We live in a world of fiction: the fiction that a pregnant woman is not really carrying a baby; the fiction that two men can actually marry; the fiction that a male is a female merely because he says he is. And so on. We even have ideological strands of fiction, the latest of which is Christian nationalism.
Most Americans have never heard of Christian nationalism. With good reason: it exists only in the minds of left-wing activists, some of whom are alienated Christians. The latter are now organized and have set forth their convictions in a statement, “Christians Against Christian Nationalism”; it was released in July 2019.
The statement never tells us who these people are. Surely they could have found one poster boy to be the face of this scourge, but they did not. So what is this ideology? “Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.”
In other words, Christian nationalists seek a special status, one that should be ratified by the state. They can’t name anyone because the concept is a fiction. If they knew anything about the history of the First Amendment provisions on religion, which were written by Madison, they would know what he said when asked what the meaning of the establishment provision is.
Madison said it meant that the government could not create a national church and that it could not show favoritism of one religion over another. That was it. Are we to believe that Christians are so angry with Madison’s reasoning that they have formed a nationalist movement? Nonsense.
According to the logic of these left-wing activists, the Founders were Christian nationalists. After all, they had no problem with state religions—they existed in Massachusetts until 1833. The fact is we were founded on Judeo-Christian principles: that is not debatable. Indeed, the Founding, absent the role that Christianity played, is unintelligible.
Jefferson, allegedly Mr. Separation of Church and State, paid homage to the nation’s beginnings when he awarded $300 to the Kaskaskias Indians so they could build a Catholic church. He authorized spending $100 a year for seven years to support a Catholic priest. He also authorized setting aside government lands for the sole purpose of religious activities, allowing Moravian missionaries to promote Christianity.
Would that make Jefferson a Christian nationalist? According to today’s separation of church and state extremists, it would.
Let’s get back to the definition of Christian nationalism. The statement says this ideology “implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.” Why do these nationalists only imply such a belief? Why don’t the proponents of this dangerous belief system make their convictions unambiguous? Here is the answer: because those who are responsible for inventing Christian nationalism can’t quote any public figure who has commented as such.
The statement then takes the leap of asserting that Christian nationalism is a close cousin to White nationalism. Surely there are Klansmen-like racists, but they are not the ones terrorizing urban America: it is those who wear black masks and head gear who have taken to the streets, beating up innocent persons. That’s what the fascists from Antifa do.
The left is good at inventing a crisis and then offering solutions to fix it, the result of which is more intolerance and oppression of those they hate. That’s what is driving their push to eradicate Christian nationalism.
There is nothing new about the fiction of Christian nationalism; it’s just that its latest iteration is being rolled out to prop up White nationalism. Consider the following observation.
“Over the past few decades, religious conservatives have forged an alliance to confront the unremitting secular assault on the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Unfortunately, whenever the conservatives fight back—usually to maintain or restore the status quo, for example, to keep ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance—they are demonized for doing so. In fact, demonization is one of the most popular weapons in the arsenal of those out to annihilate our culture. The most common accusation holds that traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Orthodox Jews desire nothing less than a theocracy in America.”
Bill Donohue wrote those words a decade ago in his book, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America. What’s changed is the conjoining of religion with race, making Americans believe that some dark forces, rooted in Christian and White nationalism, are threatening our liberties. Those who are behind this ploy are engaged in religious and racial baiting.
This entire campaign of demonization is designed to further divide the nation, pitting Americans against each other. The left thrives on division, seeing it as an opportunity to marginalize and ultimately destroy their adversaries. For freedom to prevail, a robust public expression of religion must exist. That is what scares the daylights out of these activists.
