewal may feel ecumenical. It may even seem generous. But it ignores the fatal contradiction at the heart of the alliance. Rome does not share power. It never has. It does not accept parity with other Christian traditions. Its own canon law forbids that. Its doctrine declares Protestant orders invalid. Its councils anathematize justification by faith alone. Its Catechism still proclaims the Pope as supreme ruler of all Christians. These are not cultural preferences. They are dogmas.

The Founders knew this. They wrote laws to prevent it. They took oaths to reject it. They built the American order in opposition to it. They saw Rome not as a partner in Christian civilization, but as a predator upon it. They were not wrong. Nothing has changed.

Christian Nationalism cannot afford to forget this. If it does, it will build its house on sand. If it welcomes Rome in the name of unity, it will inherit tyranny in the name of peace. And if it refuses to learn from the warnings of the Founders, it will repeat their fears as realities.

There is no Christian nation without Christ. But there is also no Christian liberty without Protestant truth. To rebuild the city on a hill, we must first make sure the ground is solid. The Pope does not belong in that city. He never did. And if we let him in now, he will not be content to visit. He will demand the throne.

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