Tag Archives: White Christian Nationalism

Bigotry Unbounded

There is no longer any way to mask what MAGA is all about: Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy and the “othering” of anyone who isn’t a White “Christian” male. The persistent attacks on the Constitution are efforts to overcome legal impediments to the goal of returning White “Christian” men to social dominance. 

The evidence is everywhere.

The new Secretary of Defense, the unreconstructed (and thoroughly unqualified) Pete Hegseth, has ordered the military  to suspend all observances and/or recognition of the following holidays: Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, Women’s Equality Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Asian American Pacific Islander Awareness Month, and American Indian Heritage Month.

He has also indicated his desire to revert military installations to their former Confederate names.

Incoming MAGA officials have wasted no time before eliminating all DEI–diversity, equity and inclusion–programs. Trump’s fire hose of Executive Orders has been matched in red states like Indiana, where incoming Governor Braun undoubtedly delighted his Christian Nationalist running mate Micah Beckwith by ridding Indiana government of any DEI efforts to combat years of discriminatory practices.

Some DEI efforts have arguably gone too far toward what we used to call “political correctness,” and research has suggested that they have been relatively unsuccessful in erasing bias. But it is impossible to ignore the message intentionally sent by their wholesale erasure.

My Christian friends (including several in the clergy) tell me that “Christian Nationalism” is many things, but Christian isn’t one of them. Wikipedia agrees.

Christian nationalism has been linked to prejudice towards minority groups. Christian nationalism has been loosely defined as a belief that “celebrate[s] and privilege[s] the sacred history, liberty, and rightful rule of white conservatives”.  Christian nationalism prioritizes an ethno-cultural, ethno-religious, and ethno-nationalist framing around fear of “the other”, those being immigrants, racial, and sexual minorities. Studies have associated Christian nationalism with xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, political tolerance of racists, opposition to interracial unions, support for gun rights, pronatalism, and restricting the civil rights of those who fail to conform to traditional ideals of whiteness, citizenship, and Protestantism. The Christian nationalist belief system includes elements of patriarchy, white supremacy, nativism, and heteronormativity.  It has been associated with a “conquest narrative”, premillennial apocalypticism, and of frequent “rhetoric of blood, specifically, of blood sacrifice to an angry God”. 

MAGA evidences all of those elements.

Trump’s intemperate rage against immigration has always been directed against Black and Brown immigrants–those from “shithole” countries. Despite his rhetoric about expelling “criminal” immigrants, the recent ICE raids have swept up  undocumented people who had never committed any crime and people who are U.S. citizens.

MAGA’s war on women is in high gear. Christian Nationalists are determined to strip us of autonomy over our own bodies, and return us to a status subservient to–and ultimately dependent upon– males Having achieved their goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, they are now coming for birth control. In several states, Republican lawmakers are pushing to restrict access to birth control methods they claim are “really” abortifacients.

The escalating attacks on trans youth are part and parcel of MAGA homophobia. Given the broader culture’s about-face on LGBTQ rights generally, MAGA bigots have thus far focused on the tiny group of trans individuals who are less well understood.

And who can forget the rioters in Charlottesville– described as “fine people” by Donald Trump–who chanted “Jews will not replace us”? Or efforts to keep all Muslims out of the country?

Any and all efforts to move the American public beyond bigotry are met with claims that efforts to eradicate discrimination against any minority group really amounts to discrimination against White Christian men, and a retreat from “meritocracy.” Trump even blamed “DEI hires” for the recent plane crash–presumably, because “DEI hires” would be less competent than the pathetic assortment of unqualified clowns he has nominated.

Hegseth is an excellent example.

Lloyd Austin, Biden’s Secretary of Defense– a Black man– had a distinguished 41-year career in the U.S. Army, retiring as a four-star general. He held key positions, including Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Commander of United States Forces – Iraq, and Commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM). He was awarded the Silver Star for valor. Following his retirement from the military in 2016, he served on the boards of several companies, including Raytheon Technologies, Nucor, and Tenet Healthcare. 

Hegseth did serve briefly in the Army. He subsequently was fired from two nonprofit organizations for mismanagement, and became a Fox News host. Aside from those “accomplishments,” he faced credible accusations about extreme drunkenness and wife-beating. He also reportedly sports White Supremacist tattoos.

But hey! He’s a White “Christian” male, so obviously superior to the Black guy.

Welcome to MAGA world.

Comments

Religious War

A few days ago, I participated in a panel discussion following a showing of “Bad Faith,” a documentary film about Christian Nationalism. Coming so soon after reading “The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory,” it was even more traumatizing.

The film began with videos of the violent January 6th insurrection, and focused in on the multiple signs of “religious” motivation–placards linking Jesus to Donald Trump, crosses, rioters waving bibles and numerous other bits of Christian iconography. The rest of the documentary alternated between films of mega-church pastors preaching fire and brimstone to huge adoring audiences and anguished commentaries from scholars and clerics, including many religious figures who–like Tim Alberta–are devout Evangelicals appalled by the White Christian Nationalism that has replaced authentic Christianity for millions of believers.

The film underscored the dimensions of the religious war these “believers” are waging.

  • The sheer number of “soldiers” who have substituted White Christian Nationalism for Christianity is stunning. The videos showed “sermons” of well-known pastors (many of who have benefitted monetarily from the movement) and panned over huge audiences. According to the scholars interviewed, the movement numbers hundreds of pastors whose names are less familiar than those of the usual subjects, but whose messages are equally strident, intemperate and theocratic.
  • The movement is thoroughly racist and misogynist. Adherents are men and women who are threatened by social change and who express strong disapproval of the emerging “non-biblical” social equality of women and Black people. (Especially Black people.) The audiences for the diatribes about America’s “decline” were virtually all white, and the rhetoric employed left little room for alternative explanations.
  • This phenomenon is not just a fundamentalist tantrum against diversity and feminism; it’s leadership is strategic, well-planned and and coordinated. The role of Paul Weyrich in forming and growing the movement was amply documented, but what really struck me was the longevity of the effort. Weyrich and the others–Falwell, Robertson, Ralph Reed, etc.–began many years ago putting together a political movement intent upon replacing the government with a Christian theocracy. They made common cause with the very rich by promising to protect them from “confiscatory taxation.” They created a number of not-for-profits and think tanks that have worked in tandem for many years. Weyrich’s original manifesto has basically been reproduced in Project 2025.
  • Movement leadership accomplished their planned takeover of the GOP, expelling traditional Republicans and conservatives, and turning the party into a White Christian Nationalist cult.
  • The widespread belief that Evangelical political activity was sparked by Roe v. Wade is a myth. As I’ve previously noted and multiple religious historians have confirmed, initial Evangelical responses to that ruling were positive or neutral. It wasn’t until five years later that movement honchos decided to use “baby killing” as a tool to motivate activism from previously non-political Evangelicals–although their real trigger was withdrawal of tax-exempt status from the segregation academies they had established in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.
  • The pastors have sold Trump to their Christian Warriors by insisting, variously, that he is a flawed “tool” of the Almighty and/or that he found God and was “born again” during his first term.
  • The movement substitutes country for God and far-Right politics for religion, using bogus history to claim that the United States was established as a “Christian country.” Evangelical clergy who focus on the essence of Jesus’ message–for example, the Sermon on the Mount–lose church members who tell them that such sentiments are “woke” and then decamp for more belligerent congregations.

There was much more, and if you get a chance to see the film, it is definitely worth your time. It will increase your understanding of the threat we face, and will underscore the imperative of reaching the millions of Americans who don’t bother to vote.

What is sobering is the realization that this effort to replace America’s Constitutional democracy with a psuedo-Christian theocracy has been active for over fifty years. Those of us in the larger, “woke” American culture have, for the most part, been blissfully unaware of its well-financed and strategically-sophisticated leadership, or the significant danger it poses to tolerance, individual liberty and the rule of law.

Like Micah Beckwith, these biblical literalists think they–and only they– own God. They are certain that they, and only they, are “on God’s side.” They are convinced that there’s a bright line between (their definition of) Godliness and sin (which is pretty much everything in modern culture), and that God wants them to impose His rules (as they understand them) on the rest of us.

They are the core of Trump’s base. They vote. And he knows he owes them.

Comments

More Hair-Raising Proposals From Project 2025

Yesterday, I focused on the theocratic elements of Project 2025. But those elements–horrific as they are–pale in comparison to several of the Project’s less-often-noted aspirations.

A cousin of mine participates in a study group that recently assembled a list of the proposals in Project 2025. He shared that document with me, and I am posting it in its entirety today. It displays a worldview that isn’t simply backward–it’s terrifying and dystopian. Anti-science. Anti-equality. Anti-American.

Allow me to share that (unedited) compendium of crazy with you–and remind you that this is the world we’ll get if the GOP prevails.

PROJECT 2025

•    100+ conservative think tanks involved

•    400+ contributors and writers

•    240 Trump former administrators among authors

•    31/38 chapters written by Trump administrators

•    920+ pages in length

•    Mentions “Trump” 320+ times

•    Trump 2023 — “This is great work, our roadmap”

•    Trump 2024 —  “I don’t know these folks”

•    Trump campaign manager calls it “a pain in the ass”

•    Trump 2024 – Keynotes a Heritage Foundation convention

FROM THE RIGHT

•    Spells out a bright American future

•    Rescues the nation from the grip of the Radical Left

•    A governing agenda, putting the right people in place

•    A definite plan to execute a conservative agenda on Day One lead by a strong executive

FROM THE LEFT

•    Authoritarianism, strips rights, destroys economy

•    Trump has selective amnesia about Project 2025.

•    Heritage President Kevin Roberts acknowledged that Trump’s claims of ignorance are a “politically  tactical decision”  — and then he was forced out of office. (April 2024)

Pillars of Project 2025:

•    Restore family as the centerpiece of American life and protect children.

•    Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

•    Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

•    Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

THE DEFENSE OF AMERICA

The plan “…unshackles America’s military from the long-term rot of misspent budgets, politically driven policies, and a lack of focus on the military threat posed by China.” Restore warfighting as the military’s sole mission

•    End the Left’s social experimentation in the military

•    Halt the admission of transgender individuals into the military

•     Reduce the number of generals, increase Army by 50,000

•     Move US troops stationed overseas to US borders

•     Grow Navy from 292 to 355 ships

•     Purchase 60/80 more Air Force F-35A’s/year

•     Triple the number of US nuclear weapons worldwide

•     Build an American “Iron Dome”

•     Increase fighting responsibilities for all Allies

•     Continue to provide nuclear protection to Allies

•     Shift war-planning from reaction to one of strength in denial

•     Preposition resources to anticipate threats

•     Reconstitute NATO or withdraw from the NATO alliance

•     Allies must pay for all US weapons provided to them

•     Disavow NATO Article Five

•     All alliances will be bi-lateral

•     Withdraw from arms reduction treaties

Governance Principles

•    Replace 50K civil service “deep state” employees. Most civil service employees to answer to the Chief Executive

•    Eliminate or re-write the First Amendment

•    Change the oath of office from “…protect & defend the constitution”

•    The government should “…operate on Christian Principles

Trade/Foreign Assistance Principles

•    USAID to defund women’s rights foreign aid initiatives

•    Withdraw from all multi-lateral trade agreements

•    Withdraw financial aid from Ukraine

•    Institute 60% tariffs on Chinese goods

•    10% tariffs on all imports worldwide

Principles for Educating Our Kids

•     Eliminate the Department of Education

•     Eliminate Head Start, Title 1, & lunch programs

•     Eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion efforts

•     10 Commandments posted in all classrooms

•     Books pertaining to race/gender be removed

•     Schools requiring vaccinations lose federal funding

•     Vouchers for private/Christian schools to be the law

•     Public high schoolers take a military entrance exam

•     Eliminate federal funds for certain special needs

•     Arm classroom teachers

•     Defund NPR and PBS

Principles To Direct Entitlements & Protections

•    Words “abortion” & “reproductive health” cut from all federal regulations, policies, and any legislation

•    Reinstate student debt (6.8%)

•    Repeal the Affordable Care Act

•    Eliminate Medicaid

•    Privatize Medicare — Advantage the default choice

•    Raise retirement age

•    Eliminate drug price negotiations

•    Limit benefits for veteran disability payments

•    Eliminate/repurpose EPA, OSHA, EEOC, FDIC

•    Privatize TSA

•    Federal elections done in 1-day, on paper, no mail-in, with ID

Principles Dealing With “Minorities”

•    Immediate mass deportation of the undocumented

•    Construct internment camps

•    Limit total immigrants (20K)

•    Limit foreign college education applicants

•    Deport existing “dreamers” & end birth-right citizenship

•    Muslims, Haitians banned from the country

•    Ukrainian refugee status reviewed

•    Roll back gay rights/invalidate homosexual marriage

•    Outlaw transgender rights

•    Outlaw no-fault divorce

Principles Guiding Climate Decisions

•    The climate is not changing and not to be taught

•    Eliminate climate and environmental protections

•    Eliminate greenhouse gas regulation

•    Defund FEMA & EPA. Emergencies are a state responsibility.

•    Dismantle NOAA and Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, halt climate research.

•    End Global Change Research Act of 1990. \

•    Withdraw from the Paris Accords.

•    Stop EV research, regulation, and tax initiatives

If this doesn’t motivate you to vote–and vote BLUE–I don’t know what will.

Comments

A Chilling, Albeit Correct, Diagnosis

I don’t know who Thomas Zimmer is, nor do I recall how I came to read his February 8th “Democracy Americana” newsletter. 
It’s likely some reader shared it after one of my periodic rants about racism and MAGA’s takeover of the GOP, but that’s just a guess. The headline and subhead are pretty clear indications of the subject-matter: “Domination or Dissolution, Rule or Ruin: The Right is fantasizing about secession, ‘national divorce’ and civil war–because they will not, under any circumstances, accept pluralism.”

The article began by focusing on the Texas border standoff, and the growing divide between Red and Blue states.
 
The Right loves to talk about secession and civil war. And quite a lot of people on the center and on the Left seem to have come to the conclusion that “blue” America would indeed be better off if we severed all ties with “red” states and unburdened ourselves from the reactionaries who are evidently not on board with the idea of egalitarian multiracial pluralism. I get all the frustration and exasperation. But would you feel comfortable making this argument – let them go do their own thing! – to the tens of millions of people who happen to live in those Republican-led states, who want nothing to do with the reactionary project, but would suffer most under authoritarian white Christian patriarchal rule?
 
There really aren’t that many hard-core secessionists. Zimmer pointed to the much-hyped (at least on the Right) “Take Our Border Back” trucker convoy. Organizers of what they dubbed “God’s Army” predicted the participation of 700,000 trucks. They got about 100– “A sad, paltry contingent of hardcore MAGAs and White Christian nationalists. It’s hard sometimes not to dismiss the rightwing threat to democracy as just silly, pathetic cosplay from a bunch of grifters, buffoons, and lost souls.”
 
The situation is quite a bit more serious than that, unfortunately. Not only is there simply no guarantee that grifters and buffoons can’t bring down democratic self-government. The trucker convoy fiasco also doesn’t change the fact that the border standoff is acting as a catalyst for the pervasive lusting for civil war and ubiquitous fantasizing about secession on the Right. This isn’t confined to extremist online fringes either. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for instance, fabulated we would “have a war on our hands” were president Biden to federalize National Guard troops. Kevin Stitt, the Republican Governor of Oklahoma, argued that the Texas National Guard was merely “protecting their homeland” from the federal government. And Representative Clay Higgins posted on Ex-Twitter that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.” These aren’t just outlier voices. Texas, with the explicit support from 25 Republican governors, is deploying precisely the argument slave states used to justify secession.
 
Zimmer delves into the history of the Civil War, and provides a great deal of context for the situation we face, but the essential point he makes is one that I have reluctantly concluded is at the very foundation of America’s current polarization:  significant parts of the political Right steadfastly refuse to accept what he delicately calls “multiracial pluralism.”
 
In short, they’re committed racists.
 
At its base, the Rightwing populism that has largely displaced conventional conservatism is a creation of what Zimmer calls “a reactionary counter-revolution” by aggrieved defenders of “real America” against nefarious “woke, globalist elites.” One example he cites is the White Power movement of the early 1980s. Members embraced the ideas outlined in the “Turner Diaries,” a neo-Nazi novel published in 1978 that has served as a central reference point for the extreme Right ever since.
 
In the book, a small group of dedicated white supremacists manages to bring down the federal government and, ultimately, over the span of a little more than a century, restore white domination not only in America, but across the globe. Such ideas, as historian Kathleen Belew has emphasized, have influenced the tactics of fascistic militias like the Proud Boys that led the charge on January 6. And the white supremacists who regard the future depicted in the “Turner Diaries” not as a dystopian nightmare, but as an aspiration, have moved much closer to the center of conservative politics: On January 6, they stormed the Capitol literally in service of the man who is still, three years later, the leader of the Republican Party.
 
Zimmer provides a number of other examples, and the (lengthy) essay is worth reading in its entirety. I came away from it convinced of his central point: in November’s elections, both federal and down-ballot, too many voters will still be fighting  America’s Civil War. 
 
November’s elections will pit MAGA’s White Christian Nationalists against Americans who support pluralism, inclusion and the American ideal of civic equality. Pretty much everything else is window-dressing.
 
Comments

Why They’re Leaving The Church

Christianity in America has been losing adherents, and the loss has become too pronounced to ignore. Reaction to that loss has been one of the more obvious motivators of White Christian Nationalists’ prolonged tantrum.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the media was filled with reports that–while “mainstream” Christian churches were losing ground–that loss was offset by the growth of Evangelical “mega churches.” Today, the reports are that those Evangelical churches are also in decline.

The question, of course, is why.

A Guardian  article a while back addressed the phenomenon, and the purported reasons for it

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

The report noted that a large number of churches are being “repurposed” into cafes, museums and shops, reminding me of my last trip to visit my son in Amsterdam, where  repurposed Churches seemed to be on every corner.

Here in the U.S. the pandemic has come in for a good deal of blame: researchers note that when people break the habit of Sunday church attendance, it requires  some significant effort to get them back.

But a more likely diagnosis is the decreasing religiosity of the American population.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

As the article noted, some of the reasons were logistical–prompted by people moving away for college or starting jobs which made it difficult to attend church. But–as the research also found–other reasons were more philosophical. When researchers asked why they had broken with their churches, one  of the top answers was that the respondent saw church members as judgmental and hypocritical.

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Scholars of religion quoted in the article noted that the move away from religion occurred much earlier in other countries.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

That belief–that one must be religious–or actually, White and  Christian–in order to be a “true” American permeates the current White Christian Nationalist movement. Rage at the decline of that (ahistorical) insistence is fueling what I’ve characterized as a “tantrum,” leading to periodic eruptions of violence like that of the January 6th insurrection, which was striking for its numerous displays of Christian imagery.

A few days ago, a commenter to this blog noted that animals are most vicious when cornered, and that much of the rage we are seeing is triggered by similar perceptions of growing irrelevance. I think it’s a valid analogy.

The question is, how long does it take to tame that rabid animal?

Comments