Once they take over, what do Christian nationalists plan to do with the United States?

Lauren Witzke, a Christian nationalist leader who was the Republican Party’s candidate for Governor of Delaware in 2020 made her movement’s intentions quite plain. She recently wrote:

“We are a Christian nation, founded by Christians, and yes, we should legislate our faith on you. If you don’t like it, get out.”

If you think that’s just an isolated comment, listen to what Christian nationalist leader Nick Fuentes announced recently:

“Some might say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and everybody can express their own religion, and so people can have their own countries, and I would agree with that if Christianity weren’t true, but we know that it is.

So, if that’s the case, why should other countries be allowed to be wrong? Why should countries persist? Why should there be governments and peoples in the world where they want to be wrong? We have these countries where they will empty out into Hell when they go away? These countries are just places where the floor opens up and everybody falls into Hell when they die? No, I don’t actually think that’s a good idea at all.

So, we’ll start with America. I think America’s a good start. We’re going to reclaim America for Christ, retake America for Christians, and if people have a problem with that they can stay and live under it, or they can go somewhere else where they have different rules, and then we’re going to follow you to those countries, and we’re going to make those countries the same way, and you are going to become a Christian.”

These words from Nick Fuentes should remind Americans that what Christian nationalists want is far from the democratic norms that we have come to take for granted. Under the Christian nationalist regime Fuentes is arguing for, no one will have the right to refuse conversion to Christianity. His argument comes from the belief that Christianity is obviously true and good. From that premise, he concludes that it is morally wrong to allow people to express their own opinions. He wants to create a global government that issues Christian edicts that everyone on the planet must not only obey, but must believe.  

If that’s not enough to frighten you into action, listen to Andrew Torba, a Christian nationalist who was hired to work on Doug Mastriano’s campaign for Governor of Pennsylvania this year. He warned that:

“We're taking back this country for the glory of God and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop us. Every knee will bow, yours included.”

There’s that language of kneeling once again. Some people like to suppose that prayer is an inherently peaceful act, but these are not words of peace and respect. These are the words of fascists who plan to impose a totalitarian Christian regime after they destroy America’s secular democracy.

For the record, there are more than a hundred million non-Christians in the United States. That’s over a hundred million Americans who choose not to kneel to the Christian god, in defiance of the claims of Christian nationalists to speak for all Americans.

When Donald Trump says that “Americans kneel to god, and to god alone,” he’s just plain wrong. Americans kneel to plenty of things, and many don’t kneel to any god.

I want to be clear about what Andrew Torba is up to here working on the campaign of Doug Mastriano for Government for Pennsylvania. It might be easy to suppose, if you aren’t researching Andrew Torba’s extensive work promoting Christian nationalism, you might assume that his remarks about forcing non-Christians to bow their knees in subservience to Christianity were just a gaffe, merely a one-time misstatement.

Let’s clear up that misconception. Andrew Torba speaks repeatedly, and at great length, about what Christian nationalists in the Republican Party are planning to do. Here’s, for example is what Torba said this month about the work of a Christian nationalist member of Congress, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene:

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is also coming under attack, you know. She is getting loud with the explicit Christian nationalism and I love to see it. This is great stuff. So, on the cap to her podcast, she said the GOP is the party of Christian nationalism and that Christian nationalist policies serve everyone. She is absolutely correct. Me loving my neighbor is wanting my neighbor to be ruled by wise biblical Christian men.

Why? Well, look at the fruits. Look at the fruits of what happens when we allow Pagans, Jews, non-believers, atheists to run our country, okay? What happens? What is the fruit of that? Well, the fruit of that is massive inflation, a border invasion, billions and billions of dollars being sent to foreign countries, you know, a suicide epidemic in this country. Deaths of despair. Fentanyl deaths skyrocketing, and just this laundry list of stuff, okay?

So this is what happens when non-believers are in positions of power and run our government. What happens when Christians are in positions of power and run our government and run our media and run our education system? Well, you get what we've seen in the United States of America and across Europe. Well, across Europe for thousands of years, across America for, you know, the first two hundred years or so of our founding of this nation, which is the fruit of exceptionalism and of freedom and of liberty and of wealth. That is what happens when you have biblical, wise, Christian, biblical leadership that is running the country. It benefits everybody, okay? This is just the reality of the situation. So, me loving my neighbor is wanting my neighbor to be ruled by Christians, biblical wise Christians.”

These comments by Doug Mastriano’s campaign aide Andrew Torba are a great example of the way that Christian nationalists use positive-sounding Christian phrases to conceal a cruel authoritarian agenda. Who, for example, could argue against loving your neighbor? In this speech, Torba reveals what the Christian nationalist definition of loving your neighbor is. In Christian nationalism, loving your neighbor means wanting the United States to become a Christian theocratic dictatorship.

In Torba’s vision of a Christian nationalist government, women won’t be allowed to vote or to hold positions of government power. We’ll be ruled by “wise biblical Christian men”. Not women. Men only will be allowed to vote and to work in the government under Torba’s Christian nationalism. These are Torba’s words.

Torba plans to outlaw non-Christians from voting and from serving in the government, too. In order to achieve that, Torba will have to repeal the Constitution of the United States of America, because the core of the Constitution, not just the First Amendment, explicitly bans religious tests for public office. So, loving your neighbor, for Torba, includes destroying your constitutional rights.

Loving your neighbor under Christian nationalism also means having a return to slavery. Slavery is a common theme in Christian nationalist harangues. They just can’t seem to stay away from it. When Andrew Torba talks about the “fruit of exceptionalism” and wealth experienced during the first generations of the United States, we need to remember what was happening in the country at that time. People were held in captivity as slaves, with their children and their children’s children handed down as heirlooms by wealthy economic elites. Torba doesn’t blink an eye when he refers to an era in American history when slavery was commonplace as if it was a wonderful time. “It benefits everybody,” Torba says, with a straight face, because he does not view people of African ancestry as human.

What could justify this harsh discrimination under the rule of a white male Christian minority? Andrew Torba says that a Christian nationalist dictatorship is justified because Pagans, atheists, and other non-believers are in charge of the federal government.

Since when are Pagans in control of the United States? Where are these non-believers in control of the federal government that Torba is talking about?

Joseph Biden is not a pagan, or a Jew, or a non-believer. The President of the United States is a Christian and has been so for his entire life. The leaders of both houses of Congress are both Christians. The Christian nationalist bloc of justices that control the Supreme Court are all Christians.

For the record, there has never been a Pagan or an atheist President. There has never been a non-Christian President, or Speaker of the House, or Senate majority leader. There has never, in the entire history of the United States, ever been a single non-religious American who has been allowed to be a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. That isn’t because there aren’t very many non-religious Americans. Non-religious Americans currently are 30 percent of the US population, and they’ve never ever been represented in congressional leadership, in the White House, or in the Supreme Court.

Andrew Torba’s idea that non-Christians control the government of the United States is a fantasy. There isn’t a single position in the US government that has not been occupied predominantly by Christians.

If you don’t like what the US federal government has been doing, you can’t blame atheists or religious minorities for it. It’s Christians who control the federal government, and state government in every one of the 50 states.  When there’s a problem, in American government, blame the Christians, because they’re the ones in charge, and they have refused to share power with other groups.

When it comes to non-Christians, Andrew Torba has particular animosity toward one population in particular. He despises American Jews. Here’s what Torba had to say this week in response to criticism from a Jewish member of the Antidefamation League.

This is a Christian nation. Christians outnumber you by a lot. A lot, and we're not going to listen to 2 percent. You represent 2 percent of the country, okay? We're not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore. The 98 percent of the rest of us, you know, 70, 75 percent of which are Christians, self-identifying Christians, we're not taking it anymore, bud. We are taking back our culture. We're taking back our country. We're taking back our government. So, deal with it.

You know, there's nothing you can do to stop us because what has been set into motion, it's snowballing now. Right? We have Marjorie Taylor Greene openly saying that she's a Christian nationalist. We have Matt Gaetz kind of flirting with it a little bit today with his tweet on Christian nationalism. You know, we have Paul Gosar. We have like people in Congress right now, members of Congress right now who are openly, openly saying that they're Christian nationalists. We have multiple candidates for governor who won their primaries in a landslide, are winning in the polling right now, and are going to win the governorships of multiple states who are Christian nationalists.

We have officials not only at the state level, not only at the federal level, but also at the local level. People who are running for school boards, Christian nationalists who are running for school board and by Christian nationalists, I mean like concerned Christian parents who are done, who are done, done with this, done, done being controlled and being told what we're allowed to do in our own country by a 2% minority or by people who hate our biblical worldview, hate our christ, hate our lord and savior. Done. It's over. So, you better deal with it.

You can demonize me individually. You can try and attack me. But guess what? You know, I am just one of hundreds of millions of Christians in this country, bud. So, guess what? It's inevitable.

Who is this 98 percent of America that Andrew Torba claims to speak for? They’re not all Christian nationalists. You heard there how quickly Torba backed off the claim that 98 percent of Americans are Christian nationalists like himself. He corrected himself and said that Christian nationalists are 75 percent, and then just 70 percent.

The actual number is lower. Christians now are only 60 percent of the American population. That’s a slim majority, but then, not all Christians are Christian nationalists. A majority of American Christians are Christian nationalists, but perhaps only 60 percent. 60 percent of 60 percent of the population is a minority. Although Christians are a majority in the United States, and enjoy all sorts of special privileges, Christian nationalists are in the minority.

Facts, however, aren’t the forte of Christian nationalists.

Listen to Torba make threats against American Jews, though, the reviled 2 percent of the population. The Christian nationalists, Torba says, are going to take freedom away from Jews living under Christian nationalism.

If you haven’t noticed it yet, Andrew Torba makes it hard to ignore: Christian nationalism is really nothing more than Nazi ideology with an American face. Torba’s deranged claim that the United States is secretly controlled by Jews is just recycled Nazi propaganda. It’s as false now as it was in the 1930s and 1940s.

Nazi Christian nationalists are not just people on the fringe of the Republican Party, either. Doug Mastriano, the guy who employs Andrew Torba, is a Christian nationalist, and he’s the Republican Party’s candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. This week, it was revealed that Doug Mastriano has instituted a Christians-only policy for media access to his campaign. Torba said:

“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people. He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers and they want to destroy you.”