A National Year Of Humiliation
Once you start looking for weird behavior from Christian nationalists, you’ll find it all over the place. You’ll, for example, find it in the United States Congress.
Earlier this year, U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who sits in Congress as a representative of the 5th district in the state of Washington, introduced H. Res. 874.
H. Res. 874 is a congressional resolution that would provide official federal government support to the designation of a National Year of Humiliation.
The full title of the resolution is H. Res. 874: Supporting the designation of a National Year of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.
The legislation is a crazy quilt of scraps from Christian nationalist ideology taken from here and there, stitched together into an outlandish and nearly unreadable text.
The resolution claims that no other nation on Earth besides the United States has a coherent basis for providing people with legal rights. The resolution states: “Most countries in the world claim the rule of law and have written constitutions. Many use the language of rights and equality and declare for human dignity. But none have a coherent basis for doing so.”
Then, the resolution asserts that “America is different because god endowed us with rights; Whereas that belief is either true or it is false. If it is false, then we Americans, among all mankind, are most to be pitied. The experiment must fail. It cannot and must not succeed.”
This is supposed to be a coherent basis for legal rights in the United States? Let’s try to sort out what this language is trying to say.
1. America is different because the Christian god gave Americans legal rights.
2. That the Christian god gave Americans legal rights might be true, or it might not be true.
3. If Americans came together and worked on an agreement for legal rights for themselves, that’s pitiable and doomed to failure. Furthermore, any agreement among Americans about what their legal rights that does take place should not be allowed to succeed.
This part of the resolution is arguing against democracy. It’s saying that it’s an awful idea for people try to set up democratic arrangements amongst themselves to agree upon legal rights that apply to everyone.
Here’s the thing, though. The resolution has been submitted as a piece of legislation to the Congress of the United States of America, which is a body of human beings dedicated to establishing and implementing the legal rights of American citizens.
If U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the author of this resolution to officially designate a National Year of Humiliation, really believes that people must not be allowed to establish frameworks of legal rights, then why is she working in Congress at all? Why has she written and submitted a resolution to Congress at all?
Representative McMorris Rodgers proposes that, instead of having human beings work on legislation, people should just let the Christian god take care of it all. In fact, she proposes that the Christian god already has established the system of legal rights in America.
If that’s the case, though, how come legal rights in America have changed over time? The Christian god is supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing. So, why would the Christian god deny women the right to vote in the USA of the 1700s, but then grant women that right in the USA of the 1900s?
Did the Christian god change its divine mind? Did the all-powerful Christian god not have enough power to make its original framework of legal rights work? Did human beings outmaneuver a clumsy and weak Christian god to change the framework of legal rights while the god wasn’t looking?
What is there in this idea of a magical spirit creating legal rights with supernatural spells and ancient Bible wizardry that’s supposed to be coherent? It just doesn’t make any sense.
The resolution to create a National Year of Humiliation continues on an erratic path, free of all logic.
At one point, the resolution declares that Americans are just plain terrible people. “We confess we are a self-consumed, prideful, and unloving people,” the resolution reads. It’s strange, because Christian nationalists claim to love America, but this resolution absolutely detests Americans.
Halfway through, the resolution lurches to offer the following as a justification of a year long national pursuit of humiliation: “Whereas George Washington Carver, born a slave during the Civil War, testified in 1921 in front of the House Ways and Means Committee expounding on a myriad of ingenious uses for the peanut transforming the economy and which had been revealed to him by faith as he regularly walked through the woods at 4 a.m.”
Wait. What? George Washington Carver testified that he used to walk at night and came up with many uses for peanuts. What does it have to do with Congress establishing a National Year of Humiliation?
Don’t get me wrong. I respect George Washington Carver. I like peanuts. A walk in the woods is nice. None of these things is a reason to have a Year of Humiliation.
You may be wondering what this freaky, incoherent piece of legislation has to do with Christian nationalism. I get that. H. Res. 874 is an unhinged word salad that reads as if it was written by someone who had too much whiskey to drink. I urge you to read through the legislation yourself to get a holistic sense of its bizarre language, but for now, let me cut to the chase.
At the end of its text, H. Res. 874 finally gets to the point, and explains what the National Year of Humiliation is all about. It’s a year-long religious ritual of Christian nationalism, with all Americans encouraged by the United States federal government to surrender their independence and liberty to the power of the Christian god.
The resolution urges Americans to read the Christian Bible and engage in official federal government rituals of Christian worship, to “commit to reading His Word daily and praying together weekly for our Nation”.
The legislation resolves that the United States House of Representatives officially “expresses support for proclaiming a year of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer; prays that in this hour of our great need, our sovereign god will come;… humbles ourselves, prays, seeks god’s face, turns from our wicked ways, and thanks and praises the god of our ancestors… calls upon the people of our nation to humble ourselves before our creator and acknowledge our complete dependence upon him…”
The National Year of Humiliation is proposed as a nationwide religious celebration the tenets of Christian nationalism. The resolution would have the federal government guide Americans through sacred Christian texts, and conduct repeated nationwide rituals of Christian worship, all centered around the mythological belief that invisible spirits from the ancient Middle East used magic powers to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and write the Constitution of the United States of America, and that the human beings gathered together for the Constitutional Convention had nothing to do with it.
At the end of it all, what are we supposed to get out of this unprecedented, year-long spiritual orgy of Christian nationalism? We’re supposed to feel humiliation. That’s the goal of this resolution: To humiliate America.
I’m not making this up. H.Res. 874 actually seeks to humiliate Americans, and to do it because… well, because George Washington Carver got creative thinking about peanuts while walking out in the dark one night.
I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb when I say that H.Res. 874, the resolution to create a National Year of Humiliation, is weird.
Like I said before, I’m okay with weird. What I’m not okay with is people saying that the actual legal rights written down in the Constitution don’t matter because there in a divine spirit, who never actually shows his face anywhere, that is the secret author of America’s freedoms, and therefore anything Christians want to do with the power of government is okay.
I sincerely believe that Americans have the constitutionally protected freedom to write down whatever young adult fantasy stories they want. If they want to write novels pretending that ancient mythological creatures have come to the United States, I don’t think anyone should interfere with that.
Actually attempting to pass national legislation in the United States Congress to establish an official federal government endorsement of this kind of fantasy novel plot of myth and magic, however, is going too far.
I recognize the legal right of Cathy McMorris Rodgers, as an elected representative of the people of eastern Washington state, to introduce any legislation she wants to. She could write legislation declaring that the federal government believes in fairies and unicorns.
For the Congress to pass such legislation into law, however, would not only be foolish and irresponsible. Crossing that threshold would be downright unconstitutional.
The first words of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America are very clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
That means what it says. Congress can’t make any law about the establishment of religion. Period. Resolutions to establish of a year-long religious festival of Christian nationalism, sponsored by the US federal government, are plainly laws respecting an establishment of religion. There’s no reasonable way to read the First Amendment and conclude otherwise.
Christian nationalists, unfortunately, don’t care much about reason, and they don’t care about the Constitution of the United States of America. They believe that they are following an invisible desert spirit who makes all of the human work of democracy irrelevant. They believe that religion is more powerful than liberty, that Christianity is more important than freedom. In their minds, all of American law boils down to just one principle, never written down anywhere at all but imagined constantly in their fevered imagination: Christians get to do whatever they want to do, regardless of the law, regardless of the Constitution, and everybody else has no choice but to submit, because invisible spirits have more rights than flesh and blood human beings.
People can pretend that’s not what Christian nationalism is about, but a document like H.Res. 874, the resolution to create a National Year of Humiliation, makes the truth very plain. Christian nationalists are ignorant of American history, and disconnected from reality.
I sincerely urge Christian nationalists like U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers to follow their faith to its logical conclusion. Don’t go halfway! If you really believe that there’s an ancient magical invisible desert spirit from the Middle East that secretly controls everything, including the entire system of American law and the US federal government, then act like it! Don’t pretend that you have more power than your god. Follow its commands to live a life of prayer, and let the god take charge. Leave politics to the god. Quit Congress and the Supreme Court. Go home and be like the lilies of the field, who don’t worry about anything, and just pray all day.
Please. Just go home and pray, and leave the rest of us alone and in peace. That’s what you’d do if you really believed what you say you believe.
Instead, we’re getting a Christian nationalist congressional resolution to establish a National Year of Humiliation.
What’s really unnerving about all this is that Cathy McMorris Rodgers isn’t alone in the halls of Congress. When she brought her resolution declaring that there should be a federally-sponsored national religious festival of humiliation that lasts an entire year… because peanuts… there were other members of the U.S. House of Representatives who thought it was a brilliant idea.
Fifteen members of Congress decided that the National Year of Humiliation was a great idea. They signed their names to H.Res. 874 as official cosponsors. They ought to feel humiliated that they did such a ridiculous thing. Apparently, they’re beyond shame.
Nonetheless, the names of these Christian nationalist members of Congress, every single one a Republican, are:
Vicky Hartzler – Missouri
Mariannette Miller-Meeks – Iowa
John Joyce – Pennsylvania
Larry Bucshon – Indiana
Markwayne Mullin – Oklahoma
David McKinley – West Virginia
Louie Gohmert – Texas
Yvette Herrell – New Mexico
Diana Harshbarger – Tennessee
Bill Johnson – Ohio
Adrian Smith – Nebraska
Brian Babin – Texas
John Moolenaar – Michigan
Debbie Lesko – Arizona
Virginia Foxx – North Carolina
Now, I know what Christian apologists will say. They’ll say that I’m misunderstanding the Christian language of humiliation, and what it means in a theological context. They’ll say that humiliation in Christian theology is really all about the cultivation of humility, which is a positive personality characteristic.
I understand where that’s coming from, but that concept of humility is all about the meek acceptance that the Christian god holds all the power, and all the worthiness, and that we, as mere humans, are nothing in comparison. In the context of Christian nationalism, that sort of humility isn’t at all healthy. It’s about the accumulation of power through the denigration of others.
As a general principle, when Christian nationalists talk about what their god wants, they’re really talking about what they want. When Christian nationalists talk about giving power over to their god, what they’re really talking about is giving power over to Christian leaders.
Christian nationalist leaders repeatedly seek to undermine the power of people to manage their lives on their own terms, through systems such as democracy. That’s what Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers does in the text of H.Res. 847, when she talks about how people must not be allowed to advocate for their own legal rights. Christian nationalists aim to destroy American democracy and replace it with a Christian theocracy. Under this Christian theocracy, it won’t be any god who’s in charge. It will be very human, and not at all humble, Christian leaders, who will seize control.
When Christian nationalists talk about making an entire nation full of people humiliated in the face of their religion, we ought to be very concerned.