This panel addresses relationship between religious liberty, national identity, and the category of religion, as described in two University of Chicago Press books from 2019: Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan and Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism and the Redefinition of Democracy. The authors of these books will be joined on the roundtable by a religious studies scholar who has authored two relevant books, The Invention of Religion in Japan and The Myth of Disenchantment, and a graduate student in American religious history writing a dissertation on the Marshall Islands from World War II to the present. This panel should interest scholars concerned about how religious authenticity claims become politicized in debates about religious freedom and national identity. The panelists will identify linguistic and conceptual patterns common to the various cases and comment on their relevance for contemporary political discourses, particularly in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.