I am old enough to witness and experience the deleterious impact of religious oppression on the lives of individuals, communities and a nation.
In 1961 my family moved back to east Tennessee after 16 years in the U.S. Air Force. We had lived in Texas, California, Hawai’i Michigan, New York, Kansas, Virginia, and Tennessee.
I was 16 when we returned to Johnson City, Tennessee near the Appalachian mountains and birthplace of my father and me. My paternal grandparents lived just outside of town in the small rural community of Watauga. Their hilltop home and farm were my personal touchstones in an otherwise migratory life.
At the base of the hill was a little white church at which Grandad was custodian and carpenter of pews, altar pieces and other furniture made in his shop in the old red barn.
I remember as a child a kind of freedom in worship. My parents, both raised in Christian faiths, explored many faiths as a practice, learning something from each to form what I learned was my responsibility: to form my own values based on my experience growing up in a democracy. To test them against the moral laws of the country as a guide and bulwark against tyranny.
These dear memories stand in contrast to what life in a small southern town was like for a teenager, for a woman. The church exerted a controlling influence espousing different freedoms for men than for women. From behavior to choice of avocation to personal freedom, there was a code for women much more circumscribed than for men. I never went to church without gloves, hose, garter, and garter belt, without behavior in deference to men. This is the white male hegemony that current MAGA leaders seek to reestablish. Repression of women, Black individuals, and immigrants is concurrent with building back an imagined past.
While the Bible teaches tolerance, the South practiced racism, while women are revered by Jesus, Southern men used vulgarities when referring to women’s bodies while requiring them to be virgins at the same time. It was common for young women to be touched inappropriately by relatives or strange men. A girl thus treated could not speak out about it without being tagged a slut.
Our early founders dealt with much greater religious domination. Having personally witnessed and experienced religious oppression by a state religion, our founders and early Americans of the Revolutionary times, wisely chose to keep religious preference in the personal realm. At the founding, there was a diversity of religious beliefs and diversity of people from Native Americans to far eastern, European, African and Islander living together in the British colonies. Diversity is the seedbed of our Creed: E pluribus unam, from many, one.
In 2025, a Christian nationalist cabal has seized control of the American government, a democracy founded on laws. This Christmas, it chose to impose Christian religious symbols and religious language on a nation founded on religious freedom and separation of church and state.
I abhor and reject this regime’s imposition of a particular faith on all, declaring it a state religion. IT IS NOT. Christianity is a personal religious choice. but not exclusive of any other religious tradition including the right not to embrace a religious faith.
Make no mistake. Trump et al intend to destroy the United States of America and install a king and minions in the name of Christ. Just as we helped Europe rid itself of a demagogue, we must ourselves rid the country of Maga ideology and ideologues before they take what is ours.
We are a nation of many faiths including Christianity. About 60% of Americans embrace Christianity. But it is not, nor was it ever a state religion. Nor are we a white nation. We are a nation of many peoples and beliefs and that is the great strength of our democracy and the hope of the world.
Susan Feathers 