Joe Biden Won’t Stand Up To Christian Nationalism
This article is an adapted version of a recent episode of the podcast Stop Christian Nationalism.
Stop Christian Nationalism is a podcast that seeks to, well, stop Christian Nationalism. The goal of this podcast is to help defeat Christian Nationalist politicians at the ballot box. It’s an urgent project. This year, with less than four months to go until Election Day, Christian Nationalists are mounting a vigorous campaign to destroy American democracy.
Saying that Christian Nationalists want to destroy American democracy is not hyperbole. It's what they themselves say they want to do. Their goal is to transform America into a nation that is controlled by Christian religious leaders, not by the American population in general.
Right now, the Christian Nationalists are winning because Donald Trump is winning. He is ahead in the polls and he is getting further ahead in the polls.
For too long, Americans who still support democracy have been pretending that this isn't happening. They've been looking away, because the situation is distasteful. That avoidance cannot continue. We need to talk about the situation, and we need to talk about the role that Joe Biden is playing in it.
If we are to prevail, we can't just rely on the self-evident ugliness of Christian Nationalism. We need to have a vigorous resistance to it.
Joe Biden is not offering a vigorous resistance to Christian nationalism.
Of course, Joe Biden is not offering a vigorous resistance to Donald Trump at all. Over the last week, however, we have seen two instances in which Joe Biden not only fails to confront Christian Nationalism, but he actually lends support to it.
One example of this was seen in his recent interview with George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos directly asked Joe Biden if he would consider stepping back as the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, given his weakened condition and lackluster campaign, to allow another Democrat to run for president in his place.
Joe Biden responded by saying, "I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, 'Joe get out of the race,' I'd get out of the race. The Lord Almighty is not coming down."
In this statement, Joe Biden exhibited the most immature kind of political thinking I can imagine. He employed the kind of reasoning we would expect to find an elementary school playground. It was as if Joe Biden was a child saying that what he's doing is right, and to prove it to his friends he says, "Well, if I'm wrong, then may God strike me down with lightning right now." Then, of course, you know what happens. God does not strike the child down with lightning right then. And the kid says, "See, I told you that what I'm doing is right, and there's the evidence.".
It's nonsense, of course, because, God never shows up to say or do anything, much less to strike anybody down with lightning. There is no historical record of the Christian god coming around to give his opinion about any political decision in this country. Nonetheless, Joe Biden is saying that if God didn't want him to be president, then God would come down and would say, "Hey, don't be the president anymore," and that would be the only thing to stop him from continuing on as the Democratic nominee.
Joe Biden's comment reveals a conceptual frame based on the idea that a god, not the American people should be in charge of the fate of the United States. In Joe Biden, we have a President of the United States who believes that there is some kind of supernatural being who has seized the power to direct the future course of our country. If the Christian god is in charge of American government, then the American people aren't.
That's Christian Nationalism.
The Christian Nationalist frame was represented again a couple of days ago when Joe Biden went to give a speech at a church in Philadelphia. The venue was a problem in itself. Joe Biden wasn't at that church to deliver a policy advisory as president of the United States, after all. Instead, Joe Biden delivered a campaign speech at that church, promoting his presidential re-election campaign. What's more, before Biden spoke, the pastor of that Christian church gave a sermon in which he endorsed Joe Biden's campaign.
Under a law known as the Johnson Amendment, this practice is illegal. A church cannot both claim tax exempt status and campaign for a particular political party or for a particular political candidate.
Joe Biden didn't just talk about politics at that church. He couldn't help but mix religious messages into his campaign speech as well. Almost an entire minute out of the six-minute speech was occupied by Biden preaching about Christian religion. Biden thoroughly blended the secular business of government with the religious agenda of Christianity.
Here's some of the religious language Biden packed into his religious campaign speech:
"I used to go to 7:30 mass in my church. You know, thank you for the introduction. It was a moving sermon... Thank you to this incredible congregation. Across the way in Delaware, I attended the morning mass, my church, and I've always felt the power of your faith. Fact is, the scripture says, 'All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.'... We are all created equal in the image of God, always praying, always believing that joy cometh in the morning... and as your President, I've tried to walk my faith. You walk your faith as well. We don't know where or what faith will deliver us to, or when."
This isn't the first time that President Joe Biden has campaigned in a church. He does it all the time.
He says that as President, he has walked in faith, but that's not the job of the President of the United States. What bothers me more is a specific message that he cites from the Bible. It comes from the Book of Romans in the New Testament, chapter eight.
The part that Joe Biden said from that chapter was this: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose." After the part Biden quoted, the chapter continues, "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us such things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies."
The core message of this Bible passage is that good things will only come to Christians, and they're not going to come to non-Christians. The rest of this chapter in the Book of Romans talks about how non-Christians don't have the favor of God, and they're going to be punished. That threat of punishment against people who choose not to be Christian goes on in the Book of Revelation in really terrible detail. The New Testament warns that non-Christians are going to be burned, are going to be squashed, are going to be stabbed with swords. The Bible that Joe Biden quoted threatens torture for everybody who is not a Christian, while promising peace and prosperity for Christians alone.
The Bible passage that Biden chose also says that God's purpose is what matters, and that the Christian god has the power to make decisions. Good things come to people who love God and are called according to the purpose of the god of Christianity, it says. By citing this Bible verse, Joe Biden is taking sides as President of the United States, with one religion against everybody else. Biden is saying that good things should come to people because they are Christian, and not to non-Christians.
The Book of Romans, chapter eight, says that nobody can challenge the Christians and that it's God who justifies, it's God who makes decisions about things. That idea that Christians are on top of the social hierarchy, and that the god of Christianity is in charge of everything matches up really perfectly with what Biden told George Stephanopoulos about only listening to his Lord Almighty, but in the United States of America, that is not the system of government we are supposed to have.
Joe Biden has the right as a private citizen to believe these things, but to speak these things as a presidential candidate who is currently President of the United States is to speak against democracy. Joe Biden keeps promising that he's going to defend democracy from Donald Trump. Instead of fulfilling that promise, though, Joe Biden undermines democracy by repeating the very same Christian Nationalist ideology that, in a more extreme form, is leading Donald Trump to surge in the polls, putting the power to end democracy within his reach.
Donald Trump says he wants to cancel parts of the Constitution, wants to become a dictator, wants to put people in prison camps. The US Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has given Trump the power to do those kinds of things, even though they're against the law.
In the face of this threat, Joe Biden isn't standing up and saying that it's wrong. In fact, Joe Biden has never spoken forcefully and specifically against the ideology of Christian nationalism. Instead, we have Joe Biden going to churches, involving tax-exempt religious institutions in the selection of the next President of the United States, changing churches into cogs in his partisan political machine.
Instead of speaking out against Christian Nationalism, Joe Biden says that it's the will of his god that matters, not the will of the people.
Joe Biden's Christian Nationalist language comes in the wake of some extreme moves to transform state governments into instruments of Christian Nationalist power. In Louisiana the state government is now requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. In Oklahoma, the state superintendent of schools has declared that every public school classroom must have a Christian Bible. Whats more, every public school teacher will be required to teach from the Bible. This includes science teachers, math teachers, and history teachers. In Oklahoma, Christian religion will be taught in chemistry classes, in algebra classes.
Joe Biden has said absolutely nothing about either of these attacks against American democracy. While Donald Trump responded, announcing that he loves the idea of the Ten Commandments being put into every classroom and classroom, and teachers being punished if they don't display the Ten Commandments, Joe Biden said nothing. Joe Biden did nothing. The Biden White House did not release even a little statement of protest.
Joe Biden keeps telling us that he's going to be out there defending democracy, but as President of the United States, he's just not doing it. He's not standing up to Christian Nationalism. We deserve better than that.