Neil Gorsuch faces backlash for claiming US is 'creedal' nation: 'Entirely incoherent'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, May 08, 2026

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch faced backlash for claiming during a recent interview that the United States is based on a creed, prompting many users on social media to question the practical application of his assertion.

"We're a creedal nation. What unites us is not a religion, not a race; it's a belief in those three ideals [in the Declaration of Independence]," Gorsuch said during a May 4 interview with National Review regarding Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration, his new children's book about the American Revolution.

"That's our mission statement as a country, and if people don't get inspired to learn about them and believe in them, the baton drops," he added.

Justice Gorsuch: America is a creedal nation.

We're united in a belief in those ideals in the Declaration of Independence.

That's our mission statement as a country and if the people don't get inspired to learn about them and believe in them...then the baton drops. pic.twitter.com/t43NBiGoMF

— National Review (@NRO) May 6, 2026

Gorsuch's take on the secular but creedal basis of American identity went viral on social media, with some dismissing it as an insufficient basis on which to maintain a nation whose immigration policies have brought in an increasingly large number of disparate cultures and beliefs.

Some quoted John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, who in 1787 gratefully observed the culturally and religiously homogenous nature of the U.S. as the Constitution was being debated.

"Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence," Jay wrote in The Federalist Papers.

John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at The Federalist, suggested Gorsuch's assertion was shallow and inconsistent with America's Founders, who Davidson noted had most things in common culturally and philosophically.

"It's amazing to see Gorsuch start with talk of 'an idea,' then go into detail about the Founders — men who shared a common culture, more or less similar views on the West and Christianity writ large (with a few exceptions, yes), and were all products of British colonial civilization in America — and then pivot back to this tired trope about America being a 'creedal nation,'" Davidson said.

"They cannot seem to get out of this mental rut — or they don't want to. America is not a really great idea. It's a people and a culture derived from England and Christian Europe. Anyone who wants to be an American must adopt that culture as their own. It's not racist or xenophobic to say this, it's simply the truth."

"And it would be nice if we had leaders and public figures who were willing to speak the truth on our semiquincentennial," he added.

Federalist CEO Sean Davis echoed Davidson's assessment of Gorsuch's remarks, placing them in the context of mass immigration.

"If America were a creedal nation, then America would regularly be denaturalizing and deporting anyone who rejects the creed, either in word or deed. But that never happens, so you know this is just empty rhetoric," Davis wrote.

"The Founders clearly stated that America exists to secure the blessings of liberty for us and our posterity. There's nothing in any founding documents about America being created to support anyone who mouths a creed at naturalization while crossing their fingers behind their backs," he added.

Conservative political commentator Auron MacIntyre offered Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as an example of why he believes Gorsuch's view of American identity is too simplistic.

"Ilhan Omar doesn't believe in the ideas of the Declaration," he said. "She actively hates them and works against them, but not only does she maintain her citizenship, she serves as a national elected representative. This version of national identity is entirely incoherent."

Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, said Gorsuch's worldview is "nonsense" and "indicative of the broad intellectual failure of the conservative legal movement." He suggested it fails to take into account an originalist and textualist understanding of the Founders, who established a government for "ourselves and our posterity."

"This is nothing more than rootless liberalism with the thinnest of conservative veneers. I am a raging moderate about these issues. I do not think America is 'just' an ethnicity or a natural origin. We can (and have) made good Americans who arrived from many different nations. But obviously, it's not 'just' an ideology or creed either — or we'd be mass deporting the tens of millions of Americans who utterly reject the founders' creed," Carl said.

"For politicians, I don't always expect better. But for Supreme Court Justices, who should be intellectual leaders of the movement, this sort of claptrap is just embarrassing," he added.

"Creedal nation is a trap," said Christian podcaster Josh Daws. "The right will wax eloquent about the creed of our founders but won't enforce it. The left redefines the creed at will and won't hesitate to enforce it."

Others raised concern that Gorsuch's line of reasoning will be used to decide in favor of birthright citizenship, which remains before the Supreme Court in a case about President Donald Trump's executive order establishing that children of temporary visitors and illegal immigrants are not U.S. citizens by birth.

According to a 2024 poll by the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, 63% of Americans would agree with Gorsuch's views, saying they believe Americans are united "not by a shared religion or ancestry or history, but by our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals: that we all have inherent and equal rights to live, to not be tyrannized, and to pursue happiness as we each understand it."

Only 33% said they believe American unity is based on "shared history, traditions, and values and by our fortitude and character as Americans, a people who value hard work, individual responsibility, and national loyalty," the poll found.