Category: Christian Nationalism

Study Uncovers the Core of White Supremacy at the Heart of Jan. 6 Insurrection

Robert Pape is a researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago.

He recently published the results of a study into the backgrounds and identities of all those arrested and charged for their participation in the January 6th attack on our Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

We have long known that Christian Nationalism was an important, motivating ideology for many of the Trump followers involved in that attack.

Dr. Pape’s report now shows the equally important role played by White Supremacy in motivating that attack.

This marriage of Christian Nationalism with White Supremacy is not new, of course. It has a very long history in this country.

The fact that many people who call themselves Christians believed that Jesus Christ had blessed this violent attack; the fact that they claimed their involvement was integral to their patriotic, Christian witness; that “keeping America white” is a major plank in their “Christian worldview”; all combined with the evidence indicating that this movement continues to expand is more than abundant reason to weep for the evangelical church in this country.

If you know Christian leaders/teachers who are instructing their congregations about the gross, anti-Biblical, anti-Christian errors of this American idolatry, then please encourage them and offer your support.

If the leaders and pastors of your church are remaining silent or, worse yet, endorsing the heresies of Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy, then talk with them, correct them, express your dissatisfaction with their departure from Biblical truth; tell them that they are wrong and pray for their transformation.

The Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the line.

The New York Times article by Alan Feuer entitled “Fears of White People Losing Out Permeates Capitol Rioters Towns, Study Finds” explains the details [all emphasis is mine]:

Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population were the most likely to be homes to people who stormed the Capitol.

Jason Andrew for The New York Times

When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.

But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.

If Mr. Pape’s initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”

“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Mr. Pape said. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”

One fact stood out in Mr. Pape’s study, conducted with the help of researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago. Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location.

Law enforcement officials have said 800 to 1,000 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, and prosecutors have spent the past three months tracking down many of them in what they have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. In recent court filings, the government has hinted that more than 400 people may ultimately face charges, including illegal entry, assault of police officers and the obstruction of the official business of Congress.

In his study, Mr. Pape determined that only about 10 percent of those charged were members of established far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers militia or the nationalist extremist group the Proud Boys. But unlike other analysts who have made similar findings, Mr. Pape has argued that the remaining 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are part of a still congealing mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put “violence at its core.”

Other mass movements have emerged, he said, in response to large-scale cultural change. In the 1840s and ’50s, for example, the Know Nothing Party, a group of nativist Protestants, was formed in response to huge waves of largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. After World War I, he added, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival prompted in part by the arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the so-called Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North.

In an effort to determine why the mob that formed on Jan. 6 turned violent, Mr. Pape compared events that day with two previous pro-Trump rallies in Washington, on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. While police records show some indications of street fighting after the first two gatherings, Mr. Pape said, the number of arrests were fewer and the charges less serious than on Jan. 6. The records also show that those arrested in November and December largely lived within an hour of Washington while most of those arrested in January came from considerably farther away.

The difference at the rallies was former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pape said. Mr. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 rally in advance, saying it would be “wild” and driving up attendance, Mr. Pape said. He then encouraged the mob to march on the Capitol in an effort to “show strength.”

Mr. Pape said he worried that a similar mob could be summoned again by a leader like Mr. Trump. After all, he suggested, as the country continues moving toward becoming a majority-minority nation and right-wing media outlets continue to stoke fear about the Great Replacement, the racial and cultural anxieties that lay beneath the riot at the Capitol are not going away.

“If all of this is really rooted in the politics of social change, then we have to realize that it’s not going to be solved — or solved alone — by law enforcement agencies,” Mr. Pape said. “This is political violence, not just ordinary criminal violence, and it is going to require both additional information and a strategic approach.”

Mr. Pape, whose career had mostly been focused on international terrorism, used that approach after the Sept. 11 attacks when he created a database of suicide bombers from around the world. His research led to a remarkable discovery: Most of the bombers were secular, not religious, and had killed themselves not out of zealotry, but rather in response to military occupations.

American officials eventually used the findings to persuade some Sunnis in Iraq to break with their religious allies and join the United States in a nationalist movement known as the Anbar Awakening.

Recalling his early work with suicide bombers, Mr. Pape suggested that the country’s understanding of what happened on Jan. 6 was only starting to take shape, much like its understanding of international terrorism slowly grew after Sept. 11.

“We really still are at the beginning stages,” he said.

Evangelicals Must Stop Cherry-Picking Their “Prolife” Arguments

I am currently reading a good book by Daniel K. Williams entitled The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (Eerdmans, 2021).

I suspect that I will eventually post a more thorough review of this work at some point in the future. But given my recent encounters with several books and articles examining the lustful, nationalistic ties that have long bound American Christianity to the nation’s callous, military bloodletting around the world, I wanted to write a short note on Dr. Williams’ defense of the pro-life movement.

Williams looks at four political issues that tend to divide Americans along party lines: abortion, marriage and sexuality, race, and wealth and poverty.

His goal is to show that all four of these concerns should equally animate all Christians into a bipartisan – or better yet, nonpartisan – alliance that would work together towards a wholistic “politics of the cross.”

If you have read my book, I Pledge Allegiance, you won’t be surprised to learn that I couldn’t help but notice that war and peace (unsurprisingly) don’t make it onto Dr. Williams’ list of important Christian political issues.

This absence was underscored as I read his biblical/theological arguments against abortion. He naturally begins with the early Christian apologists and church fathers who condemned abortion in the ancient world. Their arguments are important and powerful, laying the groundwork for Christianity’s longstanding opposition to abortion. [This point requires elaboration, but I won’t do that here.]

However, these same ancient, Christian leaders used similar arguments to oppose all Christian involvement with violence, warfare, and the military. The same men who condemned abortion and defended unborn children were equally adamant in insisting that all Christians must be pacifists who condemned all forms of violence.

Unfortunately, Dr. Williams continues the evangelical habit of cherry-picking the “prolife” evidence.

For the early Christians, the reasons we must oppose abortion (while simultaneously providing all the supportive social services required by a newborn) are the same reasons we must oppose war and refuse to be involved in violence.

You can’t claim one part of the argument while denying the other.

Ron Sider has produced an excellent book on this subject, gathering all the ancient evidence together for the modern reader. It’s called The Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment (Baker Academic, 2012). It’s well worth reading.

So, if abortion is wrong, all violence and warfare are wrong, too. Yet, precious few Christians in either the Republican or the Democratic (yes, that is the proper adjective) party openly advocate for a national “peace/antiwar” policy in this country.

And that’s a tragedy.

For, if you believe that abortion-providers deserve to be picketed and closed down, then so do military bases, nuclear weapons facilities, war colleges, ROTC programs, weapons manufacturers, and the Pentagon.

As the earliest Christian teachers and apologists all insisted, IF Christians should not get abortions, THEN neither should they join the military, serve in the police force, or work in the judiciary, because all these roles demand an association with or the execution of violence and dehumanization.

We can’t cherry-pick the Biblical evidence, folks.

America’s Warmongering Civil Religion

An American “Christian” flag

Perhaps the most grotesque feature of American civil religion is its  manipulation of Christian faith to fit the role of pious cheerleader for this nation’s militaristic imperialism throughout the world.

Of course, this requires the collusion of our religious leaders — I hesitate to call them “Christian” — who applaud the “sacrifice” of our noble troops, willing “to give their lives for the nation.”

You can find my critique of civil religion, nationalism, and the collusion of American evangelicalism with our militaristic, national idolatry in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

More recently, Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, a professor of religious studies at Moravian College outside Philadelphia, has written a book entitled, And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War-Culture.  Her book explores the ways in which Christian vocabulary is used to justify, and to valorize, America’s endless wars.

She further explores the long-term damage of “moral injury” ravaging the consciences of soldiers who come home from the battleground.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Dr. Denton-Borhaug conducted by Robert Scheer and Scheer Post. The interview transcript is titled, “Christianity is the Linchpin in America’s War Machine,” a title that ought to make every Christian gag. [All emphasis mine.]

RS: Well, really what you’re talking about is a sickness, a profound cultural sickness that has a unique, dare I say American-exceptional variant in its relation to Christianity, modern Christianity, that has inflicted great pain not only on the world–I shouldn’t say “not only”–and on innocent civilians throughout the world, but on the warriors that are summoned or encouraged or paid–mercenaries–to go out and do this. And you’re saying there’s a fundamental connection as well as a contradiction between this nation’s claim to be influenced by notions of a deity and an almighty and accountability in a religious sense, and the barbarism–the barbarism that has consumed our relation to the world.

KDB: That’s absolutely right, and you know, part of the–I’m really glad that you used the word “contradiction,” because contradictions abound in this landscape. And part of the contradiction has to do with the way that U.S. Americans tend to understand ourselves, and especially our system of government, with respect to religion. So we like to think that we have these nice and comfortable and straightforward separations between the ways that we operate in the world politically and whatever religious commitments we may have. We like to think that we have successfully relegated those kinds of commitments to the private sphere. But what I have come to understand is that that, in fact, is not true at all. There’s a tremendous amount of interplay that goes on between those supposedly private commitments and then the way that we understand and act within these much larger political realities.

So of course, a lot of this falls under the heading of what scholars call civil religion: the way in which religion is intertwined with, and impacts, our systems and our practices and our rituals of civil government. But I think we have tended to think that all of this is very conscious and under control, and thoughtfully executed. And my work really exhibited to me that there is this sort of deep emotional, rather subconscious and very destructive subterranean stream of religious violence that impacts the ways that we think about war, and actually that acts also as a very strong mechanism of concealment and mystification. So we tend not to see these things; we tend not to be aware of them. And simultaneously, we’re really deeply impacted by them. We approach the realities of war and militarization in the United States as a kind of sacred reality.

But, again, even as I say that, when these subterranean streams are lifted to the surface, because they have become sacred in so many people’s ways of thinking, it can be very disconcerting to hear them named as such. And it can raise a lot of uncomfortable feelings, and even feelings of anger, on the part of many people.

RS: Well, but your basic research is with the one set of victims. I mean, we should never forget that bombing weddings with drones creates, in a traditional sense, real victims out there that we sort of discard; we think of war as a video game now, and we just blow people up all over, and we’ve been doing it, whether it was shock and awe and the great display of military power, or what we do mindlessly, or our president does almost every day, whether it’s Biden or Trump. But you’ve focused on the warriors.

KDB: Right.

Read or listen to the entire interview here.

The Dangers of Absolute Truth

  • I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a serious dilemma for conservative Christians.

One of the messier lessons to be learned – or to be reminded of – by the rise of Trumpism in America is the powerful allure of authoritarianism to conservative Christians.

American evangelicals are especially susceptible to falling in love with authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump. It’s true that this tendency hasn’t been limited to the Christian church. In fact, the majority of registered Republicans, whether religious or not, remain loyal to Trump and still believe that he won the November election.

This rigidly predictable overlap between conservative politics and conservative religion (I am hesitant to call it theology) has long been the crippling, besetting sin of the evangelical wing in the American church. We have always had great difficulty in separating our social, economic, cultural preferences – dare I call them prejudices? – from our conceptions of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the gospel of God’s kingdom.

We should never underestimate the preemptive power of human socialization to squelch the development of a distinctly Christian conscience. Believers beware…

Sadly, there is nothing surprising about this coincidence of secular and religious allegiances, for there is really nothing coincidental about any of it. This alliance in outlooks is no accident. As the linguist and cognitive scientist, George Lakoff (at UC Berkeley), explains in his several books on neuroscience and political decision-making, conservative personalities tend to view the world through a binary framework: there is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, with little if any room for the grayish hues of nuance, ambiguity, or uncertainty.

The conservative view of human relationships also places an authoritative father-figure at the top of this binary framework. Thus, authority figures are always to be obeyed, whether that figure is the father in the home, the police officer pulling you over, or the president in the White House. These authority figures are the ones who get to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Sure, the authority figure will insist that he/she is merely the human face of some ultimate law or code that stands above everyone regulating all of our behavior. But it takes very little life experience to learn that these “codes” rarely apply to authority figures in the same way that they apply to regular folks.

There is a good reason that Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd was hailed as an all-too-rare victory in the fight against the excessive use of force, especially against people of color, by American police officers.

One would hope that the Christian’s habitation by the Holy Spirit would provide abundant testimony to a Christian counter-culture winding its way throughout secular society, infiltrating, subverting, weakening, overturning, even strangling secular ways of thinking and behaving among God’s people and the rest of society.

It does happen, but not nearly enough.

I do believe the Holy Spirit is alive and that he transforms disciples of Jesus into counter-cultural people. But not everyone who calls him/herself a Christian is a disciple. As Jesus predicted, those numbers are small and only “a few” walk the path of discipleship faithfully.

Furthermore, as if the challenge of brain chemistry were not enough of a problem, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a unique complication for conservative, religious personalities (which, remember, seems to describe the majority of evangelicals).

When I believe in absolute truth, I will become an absolutist, at least in those areas of life that I believe are touched upon by that truth.

Don’t misunderstand.

There is nothing inherently wrong with absolutism. If only Nazi Germany had contained more humane, Christian absolutists willing publicly to decry Nazi crimes against humanity, standing firm to the point of death in defending all their fellow citizens. Being absolutely committed to following Jesus is the Christian ideal. So, no, religious absolutism per se is not the problem defacing American evangelicalism.

Rather, our problem appears in the fusion of our belief in absolute truth with our innate tendency to seek out and identify with authority figures who will enforce those absolutes (as we perceive them) in this world. After all, we all want the world to work for us.

Many habits of the Christian church are easily exploited by both (a) those who are eager to exercise authority over others as well as (b) those happy to remain subject to another’s authority. Thus, preachers who elevate themselves as God’s singular mouthpiece may often discourage (or never encourage) small group Bible studies throughout the congregation where others can learn from God’s word for themselves, without the pastor’s immediate input.

The popular confusion of church with society – a lingering ghost of western Christendom that continues to haunt US evangelicalism – leads conservative Christians to support leaders, whether Christian or not, who would make selected points of conventional, Christian morality equally authoritative for everyone else in the world, regardless of their attitude towards Jesus.

We want the world to be convenient for us.

The more authoritatively a public figure insists on universal conformity to his/her view of ethics, the more popular that authoritarian will become in evangelical circles.

When I was a teenager, one of the poster children for fundamentalist authoritarianism was Bill Gothard whose Institute for Basic Life Principles filled sporting arenas to overflowing with Christian devotees searching for someone to tell them how to live their lives. Holding Gothard’s thick IBLP binder open on their laps, the ultimate religious father-figure would direct them through the tiniest details of what a proper Christian life should look like.

I suspect that Jordan Peterson’s rapid rise to fame in evangelical circles provides a more contemporary example of the same conservative urge to seek out and surrender to an authority figure.

Frankly, every public figure I have ever listened to representing the Religious Right has struck me as an authoritarian personality. I am thinking particularly of people like Tony Perkins, Gary Baur, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed, to name only a few — all avid Trump supporters, by the way.

The allure of Donald Trump was like a pan of beer laid out for a garden full of slugs. Irresistible to evangelicals.

Never mind that he told the graduating class at Liberty University that they ought to throw out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. His commencement advice was “to get even” with very sharp elbows. Stab your competitors in the back. That’s what Trump advised an auditorium of right-wing, Christian graduates. But it was all ok. After all, Trump is a strong authoritarian who implied that he meant to impose conservative Christian values onto the rest of society, whether they liked it or not.

Fortunately, brain chemistry is not destiny, although far too many conservative Christians appear unaware of that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit, combined with the life and teaching of Jesus, mediated to us through the New Testament (and especially the four gospels) can mold a Spirit directed life, as opposed to an authoritarian directed life.

Lovers of authoritarianism who remain enamored with enforcing Absolute Truth forget that the Christian’s absolute truth is not a law or a code. It is not contained in a manual or a binder.

For the one and only Absolute Truth in this universe is our Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our Absolute Truth is a Person – or a Trinity of equally divine Persons.

We don’t learn about absolute truth by memorizing the minutiae of a legal code.

We don’t honor absolute truth by riding herd over society’s degenerate, wayward cattle.

We only know Absolute Truth by surrendering ourselves to Jesus Christ. For he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Jesus never manipulates, coerces, bullies, or publicly shames anyone, especially not for his own advantage.

The Absolute Truth of Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant; the one who “came to serve, not to be served;” the one who gave his life and was crucified as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of my sins; this is the only Absolute Truth for real disciples.

Jesus has little patience, I suspect, for evangelical authoritarians.

Michelle Goldberg on The Decline of the Religious Right

“The Religious Right is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It,” is the title of Michelle Goldberg’s recent article at The New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg, author and journalist

Ms. Goldberg has been following the Religious Right for some time. I recommend her insightful book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2007) for more of her analysis on white evangelicalism in this country.

Her current article in the NYT underlines the central, animating principle of American evangelicalism in the 21st century: the preservation of Christian cultural supremacy and entitlement.

If you don’t believe me, try this exercise the next time you hear another white, Christian “culture warrior” decrying the latest political act of “anti-Christian” oppression. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine the apostle Paul complaining about this social/cultural disagreement as a threat to the Christian faith or the church?”

Where did Paul ever insist that Greco-Roman society must abandon its idolatry in order for the church to thrive?

When did he insist that Christian organizations were being persecuted unless they were granted tax exempt status?

How often does he announce that the surrounding pagans must change their ways and conform to Christian moral principles in order that Christians may live more comfortably?

The answers are obvious.

Below is Ms. Goldberg’s article. She hits the nail on the head:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”

Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.

QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.

As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

Speaking Truth to Power in American Will Get You Death Threats

Somali born US representative Ilhan Omar recently asked the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, an important question about America’s

Ilhan Omar questions Anthony Blinken by Zoom

relationship to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

She asked Blinken a thoughtful, necessary question which he skirted completely. Here is the complete transcription of that question:

Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, I asked about the Trump sanctions on the ICC staff, so I wanted to thank you publicly for doing the right thing and lifting them. I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either case [sic] that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban. So, in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice, and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice and what justice mechanism [inaudible 00:01:29]?

Given the long-standing US antagonism towards the ICC, including the scuttling of any and all cases that even tangentially involve the United States or Israel, Rep. Omar asks the obvious question: where can the victims of these crimes against humanity turn for justice?

Predictably, conservatives and pro-Israel apologists jumped on Rep. Omar immediately. In her defense she sent out the following Tweet:

We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.

The pundit class immediately torn their clothes and screamed in outrage.

Anthony Blinken

How dare Rep. Omar put the US and Israel in the same class of miscreants as Hamas and the Taliban! She must be excoriated, even excommunicated, for her blasphemy against the lily-white mythology of “American (and Israeli) exceptionalism.”

Never mind the fact that those who study our history know full well that the US is every bit as guilty – many will argue even more so — of war crimes as are the Taliban or Hamas.

It did not take long for Rep. Omar to suffer the most hateful vitriol from not only her congressional colleagues but also conservative news media and the wider public.

Below is a short video explaining the recent series of attacks against Rep. Omar and her family:

Let me say again, as I have many times before, I love Ilhan Omar.

She is a very brave woman of color with the integrity, strength of character, and rightly attuned moral compass to speak truth to power.

Sadly, for jingoistic, “patriotic” Americans, including politicians in both parties who have sold their souls to corporate power, genuine justice and equality before the law are nothing more than bland banners to wave at 4th of July picnics.

They have no hold in real life; certainly not in the hardball realm of Realpolik. They possess no power of moral suasion that might move the consciences of America’s leaders to confess and repent of the nation’s many, grotesque national sins – including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Why are all the members of Congress claiming to be Christians on the wrong side of this debate?

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am grieved that (almost certainly) a majority of American evangelicals share in the hateful attitudes now on display in these vile attacks against Rep. Omar.

We are seeing another clear example of the corrupting influence of Nationalism, and why all Nationalisms are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nationalism is inherently incapable of genuine confession, repentance, rectification, and restoration. It is an ideology rooted in the elevation of the Collective Self, which has no relation to Christian discipleship.

Humility and self-abasement, cardinal attributes of authentic Christian faith, are anathema to Nationalistic sentiment. Thus, the label Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, a blasphemous self-contradiction.

Ilhan Omar’s Muslim faith, combined with her life experience as a Somali refugee, has formed a more noble and enlightened conscience, a more Godly sense of right and wrong than we now see among any of the Family Research Council, Religious Right, Republican, or Democratic critics demanding that she be punished for asking the obvious and necessary questions about America’s place in the world.

This is why I pray from Ilan Omar. I ask the Lord to protect her and her family, and that she continue to find the courage to continue working for justice in this world.

And this is why I pray for American Christianity, that the Lord redeem us from our apostasy. And that we renounce the destructive sin of Nationalism with all its evil power.

Repost: Dispelling a Memorial Day Myth

[This Memorial Day weekend, I am reposting an article I shared several years ago. After listening yesterday to several speakers on Christian radio — neither of whom had served in the military or ever been to war — advertise the beauties of “Americanism” while defending Christian Nationalism and glorifying our military; hearing them disparage people like me who warn against the dangers of Christian Nationalism, I decided to resurrect this article.]

I wrote this article in 2006. It was originally published in Perspectives Journal  (August 1 issue).  It is as relevant today as it was then.

The only difference for me is that my father died several weeks ago of war related health problems.

“I’m an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband’s graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war.

“I remember my mother’s stories of how his hands would encircle her throat at night as she crept into his nightmares, the sleeping wife lying next to him fused with the Chinese enemy crawling under his tent flap. I vividly recall the continual depression, the emotional detachment, the explosions of anger. Our family eroded (internally, if not externally) and gradually fell apart like a sand castle trying to withstand an oncoming tide.

“There is more than one way for a soldier to die. Sometimes the family that waits behind gets back only a shell of the man they once knew. Somewhere overseas the soldier’s insides are emptied onto a battlefield, scooped out by bombs and artillery, sleepless nights and ‘collateral damage.’ The father I once knew had been replaced by someone new, a stranger haunted by guilt and riddled with sickness.

“What do my mother and siblings have to celebrate on Memorial Day?

“Please, don’t urge me to remember the veterans who gave their lives so that we could be free. It’s cold comfort because it’s not true. Aside from the clearly religious overtones of those words, something my Christianity finds deeply offensive, my father’s life was not ruined while defending American freedom. Were that the case, I might be able to celebrate. But with the possible exception of World War II, what modern war has this nation fought for such noble purposes? None. My father’s life was hollowed out for a discredited domino theory that preserved American freedom by only the most strained exercise in mental gymnastics. (If Southeast Asia falls, we’re next!) In the end, half the Korean peninsula and the whole of Vietnam were ‘lost.’ Yet, our freedoms were not diminished one iota.

“Let’s be honest in our celebrations. My father’s comrades-in-arms died believing that they were defending American freedom. They died because this nation’s political leaders had convinced themselves that the borders of American national interests extended into Southeast Asia. But the verdict is now inescapable. American freedom was never at risk in any of those conflicts.

“Soldiers gladly give their lives defending the buddies huddled beside them.

Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam’s “D” Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo)

Soldiers die because they obey their orders, no matter how dangerous. Many die because they are patriots. Sometimes they die in the conviction that they are defending someone else’s freedom. More die because they didn’t know what else to do after high school graduation. Soldiers die because they trust their leaders and believe the rallying cries of the commander-in-chief. But none of this necessarily has anything to do with the defense of American freedom. History demonstrates that our soldiers most often die as instruments of the ambition, naivete, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, and miscalculations of our nation’s leaders.

Washington DC, USA – June 18, 2016: The Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC at dawn.

“It is far more accurate to say that Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who unwittingly gave their lives for the extension of America foreign, political, and economic interests. But that’s neither catchy nor comfortable to repeat.

“In 1775 Samuel Johnson characterized patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is also the first refuge of the masses unwilling to face hard political realities. I’ll stand to memorialize the patriot soldiers who gave their lives protecting a buddy while carrying out dangerous commands. But don’t ask me to memorialize a lie. My family has suffered enough for patriotic delusions.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Gives Powerful Speech About Palestine on the Floor of Congress

 

 

 

Thinking About (Christian) Nationalism

Following my invitation to participate in the upcoming NEME webinar, Two Chosen Peoples? Two Promised Lands?, focusing on the intersection of Christian and Jewish Nationalism in the United States and Israel, I have been expanding my horizons in the ocean of literature exploring the history and contours of modern nationalism.

You know, I always appreciate another reason to read a few more good books!

Some of you may recall that I touched on the subject of American nationalism, and the related issue of civil religion, in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).

The more I learn about the history and developments of this mind-set called “nationalism,” the more convinced I become that it is hostile to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and inevitably corrosive to faithful citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Fortunately, more and more Christian leaders are speaking out to warn God’s people against the dangers of what I consider the worst form of nationalism, that is “Christian Nationalism.”

For example, check out the resources provided by the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

Christian nationalism insists that The Nation is bound together by a corporate commitment to the Christian religion, born of a Christian history and Christian culture. Being Christian people (however that is defined) becomes the centerpiece of national identity.

Christian nationalism goes hand in hand with a belief in the nation’s “chosenness.” The Christian nation is God’s unique, elect people with a special, divine calling to perform His will in this world.

Historically, such national callings have generally been implemented, at least in part, through warfare, colonialism, bloodshed, discrimination, and even ethnic cleansing.

Christian Nationalism creates a secularized ecclesiology [ecclesiology is the doctrine of the Church], offering a worldly, bogus doctrine of a “national church” for seriously misguided people.

It even creates alternative, secular liturgies, symbols, rituals, and vocabulary for national “devotion.” Nationalism becomes a religious exercise memorializing the nation’s holy history.

But disciples of Jesus Christ are called to find their personal identity in union with the peaceable, crucified Savior. Clinging to the idolatrous badge of identity provided by a warmongering nation-state is a betrayal of genuine Christian values.

“Christian Nations” (so called) can never embody anything other than the secularized fellowship of false identities carved out by the egotism of those who are distorted by their own peculiar ethic, regional, cultural, linguistic superiority complexes.

There ain’t nothin’ Christian about any of that.

Here is a short excerpt from a good book on nationalism entitled, National Identity (Penguin 1991) by Anthony D. Smith. (All emphases are mine):

The nation is called upon to provide a social bond between individuals and classes by providing repertoires of shared values, symbols and traditions. By the use of symbols – flags, coinage, anthems, uniforms, monuments and ceremonies – members are reminded of their common heritage and cultural kindship . . . The nation becomes a faith achievement group . . . Finally, a sense of national identity provides a powerful means of defining and locating individual selves in the world, through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture. It is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know ‘who we are’ in the contemporary world. By rediscovering that culture we ‘rediscover’ ourselves, the ‘authentic self’, or so it has appeared to many divided and disoriented individuals who have had to contend with the vast changes and uncertainties of the modern world. This process of self-definition and location is in many ways the key to national identity. . .

 Nationalism, the doctrine that makes the nation the object of every political endeavour and national identity the measure of every human value, has since the French Revolution challenged the whole idea of a single humanity, of a world community and its moral unity. Instead, nationalism offers a narrow, conflict-laden legitimation for political community, which inevitably pits culture-communities against each other and . . . can only drag humanity into a political Charybdis. [Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. Greek mythology turned it into a sea monster.]

True followers of Jesus Christ find their eternal community in union with the Lord Jesus and, thus, other members of the Body of Christ. That Body is an international, multi-ethnic, trans-territorial community of the faithful.

The disciple’s personal identity is developed through obedience to the Lord Jesus, becoming more and more like him as we share in the fellowship of his suffering. Self-denial, humility, mercy, including service to those who are most unlike us, form the core bundle of Christ-like character traits marking those who follow Jesus.

There is no room for the perversions of Nationalism, much less “Christian Nationalism,” among God’s people on this earth.