In his 1935 novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” Sinclair Lewis wrote, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

That quote has been getting a lot of play lately, with good reason. When a former president and current presidential candidate starts hawking Bibles bundled with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, voters have every reason to be suspicious.

“Religion and Christianity are the two biggest things missing from this country,” Donald Trump declared—this coming from a self-confessed sexual predator and someone who, according to independent sources, issued more than thirty thousand false or misleading statements during his four years in office.

This impulse, which has come to be known as Christian Nationalism (although there’s nothing remotely Christian about it), has become rather popular in recent years, especially among white evangelicals. As I understand it, the central tenet is the assertion that the United States is and always has been a Christian nation.

That, of course, is demonstrably false. The founders, well aware of the wars of religion in Europe and England, explicitly specified that the new government should have no entanglement with religion. The First Amendment is abundantly clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Leading the charge in this campaign of disinformation is David Barton, a faux historian who has