On MSNBC “award-winning investigative journalist” (from Politico) Heidi Przybyla said this recently:
Remember when Trump ran in 2016? A lot of the mainline evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the divorced real-estate mogul who cheated on his wife with a porn star and all of that, right? So what happened was, he was surrounded by this more extremist element. You’re going to hear words like Christian Nationalism, like the new apostolic reformation. These are groups that you should get very schooled on because they have a lot of power in Trump’s circle. And the one thing that unites all of them because there’s many different groups orbiting Trump but the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different — is that they believe their rights as Americans don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God.
Horrors! Does this mean that a Christian nationalist believes what the Declaration of Independence said — that our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come not from King George III, but from our Creator? How does that separate a Christian nationalist from any other ordinary Christian? What is she trying to say?
Ms. Przybyla continued: The problem is that they are determining, man — men — are determining what God is telling them. And in the past, that so-called natural law ... it’s a pillar of Catholicism, for instance, and has been used for good. In social justice campaigns, Martin Luther King evoked it talking about civil rights. But now you have an extremist element of conservative Christians who say this applies specifically to issues like abortion, gay marriage, and it’s going much further than that, as you’re seeing for instance in the ruling in Alabama. The judge is connected to a dominionist faction.
Um...what? Is Ms. Przybyla trying to say that mainstream Christians support abortion rights and gay marriage, but Christian nationalists do not?
She was referring to the Alabama Supreme Court, which just ruled that human life begins at conception. How dare the court agree with basic biology and the American College of Pediatricians? According to a publication by the National Library of Medicine, eighty percent of Americans believe that biologists are the most qualified group to determine when life begins, and ninety-six percent of biologists affirm the view that life begins at fertilization, yet a portion of the American public still demand the right to legally murder their unborn children.
Does a Christian automatically qualify as some sort of religious zealot simply for opposing abortion? What if he doesn’t oppose the “Plan B” pill? Can a Christian be patriotic without being called a nationalist? Can a Christian still sing the patriotic anthem “God Bless America”?
What is a Christian nationalist? We still don’t have a real answer. Perhaps it would be helpful to break the term down into individual words to understand it better.
If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you’re a Christian. Okay, then...so what is a nationalist? According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a nationalist is a person who wants his country to be politically independent, or a person who strongly believes that his country is better than others.
Putting the two terms together, we get a follower of Jesus Christ who strongly believes that America is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. And that’s the problem?
Oh, wait a minute — one of the Alabama justices is accused of being a dominionist. This is, apparently, a person who seeks to create a nation governed by Christians according to their understanding of biblical law. Is the justice a dominionist because he quoted from the Bible instead of a biology textbook? Both basically say the same thing on this issue.
Most Christians I know (and I know more than a few through social media) realize that America was founded not as a Christian nation, but as a secular nation founded by Christians with Christian principles. Muslims, Jews, and atheists alike have been welcome to participate in our secular government that still operates on Christian principles.
Obviously, the term “Christian nationalist” is meant to be seen as a pejorative. It is being used to separate the “good” Christians (those who support abortion and gay marriage) from the bad Christians (actual Christians). It is a term intended to divide and conquer.
The current problem for those attempting to employ the term to accomplish their nefarious goal of turning Christians on one another is that most people don’t seem to know what a Christian nationalist is.
According to Pew research, roughly twenty-four percent of the American public had a negative opinion of Christian nationalism and predictably said things like, “It is a euphemism for racism and antisemitic fascism; a polite term for a Nazi sympathizer” — but still, more than half of U.S. adults have never even heard of the term.
One of the Christian respondents to the survey shared a starkly different opinion: “It’s a term used to dismiss any Christian because they are dangerous, therefore dehumanize them and make them the enemy. It should mean a follower of Christ and someone who is patriotic.”
Why was it so important for the Politico reporter to establish that the modern existential threat to the American republic is this largely unheard of “Christian nationalist” movement? Because this same “journalist” co-authored an article saying that the Trump administration is going to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into their policies because a guy named Russell Vought is under consideration to become Trump’s chief of staff.
If you don’t remember Vought, he’s the guy who famously sparred with Bernie Sanders when Sanders tried to apply a religious litmus test to disqualify Vought from an appointment to the Office of Management and Budget. According to Ms. Przybyla’s most recent article, “Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.”
Well, then! We should burn him at the stake like a heretic, right? No way should this guy be allowed to serve in the next Trump administration...unless, of course, Trump wants him.
Every Christian (nationalist) should utter just four words sure to send a cold chill through the heart of Ms. Przybyla and her ilk: Make America Great Again.
John Leonard is a freelance writer. He blogs at southernprose.com. His books, including The God Conclusion and Atheist’s Prayer, can be found at LeonardBooks.net.