GOP becoming a cult of know-nothings

November 28, 2021·

Supporters of former President Trump are seen the North Carolina Republican Party Convention on June 5

The Republican Party is becoming a cult. Its leaders are in thrall to Donald Trump, a defeated former president who refuses to acknowledge defeat. Its ideology is MAGA, Trump's deeply divisive take on what Republicans assume to be unifying American values.

The party is now in the process of carrying out purges of heretics who do not worship Trump or accept all the tenets of MAGA. Conformity is enforced by social media, a relatively new institution with the power to marshal populist energy against critics and opponents.


What's happening on the right in American politics is not exactly new. To understand it, you need to read a book published 50 years ago by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, "The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970." Right-wing extremism, now embodied in Trump's MAGA movement, dates back to the earliest days of the country.

The title of Lipset and Raab's book was chosen carefully. Right-wing extremism is not about the rational calculation of interests. It's about irrational impulses, which the authors identify as "status frustrations." They write that "the political movements which have successfully appealed to status resentments have been irrational in character. [The movements] focus on attacking a scapegoat, which conveniently symbolizes the threat perceived by their supporters."

The most common scapegoats have been minority ethnic or religious groups. In the 19th century, that meant Catholics, immigrants and even Freemasons. The Anti-Masonic Party, the Know Nothing Party and later the American Protective Association were major political forces. In the 20th century, the U.S. experienced waves of anti-immigrant sentiment. After World War II, anti-communism became the driving force behind McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Goldwater movement in the early 1960s ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice").

The roots of the current right-wing extremism lie in the late 1960s and 1970s, when Americans began to be polarized over values (race, ethnicity, sex, military intervention). Conflicts of interest (such as business versus labor) can be negotiated and compromised. Conflicts of values cannot.

You see "the politics of unreason" in today's right-wing extremism. While it remains true, as it has been for decades, that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican (that's interests), what's new today is that the better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic, at least among whites (that's values, and it's been driving white suburban voters with college degrees away from Trump's "know-nothing" brand of Republicanism).

Oddly, religion has become a major force driving the current wave of right-wing extremism. Not religious affiliation (Protestant versus Catholic) but religiosity (regular churchgoers versus non-churchgoers). That's not because of Trump's religious appeal (he has none) but because of the Democratic Party's embrace of secularism and the resulting estrangement of fundamentalist Protestants, observant Catholics and even orthodox Jews.

The Democratic Party today is defined by its commitment to diversity and inclusion. The party celebrates diversity in all its forms - racial, ethnic, religious and sexual. To Democrats, that's the tradition of American pluralism - "E pluribus unum." Republicans celebrate the "unum" more than the "pluribus" - we may come from diverse backgrounds, but we should all share the same "American values."

One reason right-wing extremism is thriving in the Republican Party is that there is no figure in the party willing to lead the opposition to it. Polls of Republican voters show no other GOP figure even close to Trump's level of support for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The only other Republican who seems interested in running is Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who recently criticized "Trump cancel culture."

If Trump does run in 2024, as he seems inclined to do, can he win?

It all depends on President Biden's record. Right now, Biden's popularity is not very high. In fact, Biden and Trump are about equally unpopular (Biden's job approval is 52 to 43 percent negative, while Trump's favorability is 54 to 41.5 percent negative). Biden will be 82 years old in 2024. If he doesn't run, the Democrats will very likely nominate Vice President Harris. When a president doesn't run for reelection, his party almost always nominates its most recent vice president, assuming they run (Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, Joe Biden in 2020). Democrats would be unlikely to deny a black woman the nomination. There is also some talk of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg running if Biden doesn't.

The 2024 election could be a rematch between Trump and Biden. Or a race between Trump and a black woman. Or between Trump and a gay man with a husband and children. Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the New America think tank, recently told The New York Times, "I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that's happened now. I don't see the rhetoric turning down. I don't see the conflicts going away. ... It's hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse."

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of "Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable" (Simon & Schuster).

How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics

From xenophobia to conspiracy theories, the Know Nothing party launched a nativist movement whose effects are still felt today

Lorraine Boissoneault

January 26, 2017

Anti-immigrant cartoon showing two men labeled "Irish Wiskey" and "Lager Bier," carrying a ballot box. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

Like Fight Club, there were rules about joining the secret society known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB). An initiation rite called “Seeing Sam.” The memorization of passwords and hand signs. A solemn pledge never to betray the order. A pureblooded pedigree of Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock and the rejection of all Catholics. And above all, members of the secret society weren’t allowed to talk about the secret society. If asked anything by outsiders, they would respond with, “I know nothing.”

So went the rules of this secret fraternity that rose to prominence in 1853 and transformed into the powerful political party known as the Know Nothings. At its height in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party, originally called the American Party, included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians. Party members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. They wanted to restore their vision of what America should look like with temperance, Protestantism, self-reliance, with American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation's highest values.

Know Nothings were the American political system’s first major third party. Early in the 19th century, two parties leftover from the birth of the United States were the Federalists (who advocated for a strong central government) and the Democratic-Republicans (formed by Thomas Jefferson). Following the earliest parties came the National Republicans, created to oppose Andrew Jackson. That group eventually transformed into the Whigs as Jackson’s party became known as the Democrats. The Whig party sent presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and others to the White House during its brief existence. But the party splintered and then disintegrated over the politics of slavery. The Know Nothings filled the power void before the Whigs had even ceased to exist, choosing to ignore slavery and focus all their energy on the immigrant question. They were the first party to leverage economic concerns over immigration as a major part of their platform. Though short-lived, the values and positions of the Know Nothings ultimately contributed to the two-party system we have today.

Paving the way for the Know Nothing movement were two men from New York City. Thomas R. Whitney, the son of a silversmith who opened his own shop, wrote the magnum opus of the Know Nothings, A Defense of the American Policy. William “Bill the Butcher” Poole was a gang leader, prizefighter and butcher in the Bowery (and would later be used as inspiration for the main character in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York). Whitney and Poole were from different social classes, but both had an enormous impact on their chosen party—and their paths crossed at a pivotal moment in the rise of nativism.

In addition to being a successful engraver, Whitney was an avid reader of philosophy, history and classics. He moved from reading to writing poetry and, eventually, political tracts. “What is equality but stagnation?” Whitney wrote in one of them. Preceded in nativist circles by such elites as author James Fenimore Cooper, Alexander Hamilton, Jr. and James Monroe (nephew of the former president), Whitney had a knack for rising quickly to the top of whichever group he belonged to. He became a charter member of the Order of United Americans (the precursor to the OSSB) and used his own printing press to publish many of the group’s pamphlets.

Whitney believed in government action, but not in service of reducing social inequality. Rather, he believed, all people “are entitled to such privileges, social and political, as they are capable of employing and enjoying rationally.” In other words, only those with the proper qualifications deserved full rights. Women’s suffrage was abhorrent and unnatural, Catholics were a threat to the stability of the nation, and German and Irish immigrants undermined the old order established by the Founding Fathers.

From 1820 to 1845, anywhere from 10,000 to 1000,000 immigrants entered the U.S. each year. Then, as a consequence of economic instability in Germany and a potato famine in Ireland, those figures turned from a trickle into a tsunami. Between 1845 and 1854, 2.9 million immigrants poured into the country, and many of them were of Catholic faith. Suddenly, more than half the residents of New York City were born abroad, and Irish immigrants comprised 70 percent of charity recipients.

As cultures clashed, fear exploded and conspiracies abounded. Posters around Boston proclaimed, “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are…vile imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” Convents were said to hold young women against their will. An “exposé” published by Maria Monk, who claimed to have gone undercover in one such convent, accused priests of raping nuns and then strangling the babies that resulted. It didn’t matter that Monk was discovered as a fraud; her book sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The conspiracies were so virulent that churches were burned, and Know Nothing gangs spread from New York and Boston to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville, Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis and San Francisco.

At the same time as this influx of immigrants reshaped the makeup of the American populace, the old political parties seemed poised to fall apart.

“The Know Nothings came out of what seemed to be a vacuum,” says Christopher Phillips, professor of history at University of Cincinnati. “It’s the failing Whig party and the faltering Democratic party and their inability to articulate, to the satisfaction of the great percentage of their electorate, answers to the problems that were associated with everyday life.”


Citizen Know Nothing. Wikimedia Commons

Phillips says the Know Nothings displayed three patterns common to all other nativist movements. First is the embrace of nationalism—as seen in the writings of the OSSB. Second is religious discrimination: in this case, Protestants against Catholics rather than the more modern day squaring-off of Judeo-Christians against Muslims. Lastly, a working-class identity exerts itself in conjunction with the rhetoric of upper-class political leaders. As historian Elliott J. Gorn writes, “Appeals to ethnic hatreds allowed men whose livelihoods depended on winning elections to sidestep the more complex and politically dangerous divisions of class.”

No person exemplified this veneration of the working class more than Poole. Despite gambling extravagantly and regularly brawling in bars, Poole was a revered party insider, leading a gang that terrorized voters at polling places in such a violent fashion that one victim was later reported to have a bite on his arm and a severe eye injury. Poole was also the Know Nothings’ first martyr.

On February 24, 1855, Poole was drinking at a New York City saloon when he came face to face with John Morrissey, an Irish boxer. The two exchanged insults and both pulled out guns. But before the fight could turn violent, police arrived to break it up. Later that night, though, Poole returned to the hall and grappled with Morrissey's men, including Lewis Baker, a Welsh-born immigrant, who shot Poole in the chest at close range. Although Poole survived for nearly two weeks, he died on March 8. The last words he uttered pierced the hearts of the country’s Know Nothings: “Goodbye boys, I die a true American.”

Approximately 250,000 people flooded lower Manhattan to pay their respects to the great American. Dramas performed across the country changed their narratives to end with actors wrapping themselves in an American flag and quoting Poole’s last words. An anonymous pamphlet titled The Life of William Poole claimed that the shooting wasn’t a simple barroom scuffle, but an assassination organized by the Irish. The facts didn’t matter; that Poole had been carrying a gun the night of the shooting, or that his assailant took shots to the head and abdomen, was irrelevant. Nor did admirers care that Poole had a prior case against him for assault with intent to kill. He was an American hero, “battling for freedom’s cause,” who sacrificed his life to protect people from dangerous Catholic immigrants.

COUNT THE STEREOTYPES

On the day of Poole’s funeral, a procession of 6,000 mourners trailed through the streets of New York. Included in their number were local politicians, volunteer firemen, a 52-piece band, members of the OSSB—and Thomas R. Whitney, about to take his place in the House of Representatives as a member of the Know Nothing Caucus.

Judging by the size of Poole’s funeral and the Know Nothing party’s ability to penetrate all levels of government, it seemed the third party was poised to topple the Whigs and take its place in the two-party system. But instead of continuing to grow, the Know Nothings collapsed under the pressure of having to take a firm position on the issue the slavery. By the late 1850s, the case of Dred Scott (who sued for his freedom and was denied it) and the raids led by abolitionist John Brown proved that slavery was a more explosive and urgent issue than immigration.

America fought the Civil War over slavery, and the devastation of that conflict pushed nativist concerns to the back of the American psyche. But nativism never left, and the legacy of the Know Nothings has been apparent in policies aimed at each new wave of immigrants. In 1912, the House Committee on Immigration debated over whether Italians could be considered “full-blooded Caucasians” and immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe were considered "biologically and culturally less intelligent."

From the end of the 19th century to the first third of the 20th, Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization based on their non-white status. “People from a variety of groups and affiliations, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Progressive movement, old-line New England aristocrats and the eugenics movement, were among the strange bedfellows in the campaign to stop immigration that was deemed undesirable by old-stock white Americans,” writes sociologist Charles Hirschman of the early 20th century. “The passage of immigration restrictions in the early 1920s ended virtually all immigration except from northwestern Europe.”

Those debates and regulations continue today, over refugees from the Middle East and immigrants from Latin America.

Phillips’s conclusion is that those bewildered by current political affairs simply haven’t looked far enough back into history. “One can’t possibly make sense of [current events] unless you know something about nativism,” he says. “That requires you to go back in time to the Know Nothings. You have to realize the context is different, but the themes are consistent. The actors are still the same, but with different names.”

Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
Poll: Religious Americans less worried about climate change
By LUIS ANDRES HENAO

Storm clouds approach a church in Mequon, Wis., on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. A new Pew Research Center report published Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022 explores how religion in the U.S. intersects with views on the environment and climate change. 

(AP Photo/Morry Gash)


NEW YORK (AP) — Most adults in the United States – including a large majority of Christians and people who identify with other religions – consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it.

AMERICAN PROTESTANT CHRISTIANS

But highly religious Americans – those who pray daily, regularly attend religious services and consider religion crucial in their lives -- are far less likely than other U.S. adults to express concern about global warming.

Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 10,156 U.S. adults from April 11 to April 17. It’s margin of error for the full sample of respondents is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

The survey says religious Americans tend to be less concerned about climate change for several reasons.

“First and foremost is politics: The main driver of U.S. public opinion about the climate is political party, not religion,” the report says.

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
“Highly religious Americans are more inclined than others to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and Republicans tend to be much less likely than Democrats to believe human activity (such as burning fossil fuels) is warming the Earth or to consider climate change a serious problem.”

Responding to the findings, the Rev. Richenda Fairhurst, steward of climate at the non-profit Circle Faith Future, said the siloed culture in America sows further division instead of inspiring teamwork.

“I don’t know who that serves,” she said. “But it’s not serving the community — and it’s certainly not serving the planet.”

The poll found that about three-quarters (74%) of religiously affiliated Americans say the Earth is sacred. A larger share, (80%), feel a sense of stewardship -- and fully or mostly agree with the idea that “God gave humans a duty to protect and care for the Earth, including the plants and animals.”

Religious Americans who show little or no concern about climate change also say “there are much bigger problems in the world, that God is in control of the climate, and that they do not believe the climate is actually changing.”

Many religious Americans are also concerned about the potential consequences of environmental regulations, including the loss of individual freedoms, fewer jobs or increased energy prices, the report says.

The survey also found that two-thirds of U.S. adults who are religiously affiliated say their faith’s scriptures include lessons about the environment, and about four-in-ten say they’ve prayed for the environment in the past year.

The views, the report says, are common across a range of religious traditions.

CHRISTIANITY IS ONE RELIGION REGARDLESS OF THE NUMBER OF SECTS

Three-quarters of both evangelical Protestants and members of historically Black Protestant churches say the Bible includes lessons about the environment. Eight in ten U.S. Catholics and mainline Protestants say the Earth is sacred and so do 77% of non-Christian religions, according to the poll.

But Christians, and more broadly, religiously affiliated Americans, are divided in their views about climate change, the report says.

Those who consider climate change “an extremely or very serious problem” range from 68% of adults who identify with the historically Black Protestant tradition, to 34% of evangelical Protestants.

In none of the major Protestant traditions did a majority say the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity; only 32% of evangelicals felt that way.

The report says the religiously unaffiliated -- the fastest-growing group in surveys asking Americans about their religious identity – are much more likely to say that climate change is an extreme or very serious problem (70%) than religiously affiliated Americans (52%).

Commonly known as the “nones,” they describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.” The report says they are far more likely to say the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human-induced activity (66%) than those who are religiously affiliated (47%).

The survey offers clues as to why religious Americans are less likely to care about climate change than those with no religion despite seeing a link between their beliefs and caring for the environment:

• For U.S. congregations, climate change doesn’t seem to be a major focus. The report says that among all U.S. adults who attend religious services at least once or twice per month, only 8% say they “hear a great deal or quite a bit about climate change in sermons.”

• One in five say they hear some discussion of the topic from the pulpit.

• And just 6% of American congregants say they talk about climate change with other people at their congregation a great deal or quite a bit.

Highly religious Americans are also less likely to view inefficient energy practices as morally wrong, the report says. This same pattern is also seen when asked about eating food that takes a lot of energy to produce.

The Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest, and executive director of GreenFaith, a global multi-faith environmental organization based in New York, said he was not surprised by the findings since he doesn’t see culturally and politically conservative Americans prioritizing climate action.

“What this study doesn’t tell us, though, is the role that religion, when utilized effectively, can play in moving people who are concerned but inactive into public action on the climate’s behalf,” Harper said. “This warrants further research so that we can all understand better what positive role religion can play in the fight against climate change.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
In Moscow, Idaho, conservative 'Christian Reconstructionists' are thriving amid evangelical turmoil


Crawford Gribben, Professor of history, Queen's University Belfast
Sat, August 20, 2022

THE CONVERSATION

Members of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, protest an order to either socially distance or wear a face mask in public. Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY-SA

Evangelical groups in the U.S. have for years faced dwindling numbers. And a messy cultural fight over the direction of the movement might serve to drive further defections.

But while some of the largest Protestant denominations in America, such as Southern Baptists, continue to hemorrhage members, one small group of conservative evangelicals appears to be bucking the trend – despite numbering only around 1,300 or so.

For the past 30 years, believers from across the United States and beyond have been gathering in Moscow, a city in northern Idaho with a population of around 25,000. Here, as part of the Christ Church congregation, they have set their face against the cultures of American modernity. Guided by a controversial social theory known as “Christian Reconstruction,” which holds that biblical law should apply in today’s setting, they look to the Bible to understand how they believe American institutions should be reformed. Followers believe that abortion rights and same-sex marriage, among other evidences of what they would see as moral decline, will eventually be repealed. Their goal is simple – the conversion of the people of Moscow to their way of thinking as the first step toward the conversion of the world.

This hope might appear to be unrealistic. But as a scholar who has charted the rise of the movement in my book “Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America,” I know that these believers have already made steps toward that goal.
Growing influence

In Moscow, the community has established churches, a classical Christian school, a liberal arts college, a music conservatory, a publishing house, and the makings of a media empire. With books published by major trade and academic presses, and a talk show on Amazon Prime, the community is setting the agenda for a theologically vigorous and politically reactionary evangelical revival.

These believers are led by conservative pastor Douglas Wilson, whose views on gender, marriage and many other topics are controversial, even among the most conservative Christians. For over 30 years, Wilson has been campaigning against the influence of everything from atheism to feminism.

In so doing, he has attracted some significant critical attention – not least from the late journalist and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens, with whom he debated whether Christianity was good for the world in a series of exchanges that was later turned into a book.

The community that Wilson leads in Moscow is still small. It is hard to obtain figures for the growth of Christ Church in terms of numbers, but my research and conversations with members of the congregation suggest it is expanding. What is clear is that in little more than three decades, Christ Church has gone from being a little-known congregation to one generating media attention and getting attention from senior political figures.

Pastor Douglas Wilson and followers at a protest. 

Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY-SA

The community has established a K-12 school, a member of an association of hundreds of classical Christian schools heavily influenced by the educational beliefs of Wilson. In a testament to the political reach of the group, in 2019 Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of the speakers at the association’s annual convention.

As I note in my book, the community’s liberal arts college sends students into doctoral programs in various disciplines at Ivy League and leading European universities – it isn’t an insular educational world. Its small and closely connected group of authors has worked with publishers such as Random House and Oxford University Press.

And then there is the talk show on Amazon Prime.

This talk show, “Man Rampant,” gives an indication of why this community is growing in influence despite the evangelical decline. Wilson, as its host, uses the platform to set out the ideas that undergird his vision of Christian renewal – developing an agenda drawn explicitly from the Bible about the revival of traditional masculinity.

As its title suggests, “Man Rampant” promotes an extremely muscular Christianity. Forget Jesus as well-meaning, meek and mild; the first episode condemned the “sin of empathy.” Empathy, says Wilson, “is not a good thing.”

The “Man Rampant” agenda is reinforced on Wilson’s website, which draws upon the creative people living in the Moscow community to turn his arguments into striking visual metaphors, and where, while dismissing racism, he argues that “it really is OK to be white.”

Going local to convert America

In America’s crowded religious marketplace, Wilson’s message is clearly distinct.

One of Wilson’s most important influences is the late R.J. Rushdoony, an Armenian-American Presbyterian theologian who was driven by protecting Protestants in the U.S. from suffering the kind of genocide from which his parents escaped. Frustrated by the other-worldliness of many American Christian denominations, whose adherents he feared preached more about heaven than earth, and their complacency in what he perceived to be a hostile liberal culture, Rushdoony set about developing biblical principles for how society should be organized.

The Ten Commandments were no longer to be considered as an artifact in the history of morality, Rushdoony argued. Instead, they should be understood as setting out the core principles for the running of the modern state. “Thou shalt not steal” ruled out the possibility of inflation, which Rushdoony argued devalued monetary assets and was therefore was a form of theft. And “Thou shalt have no other gods besides me” ruled out any possibility of religious pluralism.

Rushdoony promoted these ideals in titles such as 1973’s “Institutes of Biblical Law” – a 1,000-page exposition of the Ten Commandments that argued for both the abolition of the prison system and a massive extension of capital punishment.

Christians would be secure in American society only when it was shaped by their religious values, he argued. But the Christian America that he anticipated would not be secured through revolution or any form of top-down political change – only by the transformation of individual lives, families, towns and states.

This strategy of promoting beliefs at the local level explains why Christian Reconstructionists, like those led by Wilson, prefer to focus energies in small towns. The Reconstructionists in Moscow believe that they can achieve much more significant cultural impact if they can secure significant demographic change, either by the conversion of existing inhabitants or by encouraging others to move to the area.
Eschewing the existential crisis

The stated goal of Wilson’s congregation is to make Moscow a Christian town; at present only around a third of Moscow residents identify as “religious,” according to a 2019 report.

But it is Wilson’s attitude about public health measures during the pandemic that has most recently brought him and his church back to the attention of political leaders. Throughout the pandemic, he has argued that mask requirements reveal the hypocrisy of government. In September 2020, Wilson led his congregation in the illegal hymn-sing in front of City Hall that led to the arrests of several church members – footage of which was retweeted by President Trump, who suggested that the Moscow congregation’s arrests were emblematic of what would happen to evangelicals if Democrats took control. “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY,” the former president tweeted in all caps.

And yet, whatever the former president’s fears, Wilson’s congregation is growing. While large denominations, like the Southern Baptists, divide in the debate about critical race theory, Wilson’s church shows how some congregations could respond to evangelicalism’s existential crisis – and possibly thrive.

[3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter. Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Crawford Gribben, Queen's University Belfast.

Read more:

Why refusing the COVID-19 vaccine isn’t just immoral – it’s ‘un-American’


What is a cult?


‘The blood of Jesus is my vaccine’: how a fringe group of Christians hijacks faith in a war against science

Crawford Gribben received funding from the Irish Research Council for a research project on "Radical religion in the trans-Atlantic world."

THEY ARE'NT CHRISTIANS THEY ARE WHITE NATIONALISTS

Toxic Christian ideology is infecting the Covid debate. And that's bad for everyone.

Despite the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., where over 340,000 people have already died, recent news about the effectiveness of vaccines has provided some hope this holiday season. Videos of the first Americans receiving the vaccine were cause for celebration.

© Provided by NBC News

A consistent narrative among many political leaders who delayed an aggressive response to the virus, including President Donald Trump, is the expectation that Covid-19 vaccines will speed the return to life as we used to know it. Yet, epidemiologists and public health experts say vital herd immunity will be harder to achieve if a sizable number of Americans resist vaccination.

Americans have found all sorts of reasons to be suspicious of vaccines. One community that appears disproportionately opposed is Christian nationalists. In fact, we find in a new study that Americans who strongly embrace Christian nationalism — close to a quarter of the population — are much more likely to question the safety of vaccines and to be misinformed about them (e.g., believing that vaccines cause autism or don't work or that those who administer them are dishonest). If enough of these Americans resist a Covid-19 vaccine based on suspicions rooted in misinformation, the results would be disastrous for achieving herd immunity and reducing the spread of the virus.

VIDEO Covid vaccine's biggest obstacle turns out to be leadership, not science

We examined nationally representative data including 1,219 participants collected by researchers at Chapman University as part of the 2019 wave of the Chapman University Survey of American Fears.

Regarding vaccination attitudes, the survey instrument asked respondents to agree or disagree with various statements that we then combined into a single scale:
"Vaccines cause autism."
"Doctors and drug companies are not honest about the risks of vaccines."
"People have the right to decide whether or not to vaccinate their kids."
"Kids are given too many vaccines."
"Vaccines do not help protect children from dangerous diseases."

To measure Christian nationalism, we combined responses to these five questions into a single scale:
"The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation."
"The federal government should advocate Christian values."
"The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state."
"The federal government should allow prayer in public schools."
"The federal government should allow religious symbols in public spaces."

Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to have a particular expression of Christianity be privileged in the public sphere — in the national identity, public policies and sacred symbols of the U.S. It focuses on defining the boundaries of American citizenship, who is (and isn't) a "true" American.

Most often, a "Christian America" is one where white, native-born, politically and religiously conservative Christian Americans are at the center of the culture. In our recent book, we show that in order to understand various issues animating the culture wars, we must pay close attention to Christian nationalism.

Americans who agreed with the various measures of Christian nationalism were much more likely to espouse anti-vaccine attitudes, even after controlling for other influences, such as political party, political ideology, religiosity, race or even education.

While concerning, this information shouldn't be too surprising. First, Americans who embrace Christian nationalism are more skeptical of science. They are more likely to believe scientists are hostile to faith, that creationism should be taught in public schools and that our country relies too much on science over religion. Christian nationalists believe that authority in the public sphere should come from sources they trust are friendly to religion, not secular scientists.

In two other recent studies, we find that Christian nationalism is a leading predictor of ignoring precautionary behaviors regarding Covid-19. We show that these Americans prize individual liberty or economic prosperity rather than protection of the vulnerable. And while not measuring Christian nationalism directly, other researchers find that religious states disobeyed stay-at-home orders at a higher rate and that conservative Protestants are much more skeptical that scientists understand Covid-19.

Finally, Christian nationalism is strongly associated with support for politicians who promise to advance its values and oppose targets of suspicion. Trump and other conservative politicians have embraced anti-vaccination arguments in the past. Medical professionals have even raised the alarm about the effect of Trump's public skepticism, although as president he has acknowledged the importance of vaccinations.

So, just as with other common culture war issues, like gun control, same-sex marriage or policing, Christian nationalism appears closely intertwined with Americans' attitudes toward vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic. One limit of these data is that the researchers at Chapman were unable to ask about a Covid-19 vaccine directly, given that they fielded the survey in the fall of 2019.

But we feel confident connecting Christian nationalism and Americans' likely responses to the Covid-19 vaccine.

In our public discourse and ethics surveys this year, we asked Americans, "Would you get vaccinated if/when a Covid-19 vaccine becomes available?" One of the possible answers was "I don't plan to get vaccinated at all." Even after controlling for important sociodemographic, religious and political characteristics, the more strongly respondents identified with Christian nationalism, the more likely they were to say they don't plan on taking the vaccine.

This is a significant concern. Christian nationalist ideology will almost certainly serve as a barrier for a sizable minority of Americans who need the vaccine. Policymakers and health care professionals will need to attend to this hurdle as they plan and then execute any broad-scale vaccination strategy.

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM IS THE FINAL DEVOLUTION OF AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

Trump's 'big lie' was enabled by years of Americans being 'force fed' ​lies from religion: columnist​

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021

www.rawstory.com
On Tuesday, writing for The Daily Beast, columnist David Rothkopf outlined how American culture, and in particular religion, primed Trump supporters from birth to embrace the former president's "big lie" that the election was stolen from them.

"One of the key reasons we buy into so many small lies is that we have been force fed so many big ones. I mean really big ones. I mean ones that make the current Big Lie look like one of those low-calorie snacks that is actually a high-calorie treat shrunk to a smaller size and repackaged," wrote Rothkopf. "Many of these lies were created out of necessity. Life is finite. (OK, I'm sorry. It is. Take a deep breath if you need to and then continue reading.) ... According to a 2011 poll from the Associated Press, nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe in the existence of angels and a 2015 poll showed 72 percent of Americans believe in Heaven and 58 percent believe in the existence of Hell."

Large swathes of the population appear to be abandoning organized religion, but it remains a highly influential force in American politics. At this point, even faith leaders are having a hard time trying to properly educate their congregants against falsehoods like QAnon and anti-vaccine propaganda.
Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?

Making the problem worse, noted Rothkopf, is that lies both religious and secular are enforced by social structures that make it difficult to push back on them.

"All these lies are aided and abetted by the fact that simply believing in what you are told to believe is much easier than actually figuring out the truth," wrote Rothkopf. "What is more, if your family and friends believe in a lie, challenging that lie might make you an outcast, might alienate those with whom you have or wish to have a bond. With the advent of social media, where like-minded friends become 'editors' and select the news their followers see, lies spread among audiences inclined to believe and thereby endorse them. We live in an age of media 'echo-systems', ecosystems that reinforce disinformation spreading it from dubious sources like QAnon to Facebook to TV propaganda networks to you."

You can read more here.

PAYWALL

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

Here's how religion played a role in the Jan. 6 insurrection: report

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
July 06, 2021

Protesters storm the Capitol and halt a joint session of the 117th Congress on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.. - Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS

The Republican Party and fundamentalist evangelical Christianity have been joined at the hip since the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan openly embraced the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., the Rev. Pat Robertson and other Christian Right theocrats — much to the dismay of arch-conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater, who saw Falwell and Robertson as terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. Former President Donald Trump has been a major ally of the Christian Right, and the Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein examines the connection between fundamentalist Christianity and the January 6 insurrection in an article published six months later.

The January 6 insurrection was primarily a political attack. But in her article, Boorstein stresses that some of the rioters had religious motivations as well.

"Pauline Bauer, Stephen Baker and Jenna Ryan were among the thousands who descended on the Capitol in protest of what they falsely called a stolen election, including some who saw themselves engaged in a spiritual war," Boorstein reports. "For many, their religious beliefs were not tied to any specific church or denomination — leaders of major denominations and megachurches, and even President Donald Trump's faith advisers, were absent that day. For such people, their faith is individualistic, largely free of structures, rules or the approval of clergy."

Boorstein continues, "Many forces contributed to the attack on the Capitol, including Trump's false claims of electoral victory and American anger with institutions. But part of the mix, say experts on American religion, is the fact that the country is in a period when institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight."

One of the most famous January 6 rioters was Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. the QAnon Shaman. BuzzFeed's Zoe Tillman reports that Chansley's latest request to be released from pretrial detention has been rejected:




Although fundamentalist Protestants were part of the January 6 insurrection, some of Chansley's practices are more comparable to those of eastern religion.

"Many Christians at the Capitol on January 6 were part of more conventional, affiliated faith, including pastors, Catholic priests and bused-in church groups," Boorstein observes. "But what researchers studying January 6 find remarkable are the leaderless, idiosyncratic expressions of religion that day. Among them are those of Bauer, who wrote to a judge last month that she's a 'free living soul' and an 'ambassador of Christ,' and of Jake Chansley, the 'QAnon Shaman' who prayed to Christ at a dais in the Senate and calls himself a 'multidimensional being.'"

Robert Pape, who teaches political science at the University of Chicago, told the Washington Post that religious fanaticism doesn't necessarily come from being indoctrinated by a particular sect — and such fanatics, according to Pape, "tend to have a thin knowledge and understanding of their religion."

Pape explained, "Recruits tend to be making individual decisions about the ideologies they want to follow and even what it means. It's very much at the level of the individual."

WHITE SUPREMACIST PROTESTANTISM

We read the Gab founder's how-to guide to Christian nationalism. The book is part of a new trend of conservatives openly embracing the ideology.

Kelsey Vlamis

This Sept. 7, 2020 file photo shows the "Oregon for Trump 2020 Labor Day Cruise Rally" at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Ore. 

Michael Arellano/Associated Press

Gab founder Andrew Torba's book was a best seller on Amazon a week after it was released.
The book outlines the authors' vision for a Christian nationalist society and how to get there.
Christian nationalism has been increasingly embraced by conservative figures and GOP lawmakers.

Gab founder Andrew Torba's new book serves as a guide to Christian nationalism, signaling a recent shift in which it's becoming more common for public figures to openly embrace the concept.

"Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations" was written by Torba and Andrew Isker, a pastor from Minnesota. The brief book, which was independently published, was listed as the number 12 best seller in the non-fiction category on Amazon the week after it was released last month. At the time of this writing, it had a 4.7-star rating with 745 reviews.

Christian nationalism can generally be boiled down to the belief that Christianity should have a privileged position in American society.

Though it is not a new concept, prominent conservative figures have increasingly embraced it in recent years. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has openly identified as a Christian nationalist, even selling merch with the descriptor, while Rep. Lauren Boebert has embraced its tenets, saying "the church is supposed to direct the government."

"Simply put, Christian nationalism is a cultural framework — a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems — that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life," sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry write in their 2020 book, "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States." The book examines how Christian nationalism shapes Americans' views on society and politics.

However, embrace of the ideology is not black and white but rather a spectrum, with some Americans believing aspects of the concept while rejecting others. Torba's book demonstrates this, as his description of Christian nationalism differs in some ways from academic understandings of it.

But his central theme is consistent: American society and government should be guided by Christian principles and led by Christians.

Building a parallel Christian society

Torba's platform, Gab, was founded in 2016 and touts itself as a free-speech social network that does not moderate content like more mainstream sites. It's also been associated with the far-right, gaining notoriety in 2018 when the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh posted antisemitic rhetoric on the site prior to carrying out the attack. Many conservatives also flocked to the site in 2021 when former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter.

"Christian nationalism is a spiritual, political, and cultural movement comprised of Christians who are working to build a Christian society grounded in a Biblical worldview," Torba and Isker write, adding that Christian nationalists today "seek to reestablish states that recognize Jesus Christ as King, the general Christian faith as the foundation of state government, and state laws that reflect (in every way possible and reasonable) Christian morality and charity."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, has said all Republicans should be Christian nationalists. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Such ideas are in step with common understandings of Christian nationalism. However, the book also states that Christian nationalists do not think the US has a special relationship with God, and instead emphasizes the Christian mandate to disciple, or convert, people of all nations to the religion.

The book describes modern American society as one of moral decay, where God has been rejected and agents of Satan have invaded "every facet of our country and culture." The book says ours is a society in which there has been "half a century of legal infanticide" and a yearly "celebration of sodomy for an entire month," rejecting abortion rights and gay pride. The authors also defend traditional gender roles and reject transgender people in extreme terms.

These themes resurface repeatedly throughout the book, which also instructs American Christians on how they should live, discuss their faith, and convert others. But rather than seek to transform society into a Christian one, the book advocates for forming a parallel Christian society that can take over when our current society fails, which the authors say is inevitable.

"Our primary goal is to build a parallel Christian society, economy, and infrastructure which will fill the vacuum of the secular state when it falls," the authors write. The concept is not new for Torba, who often discusses his plans for a parallel Christian economy.
Non-Christians are free to stay — but not serve in leadership roles

The ideal Christian nation described in the book may include some non-Christians, the authors write. But at another point they say "we are Christians and our worldview is in direct conflict and a threat to all other false worldviews. It's time to start acting like it."

They also write that leaders and influential figures must be Christian, just as Christian principles must guide every aspect of society, government, and domestic life.

Torba — who has been accused of antisemitism, including by the Anti-Defamation League — and his co-author devote an entire chapter to rejecting the idea of shared "Judeo-Christian" values, calling the term itself a problem. The chapter begins with a message to journalists who they anticipate will "CTRL+F" for "Jews" in order to find quotes to "take out of context," and is dedicated to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who are both Jewish.

Torba has previously said that Shapiro — just like anyone who is not Christian, including Jewish people, atheists, or agnostics — is not welcome in the Christian movement.

The authors go on to describe Christianity and Judaism as "incompatible" and "irreconcilable" religions, but write that Jewish people must and will be converted to Christianity along with the rest of the world.

"Far from being 'antisemitic,' a proper understanding of this shows heartfelt concern for their souls!" they write, adding Christians "should pray often for the Jewish people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior."

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican of Colorado, has not openly identified with Christian nationalism but has advocated for some of its key tenets. 

Phelan M. Ebenhack, File/Associated Press

The public embrace of a somewhat taboo concept

Scholars of Christian nationalism, and Christian nationalists themselves, are quick to point out these ideas are not new. However, the separation of church and state has long been a widely accepted and mainstream viewpoint in the US.

Many ideals currently being espoused proudly by Christian nationalists were less common in mainstream politics than they have been in recent years, according to Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

"It was always present but the fact that they're openly embracing the label is different and troubling," Tyler, the lead organizer of the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, previously told Insider, adding: "Unfortunately I'm seeing this almost one-up game in some circles, who can be the bigger Christian nationalist."

Perry, one of the authors of "Taking America Back for God," also noted that shift in a tweet that featured Torba's book, as well as another recently released pro-Christian nationalism title.

"We're now definitely well past the 'Christian nationalism doesn't exist' and the 'Christian nationalism is fringe' arguments to full-on 'Christian nationalism is the only way forward.'"

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
How Donald Trump became the most powerful religious leader on the right

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base Friday July 5, 2019, in Maryland, and depart on Air Force One en route New Jersey.

 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Amanda Marcotte 
Salon 

April 08, 2022


As Salon's Kathryn Joyce reported on Friday, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who fashions himself "the new master strategist of the right," is not a man afraid of the spotlight. On the contrary, he's surprisingly candid for a man whose policy ambitions, such as destroying public education as we know it, are deeply unpopular. He loves to brag, on social media and into any microphone you'll put in front of him, of how he cynically concocts baseless moral panics with repeated false claims about everything from "critical race theory" to conspiracy theories about Disney "grooming" children for pedophilia.

But there's one thing that Rufo is surprisingly mum about: Religious faith.

Rufo's agenda is obviously being set by the religious right. He works closely with Hillsdale College, a fundamentalist school that functions as the Christian right's war room. His goals are aligned directly with long-term religious right targets. Searching his Twitter account, however, one swiftly finds that he never talks about his religious beliefs. There's no real mention of God or Jesus or the Bible. When he does speak about Christianity, it's only in the context of pushing conspiracy theories about how white Christians are victims of ethnic oppression by "woke" forces. His conspiracy theories are clearly designed to get Christian conservatives in particular riled up. For instance, he heavily hyped ridiculous claims that children are being taught to pray to Aztec gods in public schools — but he carefully avoids getting theological with it.

It wasn't always this way with the religious right. During the George W. Bush years, Republicans tended to wear their Bible on their sleeves. The God talk was frequent and explicit. Bush himself spoke of being "born again," and frequently did evangelical events thick with fundamentalist jargon that was impenetrable to outsiders. The public school fights weren't over "critical race theory" and false claims that kids were being taught sex acts in kindergarten. Instead, it was over whether schools should replace science with creationism and replace sex ed with abstinence-only texts that had been written by religious organizations. This public piety from Republicans was more muted during the Barack Obama administration, but only slightly. Throughout those years, the difference between a church service and a Republican fundraiser was often undetectable.

Then Donald Trump became president. On paper, Trump appeared to be as much of a supplicant to the relentless Jesus talk on the right as every other Republican. He hit up the same evangelical schools for speeches, waved Bibles around in public, and even did photo-ops where a bunch of grifty ministers prayed over him. But, as far as I can tell, almost no one was actually fooled by this. Trump's ignorance of Christianity was absolute. He wasn't even aware that the central tenet of his supposed faith was a focus on penance and forgiveness. He called Christians "fools" and "schmucks" behind their backs. But no matter how often Trump's evangelical base was reminded that he is not one of them, they stuck by his side. They believed, correctly, that he could deliver them the policy outcomes they desired: A rollback of reproductive and LGBTQ rights, the destruction of public education, and an end to the separation of church and state.

Turns out that Trump is the most powerful religious right leader of all, precisely because he so obviously isn't a believer. He created a "secular" cover that allowed the Christian right to hide in plain sight. Now he's out of office, but the lesson was learned well: The best way to impose theocracy on Americans is to dress it up as a secular movement.

Nowadays, the main public discourse on the right about Christianity is focused on identity, not theology. Fox News pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity talk about Christianity mainly in demographic terms, as part of a larger conception of what it means to be a "real" American. It's less about what you believe, and more about what tribe you belong to. Across the country, Republicans are passing laws that are clearly designed to advance the Christian right agenda, from abortion bans to the "don't say gay" law in Florida. But the Jesus talk has taken a backseat to QAnon-inflected fantasies about pedophilia and litter boxes in schools.

That the QAnon-style conspiracy theories would work better than lots of public praying seems weird at first blush. But it works for one simple reason: The Christian right has terrible branding.

Church ladies waving crosses around are nobody's idea of a good time. A lot of Americans, even Republican-voting Americans, don't go to church very often, if at all. What Trump understood, and the GOP, in general, has glommed onto, is that people want to have fun or at least create the illusion of being fun people. Packaging misogyny and homophobia as religious faith may give it a moral justification, but it's also a drag. Putting those ideas into the mouth of someone like Joe Rogan or Carlson in his current "naughty boy" persona, however, makes it feel transgressive, cool, and exciting.

Trump gave the right permission to stop trying to dress up their ugly views in Christian piety. He pushed calorie-free bigotry. You get the pleasures of being a bully, but you don't have to pay the price of doing boring crap like going to church. Of course, it sells well.

The confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett is a perfect illustration of this shift. Barrett has a long history of public piety in the Bush mold. It's why Trump chose her so that the religious right would feel absolutely secure that she will be the vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But during her confirmation hearing, when Democrats tried to make hay over Barrett's lengthy record of super public religiosity, Republicans cried foul, pretending that Barrett's beliefs were an entirely private matter that had no impact on her jurisprudence. This bad faith was aided by the fact that Barrett happily stood by Trump's side in public, apparently indifferent to his long history of adultery and repeated divorce. That willingness to be in the same room with Trump, perversely, only helped bolster her image as a "reasonable" person who had no intention of forcing her fundamentalism on the American public. But, of course, that's exactly what she was hired to do.

Right now, the nation is being swept by a tidal wave of theocratic legislation, and the situation only looks like it's getting worse. So far, however, the public mostly doesn't seem to take much notice. The various abortion bans barely make a ripple in the public discourse and the threats to hard-won LGBTQ rights aren't really raising many alarms either. Part of that is due to Democratic complacency after President Joe Biden's 2020 win, of course. But part of it is that people respond, especially in our short-attention-span era, to aesthetics more than substance. The Christian right has stopped looking like the Christian right and instead embraced the secular-seeming vibe that Trump, because he's godless, embodies effortlessly. It's hard to convince the public that fundamentalists are coming for them when the fundamentalists have gotten so good at pretending to be someone else.

Top Florida faith adviser dismissed after sexual assault history revealed

David Badash 
The New Civil Rights Movement 

April 05, 2022

A member of the Florida Governor’s Faith and Community-Based Initiative was recently dismissed from his role as a deacon of Clearwater’s Calvary Church after it was revealed he had a history of sexual misconduct when he was a teacher.

Rev. Willy Rice told his congregation in a video that the deacon was stepping down over a past that involved “sexual sin that could also be described as abusive,” Religion News Service reports.

“It did not involve criminal charges, and he has never been identified by law as a sexual offender,” Rice also said.

“Religion News Service has confirmed that the former deacon is Jeff Ford, the executive director of Man Up and Go, a Christian nonprofit in the U.S. and overseas whose Authentic Masculinity Program ‘teaches men how to be protectors of and providers for their families,’ according to the biography of Ford posted on the website of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. According to that website, Ford is a member of the state’s Faith-Based and Community-Based Advisory Council.”

In 2005, the Tampa Bay Times newspaper reported that Jeffrey Charles Ford, a 27-year-old coach and teacher at J.W. Mitchell High School, resigned after admitting to having sex with an 18-year-old student.

Ford’s bio on the Florida Governor’s website calls Man Up and Go “a global non-profit organization that inspires men to fight for the fatherless as Jesus commands. The organization aims to break the cycle of generational fatherlessness,” and operates “in Uganda, Ethiopia, and the Dominican Republic.”

DeSantis established the Governor’s Faith and Community-Based Initiative in 2019.

Evangelical minister: Christian nationalism is a bizarre, misogynist fantasy — and totally un-Christian

President Donald Trump joins Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, Louise Gorsuch, and others in prayer in the Green Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., following the President’s announcement of Judge Gorsuch as his nominee to the Supreme Court, Tuesday January 31, 2017. 

(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Nathaniel Manderson 
Salon 

February 20, 2022

During my time as a boy attending an evangelical church and then later, when I attended an evangelical seminary, it was hard not to notice an underlying misogyny that seemed consistently present. As a man, I would be the head of the household. I was like Christ to my future wife. In fact, I once heard a sermon by prominent evangelical minister Tony Evans where he declared that wives must refer to their husbands as "Lord." In my church youth groups, we were separated by sex and the boys had bizarre discussions on the type of men we should become. There was a strong emphasis on being what they considered to be manly and tough, whereas young girls, of course, were encouraged to be nurturing, submissive and, most important, sexually pure.

When contemporary evangelical leaders push a message around Christian nationalism, I can promise you it always refers back to a time when the "traditional" roles of American households held fast. Making America "great again" is truly about bringing back a time when women were subject to their husbands' wills and whims, and the husbands were lords of the house.

Someone recently wrote to me, in response to one of my previous articles, wondering why so many evangelicals chose Donald Trump, a vulgar misogynist who shows no understanding of any element of the Christian faith, over other candidates who were much closer to the evangelical movement. The difficult answer is that most evangelical men long for the days when misogyny was cool, when women were under the thumb of their husbands and sexual harassment was almost universally accepted. Trump exemplified that approach — and a great many evangelicals loved him for it. Trump remains the favorite of the evangelicals not because any commitment to Christ or the Christian way of life — since he has none — but because of the widespread desire among evangelicals to take back control over their lives, and their wives. One of the major ways this has been expressed lately is through the ideology known as Christian nationalism.

As I understand it, Christian nationalism is an idea now widely accepted within the evangelical church that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles — no matter what it may say in the Constitution. This commitment to the Christian faith, as a nation, is the reason God blessed the U.S. as the greatest nation that ever existed. God will only continue to bless this nation, however, as long as it remains a Christian nation. As America becomes more progressive and increasingly secular in terms of politics, culture and faith, then in this view God will remove his blessing and protection and great evils will befall our nation.

This remarkable theory has no connection to any of the teachings of Jesus Christ or his followers, and is completely irrelevant to the Christian faith. I will certainly admit that I have a heart for American idealism. I have officiated at numerous Veterans Day and Memorial Day services, and I have felt the love of country enormously, on those days and all the days in between. None of that, however, has anything to do with Christianity. God does not play favorites when it comes to nations, people or cultures. That entire idea is morally and theologically absurd.

In truth, Christian nationalism is based not in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ, but on the idea of the traditional American family. As roles for women have changed, as divorce becomes more common, as same-sex marriage gains a firmer footing, and now with the movement for transgender rights and visibility becoming more public, the panic of the Christian nationalists becomes ever more desperate. This is where all that rage among evangelicals is coming from. Understand, most people are motivated politically based on how they perceive policy decisions affecting their day-to-day life. Nothing affects our lives more than what is happening to our families. When things fall apart at home, it can feel helpful — even if it's not healthy — to blame someone or something besides ourselves. For myself, I know that all my personal failures are mine alone. I can't blame MTV or Eminem or the LGBTQI population, the evangelical church, Trump, Biden, Obama, my mom, my dad or anyone else. The problem is in the mirror, as it is for everyone. Any effort to pass that blame along to others is quite human, and quite wrong.

My final point on Christian nationalism is around all the macho tough-guy stuff that seems to be on the lips of every right-wing leader. Being "tough" seems to be the only thing conservative commentators and evangelical leaders care about. Trump is supposedly the epitome of that and his little posse loves him for it. I won't pretend to understand it. After I graduated middle school, being tough just didn't seem that important. But for people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. (before his fall) and of course Trump himself, it's important to keep pretending that they are a bunch of tough guys, even though they also claim to stand with Jesus Christ, a humble, meek and homeless teacher.

I'm no tough guy but I am happy to offer a challenge to any of these fake tough guys. Debate me anywhere, anytime. I am truly blue-collar, a member of the American working class. I am a Bible-believing minister and a flaming liberal. I believe that the Christian nationalist message comes from the devil himself. I am trying to save the name of the Christian faith and to stand up for American idealism. I oppose every part of the hypocritical, fake-populist agenda of the Christian nationalists and their enablers. I double-dog dare any of them, here and now, to stand up and take me on in public debate. Odds are they never will. 

That 'freedom convoy' in Ottawa? It's inspired by an Old Testament account of divine massacre

Image via Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Lecaque 

February 19, 2022
AlterNet

When a church announces what’s called a Jericho March (or a Jericho Walk), you might picture congregants praying, walking around a building, trumpets blasting and an odd gospel song here and there.

You might forget, however, what comes next.

From Joshua 6:20-21:

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Jericho Marches are organized by a group by the same name. They were created by a coalition of Christian nationalists in the US. They are co-led by a Catholic think-tank writer (Arina Grossu of the Family Research Council) and an evangelical businessman (Rob Weaver).

The Jericho Marches rose to prominence recently. Supporters have been marching around the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa for around 20 days. They are, for Americans, a gothic reminder of what had been brewing in the lead up to the J6 sacking and looting of the US Capitol.

The same toxic brew
Jericho March, the group, is one of the religious groups, movements and ideologies that were at play in the insurrection. The Uncivil Religion project has uncovered a bevy of beliefs. The Jericho Marches, however, were the principal symbol of J6 and the Christian nationalism at its heart, not only in DC but at state capitols around the country.

Christian nationalism is a religious idea that transcends borders. It attracts a lot of support from like-minded insurrectionists abroad.

Last year, when journalist Emma Green wrote “A Christian Insurrection” for The Atlantic, it was subtitled it, “Many of those who mobbed the Capitol on Wednesday claimed to be enacting God’s will.”

The CBC Investigates piece on the Ottawa convoy this week is titled, “For many inside the Freedom Convoy, faith fuels the resistance.”

The links are very clear between groupings. And now, organizing in small groups and marching around Parliament, is a new Jericho March.

Spiritual warfare
Filmed versions of Jericho Marches reveal a large group in the snow, bearing primarily Canadian flags and singing hymns, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and then blowing shofars before they began marching.

The hymns and prayers were occasionally punctuated by people yelling “Freedom!” and trucks honking. One woman spoke in tongues before engaging in rhetoric I’ve seen in spiritual warfare sermons.

They prayed for healing from vaccines and for summoning the “Lord of Heaven’s armies.” As the National Review reported, the Jericho March goes every day, once around Parliament, and seven full laps on Thursdays, carrying horns and trumpets. And they hope eventually more will show up, to the tune of thousands and thousands.

Benita Pedersen, an organizer from Alberta, was interviewed by a sympathetic Christian YouTube channel about what they are doing.

Pedersen said she felt a “call on her heart” to do this. She had been given a steer horn by a local farmer. She knew she had to bring it to Ottawa and to do a Jericho March. She’s using that as a shofar.

She said that the “freedom movement” was “100 percent hand in hand with Jesus.” They go together beautifully, she said, and nonbelieving supporters should think about Jesus and about how it goes together.

Divine massacre

But, of course, this isn’t her first time.


She led an anti-vaxx rally outside of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton in September, received 10 Public Health Act tickets for organizing various anti-public health rallies in northern Alberta last year and revived her Twitter account, dormant since 2016, specifically in order to promote anti-public health events she organized and ran.

The story of Jericho is nothing to worry about.

It’s only about divine massacre.

Walls come crumbling down

They know what they are doing. One participant on TikTok recounted the biblical story before backpedaling that this was “not about crumbling walls or infrastructure,” but about softening hearts.

Previous Jericho Marches were not as benign. A year ago, in Edmonton, a Jericho March against pandemic restrictions was condemned by the conservative premier and questioned by anti-hate groups for their intention to march with tiki torches. It was joined by hate groups.

One of the organizers asked “what happened when they marched around seven times on the last day? The walls came crumbling down. Spiritually speaking, we need those corrupt walls that have been built up by the politicians to come smashing and crumbling down.”

“The Great Reset”

Back to Ottawa: Christian nationalist symbols are visible in the mob that has been marching and occupying space around Parliament for about 20 days, though in smaller numbers than in American rallies. It’s part of the broader effort to bring global attention to the “convoy.”

CBC has reported on the prayer circles and speeches and signs in the crowd. Christine Mitchell has written about the Christian nationalist imagery of 2 Chronicles in the crowd. More worrisome, though, is how much international presence, interference and support there is.

Fox News, Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino influence groups around the world that spread Facebook propaganda. All of these have directed attention to Canada and fundraised for the occupation of the city.

Franklin Graham, a J6 defender, posted a supporting Instagram video, tagged with “I’d like you to meet who Prime Minister @JustinPJTrudeau called the ‘fringe minority.’ Tell me what you think of this video.” It featured the Jericho March, among others, and it was set to “Amazing Grace,” which was sung loudly by the mob on January 6.

The Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a noted QAnon-adjacent radical traditionalist Catholic, gave a talk that linked the convoy expressly to “a worldwide chorus that wants to oppose the establishment of the New World Order on the rubble of nation-states through the Great Reset desired by the World Economic Forum and by the United Nations under the name of ‘Agenda 2030.’” Viganò added:

"We know many heads of state have participated in Klaus Schwab's School for Young Leaders — the so-called Global Leaders for Tomorrow — beginning with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, Jacinta Ardern and Boris Johnson and, before that, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair.”

We should worry

“The Great Reset” is an explicitly anti-public health conspiracy theory. Viganò has promoted it relentlessly. It is also used by anti-vaxx, anti-mask and other anti-mandate groups as their way of drumming up support internationally and bringing in more conspiracy theorists.

Viganò’s message focused on Christian nationalism from a Catholic perspective. It was also permeated with QAnon tropes:

“But, even more, dear Canadian brothers, it is necessary to understand that this dystopia serves to establish the dictatorship of the New World Order and totally erase every trace of Our Lord Jesus Christ from society, from history and from the traditions of peoples.”

The elements of spiritual warfare – repeatedly deployed by Christian nationalist groups before in service of Trump and elsewhere – on the borderline of where it crosses over into physical violence, the Jericho Marchs, the violent commentary supporting it, the prayer, the shofars, the echoes of J6 expressed from abroad and divorced from the actual Canadian context – these are a symptom of a broader problem.

Illiberalism is growing. The variant around Trump – conspiracy-laden, seditionist, Christian nationalism – is getting strong by the minute.

Last year, it was in Washington.

This year, Ottawa.

Next year? We should worry.