1st place — 2026 First in the Family essay contest: Nyla Woods
FFRF awarded Nyla $3,500.
By Nyla Woods
Christianity and Christian nationalism have been used to uphold white supremacy since the establishment of the United States.
Political leaders and theologians weaponized the bible and used distorted scriptures, divine entitlement and nationalistic narratives to justify the horrendous acts of colonization, slavery and racial segregation. By doing this, white Christian nationalists successfully sacralized white dominance and transformed systemic oppression into a perceived spiritual sanction.
An example of this would be how institutionalized prejudice was prominent (and still is) in private religious schools. While Christian private schools have been religious academic institutions since the 1600s, they massively expanded during the 1950s as a direct response to the legislative desegregation of American public schools. The expansion of these institutions was not created to educate the increasing number of Christian youth, but to create a legal loophole to the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared racial segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. At private schools, the school board is legally allowed to deny admission to any student that they deem as “unfit” for their institution. White supremacists in these private academic advisory roles abused their autonomy to perpetuate discriminatory practices that prohibited African Americans and other minorities from attending their schools under the guise of “academic selectivity” and “religious freedom.”
I know firsthand what it feels like to grow up in a culture that treats whiteness as the gold standard. As a young African American girl who grew up in the suburbs, I was often one of the only two Black girls in my class. Outside of school, the media rarely offered girls like me fair and accurate representation. Instead, it constantly represented Eurocentric features and European ancestry as the sole markers of beauty and worth. Like other young minority children consuming the media, I also internalized those messages so deeply that I believed I had to change myself to matter in society.
Today, Christian nationalism wants to take that same feeling of exclusion and write it into our modern democracy. Our current executive leader and his administration have been overturning previous progressive milestones and implementing new policies that make sure white Christian culture stays dominant while forcing everyone else to conform. The fusion of exclusive biblical principles and our American governance is a direct attack on our secular democracy because it creates a system where your rights depend on your race, religion and gender.
There are many evident instances of this happening: Women having their reproductive rights stripped away, the Supreme Court allowing unfair election maps that significantly impairs the ability of Black voters to elect leaders of their choice, and the implementation of reversed protections for LGBTQ+ and transgender rights.
Therefore, it is important that we continue to educate ourselves and advocate on behalf of each other to protect our secular democracy against these dangerous beliefs and build a community where people don’t have to change themselves to matter.
Nyla, 21, is seeking a degree in visual communications from the University of Kansas.
“I am passionate about art and storytelling,” Nyla writes. “Drawing has always been a creative outlet for me since my youth. I aspire to be a comic creator, concept artist and animated feature screenwriter. I volunteer at my city’s local non-profit bookstore that gives kids and adults access to literacy and affordable books.”
