A lot of the support for Donald Trump comes from so-called Christian Nationalists, people who believe the United States of America was meant to be a nation rooted solely in Christianity.

These are people who clearly haven’t read an American history book or seen “Hamilton.” But let’s not go there for now.

I’m not a religious person. I’m not sure I believe in God. Like most other Italian-Americans, I was baptized in the Roman Catholic church. Like many other Italian-Americans, I stopped thinking of myself as Catholic a long time ago.

Again, let’s not go there for now.

From my perspective, there are two basic things wrong with the idea of the U.S. as Christian. 

One is that so many Americans aren’t. There are Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, people who believe in multiple gods and people who don’t believe in a god at all. They belong here too. But let’s not go there now, either.

Second is that, despite what these Christian nationalists believe, the United States is already imbued with Christian values.

It was Jesus who told the story of the Good Samaritan. How a Jewish man beaten by highwaymen was ignored by two fellow Jews. But a Samaritan, from a splinter group at odds with mainstream Judaism, took the man to an inn and paid for his care.

“Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?,” Jesus asked. “He who showed mercy on him. Go and do likewise.”

Until now, the United States has prided itself on being a good Samaritan. We helped fight Nazism and Japanese fascism in World War II. We see starving people in other nations and send food and clothing. After this week’s horrific hurricane in the southern Caribbean, you can bet there will be notable American efforts to provide aid to those in need in Jamaica, Grenada, Mexico and wherever else it’s needed.

What’s warped about the so-called Christian Nationalism is that it seems antipathetic to being a good neighbor. That’s best displayed in the nonsense about immigration.

Yes, it is a problem that so many people feel compelled to cross our border illegally. But almost all of them are doing so out of fear and desperation. The Christian thing to do would be to solve this – find a way to look at mothers and their hungry children as humans and not terrorists.

The so-called Christian Nationalist solution is internment camps, family separation and mass deportation. In what way does that show the mercy Jesus sought for those in need?

But let’s not go there now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Jewish values.

According to the Torah, Moses never made it to Canaan, the Promised Land. But he kept striving to get there. He led the Jews out of Egypt, distributed God’s rules of civil conduct and put down any effort to deviate from following God’s leadership.

The U.S. Constitution speaks of establishing a “more perfect union.” That is what our goal should always be. It’s not clear that we will ever achieve it. It doesn’t matter. Just trying to get to that version of the promised land is noble in itself.

And like Moses, this country is a leader. We set the bar for the ideas of freedom and democracy. George Washington could have decided he wanted to be a king – he chose otherwise. He wanted to be a citizen, like the rest of us.

After Monday’s Supreme Court decision, Donald Trump is no longer like the rest of us. But let’s not go there for now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Muslim values.

Muslims don’t believe there is some old guy with a white beard named God sitting on a throne in heaven. They believe God is one with everyone and everything, that the woman walking the dog that just peed on my mailbox is a representation of God – as is the dog, the mailbox and the pee.

That sentiment is echoed in our national and state parks. The beauty of Joshua Tree and the majesty of Niagara Falls. It’s echoed in our great cities, like my hometown of New York. 

It’s echoed in the guy selling shark jerky on a Kauai roadside or the woman tending to a nursing mother on Navajo land.

We embody Islam when we appreciate the world we have and try to make it better.

These spirits of so many different beliefs make the United States of America the greatest nation on earth.

Or they did. All that is at risk now. If we succumb to Trumpism, we lose what makes us special, what makes us wonderful. We lose the pride we should have when we’ve corrected our mistakes – working to end slavery, Jim Crow, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and more – while at the same time realizing that the promised land of being better is still further away. 

And we quash the fringe benefit of all this: becoming the innovative nation that invented the telegraph, microchips, jazz and baseball.

We are Christian – and Jewish and Muslim and other religions and none at all. Christian Nationalism – in the incongruous form of a bloated adulterer, thief, sexual predator and false god –  is not what America ever was or ever should be.

Let’s not go there. Ever.

Happy Independence Day!