Is the answer to today’s ascendant Christian nationalism, one that is overly susceptible to capture by dangerous racial and ethnonationalist causes, a saner and more salutary version: what we might cheekily call “Quaker nationalism”? The major features of colonial Pennsylvania’s Quaker government were as follows: affirmation of the equal dignity of all human beings, a commitment to religious liberty, and a practice of noncoercive nonviolence in public and social life.

How did this experiment in Christian government work out?