If Christian Nationalists Win, Your Taxes Will Support Their Church
And other fun facts about theocracy
Funded by taxes on slaves and liquor
How do you like the church above? Welcome to Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia — today’s window into early American history. If you ask me to drop names, I’ll whisper that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, George Wythe, Patrick Henry, and George Mason all attended.
Built in 1715, the church replaced the original with a grander, more durable brick structure, thanks to funding from the Virginia General Assembly. The state house allocated a £200 grant, sourced from taxes on liquor and slaves, to complete the construction. Once finished, the church featured a special seat for Governor Spotswood — “a canopied chair on a platform inside the rail opposite the raised pulpit with its overhanging sounding board.” Essentially, the governor had his own elevated throne for the weekly taxpayer-funded services.
In fact, if you check out the illustration, you can see his name embroidered in gold lettering on the canopy.
Okay, that’s crazy, right? I can hear you from here. Believe me, though, this was normal for the colonies and territories of America. From what I hear, this may be due for revisit, because Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and other social conservatives are talking about “tired of this separation of church and state junk,” i.e., one of the fundamental tenets of American democracy.
Update: Trump’s executive order of February 6, 2025 created a Faith Office in the White House — a clear move against our traditional firewall between faith and government. He tapped prosperity gospel televangelist Paula White to lead it. This is probably a great time to read up on the Seven Mountains initiative, and Paula White’s contributions to it.
Let’s think about that for a moment
First proposed by Baptist minister John Leland in 1794, the separation of church and state is the reason:
Your taxes don’t go to support your state’s official church.
Your protection under the law is the same as anyone else’s, and the value of your testimony in court carries equal weight.
You don’t have to swear allegiance to a government-sponsored denomination before declaring your candidacy for the local school board, state legislature, or president.
It wasn’t always this way. In fact, we didn’t have a separation between church and state in America from the first settlers until the mid-19th century. Let’s take a momentary look back.
The official church in New England was Congregationalist
Those arch-theocrats, the Puritans settled much of New England. The Congregationalists — a.k.a. the United Church of Christ— are their descendants. Until 1833, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut maintained the Congregationalist denomination as their official church.
So, how did that work out?
In Massachusetts, the Congregationalist establishment enforced taxation for its benefit on all believers and expelled or even put to death those who would not accede to its beliefs. As a result, Massachusetts’ Baptist clergy became the first in the United States to advocate for a separation of church and state and an absolute right to believe what one chooses. — The history of religion in the United States: Liberty and theocracy, The Constitution Center
So, not great for anyone who’s not Congregationalist.
Moving south from here, let’s leap over The Quaker State of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which had originally organizedas a Catholic refuge, to those great folks back at Bruton Parish in Williamsburg. That was what denomination, again? Oh yes….
The official church in Virginia was Anglican
Virginia was settled in large part by those who had supported the crown during England’s bloody civil war — in fact, a great number of settlers washed up on Virginia’s shores as refugees after losing their homes and family members to the conflict.
To these, the Puritans were the people who overthrew and beheaded the rightful and God-appointed King Charles I, installing a bloody theocracy lead by Oliver Cromwell in it his stead. They made sure that the state church of Virginia was Anglican — that is, the Church of England — as was the Bruton Parish we discussed earlier.
Fun fact, the clergy of the Church of England pledged their loyalty to the King of England during their ordination ceremony, so the tie-in with the government was integral to their role as spiritual leaders. It should be no surprise at what happened after that.
Since the colony’s establishment in 1607, the Church of England had been the only sanctioned church in Virginia and was supported by tithes that colonists were required to pay. The parishes and vestries were part of local government in the colony…. Dissenting denominations…faced harassment, violence, fines, and even imprisonment. — “That The Oppressed May Go Free”: A Petition To The Virginia General Assembly For Religious Freedom
After the revolution, American congregations of the Church of England rebranded. If you’re looking for their spiritual descendants, you can find them now Episcopal and United Methodist congregations.
Let’s move on now, west to the great territory of Deseret, a.k.a. Utah.
The official church in Utah was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — Mormon
Between 1849 when Mormon settlers in Salt Lake Valley organized the State of Deseret, and 1896 when the renamed Utah received U.S. statehood, a Mormon theocracy ruled it under Brigham Young. Though the U.S. did not recognize the State of Deseret, it functioned as a de facto government for the region.
Mormon church leaders held the reins of political power; Mormon leaders oversaw many areas of civic life, including education, the courts, executive functions, and law enforcement.
The U.S. seized upon the practice of polygamy as a way of screening out the problems that went along with Mormon theocracy, including bloc voting. When the church banned polygamy in 1890, however, the screen was punctured.
Utah entered as a state — albeit one with that retained a lingering whiff of theocracy — in 1896.
So pick your poison
If you’re down with creating a theocracy in the United States, or follow The Bogus Historians Who Teach Evangelicals They Live in a Theocracy, please do the rest of us a favor. Kindly let us know which of these traditional U.S. theocratic denominations you’d like to make into our Church of the United States.
Will it be Episcopal? United Methodist? United Church of Christ? Latter-day Saints?
We’d like to know where you’ll be sending our taxes.
Hello, Enthusiasts! I’m an M.Div.-fueled world religion writer with Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, and some Incan practice under my belt. Check out some of my other Religion and Spirituality stories here.
If you’re feeling flush, please consider tossing a coin into the tip jar. Many thanks, my friend!
Please drop me a note on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Threads, and Substack if you find yourself over there!
Would that be the Her Lady of the Perpetual Screeching?
Except that, of course, MTG and Ms. Boebert will never get their way. There are too few "Christian Nationalists" in this country to be able to take it over.