Saturday, June 4, 2022

U.S. Representative openly embraces the term 'Christian nationalism'

The First Amendment does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that does not stop lawmakers from endorsing Christian nationalism.

Cross by sspiehs3 from Pixabay

One of many, many related phenomena we might bring up is that some guns are Christian.

Hemant Mehta blogged: "On July 1 [2022], a slew of conservative Christians, including conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and anti-abortion zealot Abby Johnson, gathered..." The event was hosted by Gene Bailey who said they should pledge to "watch over the nation and make sure it’s run according to conservative Christian principles." He asked them to recite something called the "Watchmen Decree."

On July 23, 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene told Next News Network: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

If you're interested in context, please see my posts on Sarah Posner's Unholy and Katherine Stewart's The Good News Club (both on this blog); Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and American Rule by Jared Yates Sexton (on Medium — these links get you around the paywall); and The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones (on Goodreads). In September 2023, Jones has a new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future, and in an interview refers to White Christian Americans' "counterfactual myth of impossible innocence."

stone cross against sunset

Doug Mastriano is the Republican Party nominee for Pennsylvania governor. He supports QAnon and Christian nationalism. He's promoted his campaign on the social media site Gab, which was founded by Andrew Torba. Torba said, as Raw Story paraphrased it, that "he believes American conservatism should be for Christians only, and that conservatives should reject right-wing Jewish figures such as Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin."

Torba's words:

>"We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country. We're not saying we're going to deport all these people or whatever. You're free to stay here. You're not going to be forced to convert or anything like this because that's not biblical whatsoever. But you're going to enjoy the fruits of living in a Christian society under Christian laws and under a Christian culture and you can thank us later."

The US isn't a Christian nation, but that's a myth that enables its believers, says Jared Yates Sexton, "to understand the world and accept the type of violence and oppression that is coming." (tweet, July 27, 2022) One of their sayings is "There is no crime for those with Christ," meaning the ends justify the means. (tweet from the same thread) There was violence and political scapegoating between Catholics and Protestants ever since Protestantism arose. Then, in the US, "the Founders wanted to destroy the religious-backed institution of the monarchy, which relied on the Christian mythology in order to hold power. They wanted to move to a different system where entrenched wealth and power could be shifted." (tweet from the same thread) "Because Christianity held such power, the Founders and others like them formed secret societies and organizations where they could discuss options to move beyond the old systems and form something less chaotic and beyond the old hierarchies." (tweet from the same thread) It was the instinct of liberal democracy to have a religion-free government, and the instinct of conservatism to assume that liberals wanted "to destroy Christianity itself...[and that this was] part of a larger, sinister plot. This is the definitive mindset of conservatism and their goal is to reconstruct the hierarchies of the past." (tweet from the same thread) There is "the original conspiracy theory: that a sinister and evil plot is being carried out to destroy Christianity and destroy the nation." (tweet from the same thread) The New World Order conspiracy theory is also used by Putin and Orbán. The Christian myth "gives them a world to live in in which these things can be carried out." (tweet from the same thread) Trumpism prepared the way. QAnon is a modernized version of "sinister, Evil plots that can only be answered by violence and the destruction of liberal democracy." (tweet from the same thread) Sexton adapted this information from his forthcoming book, The Midnight Kingdom (January 2023).


Quote from NPR's Morning Edition (July 1, 2022):

"These legal wins for the Christian Right, though, are happening at a time when a growing majority of Americans are strongly opposed to their views.

'This is the most disproportionate power that the Christian Right has had in my lifetime,' says Robert Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute — a nonpartisan group that conducts research on the intersection of politics, culture and religion."


Thom Hartmann, "So where did all this right-wing religious nuttery come from?," Salon, July 12, 2022:

"...what's so astonishing about the entire situation is that we have reached this point not because the American public wants religious doctrine running our law, and not because most religious people agree with an arrogant prick working at Walgreens.

Instead, it's because a small group of right-wing billionaires didn't want to pay their taxes, wanted to get rid of their unions and didn't want regulation of the pollution from their refineries and other operations.

Seriously.

They put billions of dollars over five decades into a project to seize control of the legislatures of a majority of the states, jam up the U.S. Congress and pack the Supreme Court — and it was all about taxes, unions and regulation.

So where did the religious nuttery come from?

The right-wing billionaires and the corporations and foundations aligned with them knew back in 1971 — when Lewis Powell laid out their strategy in his infamous "Powell Memo," the year before Richard Nixon put him on the Supreme Court — that most Americans wouldn't happily vote to lower billionaires' taxes, end unions and regulation of gun manufacturers, or increase the amount of refinery poisons in our air.

How to convince the public that taxes, regulations, and organized labor cause more harm than benefit? Not only "five decades and billions of dollars to subsidize think tanks and policy groups," not only right-wing media like Fox News, not only an alliance with the NRA to increase the number of guns 8-fold in the US over the four decades since Reagan was first elected. No, they also needed Jerry Falwell, "an inveterate grifter, hustling Jesus to build a multimillion-dollar empire while ignoring Jesus' teachings about humility, poverty and the need to care for others. A new, muscular Jesus — a Jesus who endorsed assault weapons and private jets for preachers — came to dominate much of America's Protestant Christianity."

The result of the politicized Christianity, of course, is that in 2022 we no longer have abortion access in all 50 states because we lost Roe v. Wade.



"Our national poll included 2,091 participants, carried out May 6-16, 2022, with a margin of error of +/- 2.14 percent.

We started by asking participants if they believed the Constitution would even allow the United States government to declare the U.S. a “Christian Nation.” We found that 70 percent of Americans — including 57 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats — said that the Constitution would not allow such a declaration. (Indeed, the First Amendment says Congress can neither establish nor prohibit the practice of a religion.)

* * *

Fully 61 percent of Republicans supported declaring the United States a Christian nation. In other words, even though over half of Republicans previously said such a move would be unconstitutional, a majority of GOP voters would still support this declaration."

— "Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation: New polling shows the appeal — and limits — of a Christian nationalist message." Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami. Politico. Sept. 21, 2022.

Annika Brockschmidt (Twitter: @ardenthistorian) wrote a book about the rise of the religious right and white Christian Nationalism in the US. The book is in German. Amerikas Gotteskrieger: Wie die Religiöse Rechte die Demokratie gefährdet

Episode of Trumpcast: "White Supremacy, Tulsa, and the Mythology of America." One more conversation before this weekend’s ill-fated Trump rally. Description: "Virginia Heffernan talks to author Jared Yates Sexton about evangelical mythology, Bill Barr, rural understandings of globalism, the Confederacy, the coming Trump rally in Tulsa, how some Christian Trumpists may view COVID, and the “cult of the shining city."


Robert Reich observes (Substack, July 13, 2023):

“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proclaimed at the Christian Hillsdale College (substituting “left’s schemes” for the “devil's schemes” of Ephesians 6:11).

* * *

The paradox is that religious observance has shown a steep decline over the past quarter century. In 1999, Gallup found that 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. In 2020, the number was 47 percent. For the first time in nearly a century of polling, worshippers were the minority in America.

Does this precipitous decline help explain the militance of white Christian nationalism? A fierce minority religious movement has taken over the Republican Party — giving the GOP fervor and purpose that are now being championed by Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, Republican state legislators, and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

We're in this situation now.

"Christian nationalism, separate from the Christian religion, is a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian beliefs and symbols with national identity and public policy. Christian nationalists believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and Christianity should be infused in all aspects of American society. They believe that their god is the only thing that should influence laws and determine our rights, and as such, any laws and any governing body that is not based on the authority of their god, is essentially meaningless. For Christian nationalists, our government, the television shows we watch, the music we consume, how we structure our family life, how we engage with one another, and more, should be informed by their god. The true danger of this ideology lies not in that they believe this (although plenty could be said on that), but in that they are actively trying to enact it into our policies."

Unveiling Christian Nationalism: Examining its Influence Through Current Legislative Trends, Meredith Thompson, The Humanist, March 15, 2024

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