Christian nationalism, the political cicada of our time, has reemerged in recent days. Every so often, the media wring their hands over it, the issue goes away for a while, and then it returns to make a shrill and constant racket that annoys everyone.
The media today are in high dudgeon over House Speaker Mike Johnson. Turns out the Louisiana congressman is a Bible-believing Christian and so naturally, he needs to be pilloried. Apparently, Johnson is a threat to democracy because he believes the same things as George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and countless other American jurists and statesmen, that America was founded on Christian principles.
Even worse, Johnson agrees with Thomas Jefferson that we need to protect the church from the power of the state. He concurs with the assessment of John Adams that our constitution was designed for “a moral and religious people.” Perhaps the speaker’s most damnable sin is that he thinks Ronald Reagan’s view that “Without God, there is no virtue because there’s no prompting of the conscience,” is actually true.
Oh, the horror.
Most of the time, people in the media sling around the term ‘Christian nationalism’ without a lot of thought or context. But sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry have taken the time to helpfully tell Christians what we believe, what it means, and why it’s bad. Writing for the website Time, Whitehead and Perry provide a cornucopia of evil associated with believing in the Bible and things that are in it, like don’t kill people or steal their stuff.
According to the authors, the first problem is that “Christian nationalism strongly favors traditionalist social relationships.” These would be the social relationships that have defined a few thousand years of civilized society so clearly, that is terrible.
Another risk noted by Whitehead and Perry is that “Christian nationalism adheres to a desire for strong leaders who through the threat of violence, or actual violence, defend the preferred social arrangements and hierarchies.” This might be a reference to all the Christian threats of violence or actual violence against American Jews today but it probably isn’t because that’s not happening. Christian churches are, however, routinely engaging in threats of fellowship or actual fellowship in the narthex after Sunday services. And don’t get me started on the threats of tuna noodle casserole and Jello molds at the annual potluck.
Then there’s the danger that “Christian nationalism is characterized by strong ethno-racial
The authors then assert, “A final element of Christian nationalism is a populist impulse that creates space for Americans to embrace feelings of victimization - that certain ‘elites’ are trying to persecute them.” In this final element resides a grain of truth, but only because the FBI infiltrated and investigated Roman Catholic churches for conducting Mass in Latin, and a 25-man SWAT team was dispatched to arrest a parent whose kid was confronted by an unhinged stranger hurling insults at them, threatening the dad with 11 years in prison.
Whitehead and Perry’s essay devoted to slurring Speaker Johnson for his Christian faith graciously concludes by explaining "Christian nationalism isn’t a political slur.” How very tolerant of them.
Modern critics of Christianity have turned themselves into an absurd caricature. It’s as if they’re competing to see who can come up with the most hubristic, preposterous reasons why believing in the Bible and its influence on American civil society for centuries is so awful. Some critics have job titles so long they can barely fit on a business card. The byline of one item in the Morristown Green describes the author as “Co-Director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.” They’ve evolved into a joke. I’d use the word ‘punchline’ but that might be interpreted as a white, heteronormative, patriarchal, pronatalistic threat of violence.
More seriously, what they hope to accomplish is no joke. Their prime directive is to marginalize Judeo-Christian thought and eliminate it from the public square. Destroying faith is fundamental to instituting totalitarian government. That’s why, across time, tyrants from Moscow to Beijing, Havana to Pyongyang, have sought to destroy it; Judeo-Christian beliefs get in the way of subjugating people and they know it. Whether they succeed is on us.