Josh Hawley Uses Fake History To Incite Christian Violence
The National Conservatism conference this week was full to the brim with hucksters selling the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. You might have heard some references to the speech there by United States Senator Josh Hawley. You’ve probably heard this statement that he made: “Without the Bible, there is no America.”
That statement is an alarming expression of Christian Nationalism on its own. That statement, however, was only the beginning of a much larger false history that Senator Hawley told to an even more disturbing end.
What journalists have not discussed so far is the false story Senator Hawley told of a violent incident in early Christianity. No one has yet examined the way that Hawley encouraged Christian Nationalists to follow the example of violent religious zealots who lived almost 1,700 years ago in the days of the Roman Empire.
The story, as told by Josh Hawley, is as follows:
“In AD 390, a crowd of Christian believers gathered at a pagan temple known as the Serapeum in Alexandria, a shrine to the god Serapis. A few years before, the virulently anti-faith Emperor Julian had attempted to throttle Christianity and purge Rome of Christian influence. Among other measures, he seized control of the education system, he barred Christians from teaching. He demanded all students in the empire study in the ways that he approved. He commanded worship of the Roman gods, and one of those was the god Serapis.
So, on this day in 390, in the shadow of the state’s recent persecution, this group of believers gathered at the temple to take a stand. In the center of the temple, we read, there was a statue of the god clutching a three-headed serpent, and the legend went that if any impious hand should dare to violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and the earth would instantly return to their original chaos.
Well, one soldier stepped forward carrying an axe. His name is lost to history. All we really know about him is what the historian Rufinus tells us, that ‘he was better protected by faith than he was by his weapon.’ But there, in that moment, this one man made a choice. He made a choice to challenge the Powers and Principalities of his age. He made a choice to reject the dictates of emperors. He made a choice to strike a blow for truth.… He climbed a ladder to the top of the statue, raised his battle-axe, and with all his might, drove it home. Onlookers reported that as the blow fell, the god’s jaw broke away, and as it did, thousands of rats came surging out of the rotten insides.
The Woke Left may seem powerful, and maybe they are. Opposing them might cost us much, but the truth is worth any cost. That’s what courage is, in the end. It is paying the cost, no matter how high, for the truth… So, let’s count the cost.”
Let’s count the cost?
The history of what happened to non-Christians in the wake of the Christian attack against the temple of Serapis tells who will count the cost of Josh Hawley’s violent moral righteousness. It won’t be Christians. If we allow Josh Hawley’s Christian Nationalists to take over the United States and destroy our democracy, it will be non-Christians who pay the price.
So, let’s not accept Josh Hawley’s story at face value. Let’s examine the true history of the incident he’s referring to, and consider its implications.
Fact Checking Senator Hawley’s Fake History
The story Senator Hawley told about the destruction of the temple of Serapis makes it sound as if the violent mob of Christian vandals that destroyed the temple of Serapis were making a brave stand against Emperor Julian, an anti-Christian tyrant. Actual history shows that’s not at all what happened.
Emperor Julian did indeed try to suppress Christianity in the Roman Empire, but his effort was short-lived and isolated. Julian was emperor for only two years, and his reign ended twenty-seven years before the Christian attack against the temple of Serapis.
Emperor Julian was followed by Emperor Jovian, who revoked the anti-Christian edicts of Julian, and issued an edict of toleration, declaring that citizens of the Roman Empire were free to engage in whatever religious practices they chose.
Emperor Jovian was succeeded by Emperor Valentinian the First, a Christian who banned certain non-Christian religious practices and required subjects of the Roman Empire to participate in Christian religious rituals. Emperor Valentinian the First was known for his cruelty, traveling with two caged bears, whom he used to execute servants and officials who irritated him. Valentinian the First died of a stroke that occurred as he was shouting at diplomats visiting his court.
During the reign of Valentinian, his brother Valens was appointed Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, which is where Alexandria and the temple of Serapis were located. Emperor Valens was another Christian. Under Emperor Valens, different sects of Christianity in the Roman Empire began to wage campaigns of violent persecution against each other. Emperor Valens mostly attempted to stay out of these conflicts within Christianity, but used his imperial power to support Christianity in general.
It was after the death of Emperor Valens that Theodosius the First became Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was Theodosius the First who was Emperor when the Christian attack against the temple of Serapis took place.
Emperor Theodosius the First had begun to order non-Christian temples to be closed and given over to bishops to become Christian churches. Inspired by this imperial policy, Christian mobs began to violently attack non-Christian places of worship throughout the empire. It was as part of this campaign of terror that a Christian mob seized control of the temple of Serapis in Alexandria. Upon hearing of the attack, Emperor Theodosius refused to punish the Christian mob for its violence, and instead rewarded them by ordering the destruction of non-Christian holy relics. Emperor Theodosius then ordered a Christian church to be built atop the wreckage of the temple of Serapis.
After Emperor Theodosius showed this support for the destruction of the temple of Serapis, Christian violence against non-Christians spread throughout Egypt, with the widespread vandalism and destruction of ancient art and architecture, intimidation, assault, torture, and murder of non-Christians, and the destruction of the largest collections of books anywhere in the world. Most of the texts destroyed by Roman Christians were lost forever, though a few were kept safe from the hands of book-burning Christians by intellectually curious Muslim scholars.
So, the story about the temple of Serapis that Senator Josh Hawley told during his speech at the National Conservatism conference this week was a lie. The Christians weren’t courageously rebelling against an anti-Christian emperor. Their violence took place under a Christian emperor a full generation after the short reign of Emperor Julian had ended. Their attack against a non-Christian place of worship was done with the endorsement of the Christian Roman Empire, not in defiance of it. It wasn’t Christians who were being persecuted by the empire. It was the Christian empire that was persecuting everyone else.
Josh Hawley’s speech at the National Conservatism conference encouraged Christian Nationalists to repeat this persecution of non-Christians. Senator Hawley chose a story of Christian violence against non-Christians as an example of what he wants to see happen in the United States of America.
A United States senator should speak out against religious violence. A US senator should condemn violence against Americans. Instead, US Senator Josh Hawley is encouraging religious violence by Christians against their non-Christian neighbors.
Senator Hawley isn’t alone. Christian preachers and Christian politicians are beginning to explicitly call for a religious civil war of Christian Americans against their non-Christian neighbors. Non-Christian Americans have good reason to fear a campaign of genocide against them by Christian Nationalists.
Christian On Christian Violence
Christian Americans also have good reason to be afraid of violent Christian Nationalism. That’s because the long and bloody history of Christian governments shows that Christian Nationalists are rarely satisfied with simply having a government that supports a generic Christianity. Once they gain power and subjugate non-Christians, Christian Nationalists tend to turn their violence against other Christians.
An important detail that Senator Hawley neglected to mention in his story of the violent destruction of the temple of Serapis by a Christian mob was that the Christians in Alexandria were not united under one banner. Throughout the Roman empire, Christians were bitterly divided amongst themselves, unable to agree about the most fundamental questions in Christian doctrine.
Arian Christians and Nicene Christians fought each other in the streets. The Christian Roman Empire took sides in this religious violence, declared Nicene Christianity to be the official Christian theology of the Roman Empire, and began the persecution of Arian Christians as heretics.
This pattern continued for centuries. Over 1,000 years after the destruction of the temple of Serapis and the Roman Christian persecution of Arian Christians, former western provinces of the Roman Empire endured the Spanish Inquisition. First, Ferdinand and Isabella waged a campaign of genocide against Iberian Muslims and Jews, until only Christians remained alive in Spain and Portugal. Then, once they had declared a Christian government of Spain, they turned their bloody hands against fellow Christians.
The Christian rulers of Spain sent out inquisitors to find anyone who did not agree with the doctrines of the monarchs’ favored version of Christianity. At first, the inquisitors were only supposed to ensure that the thousands of Jews and Muslims who had been forced to convert to Christianity, were remaining true to their new religion. Soon, however, inquisitors expanded their mission. The inquisitors began scouring communities throughout the country to find anyone who did not practice the specific kind of Christianity approved by the Ferdinand and Isabella. Those who were deemed heretics were tortured and killed by the thousands.
The Spanish Inquisition also produced a list of banned books, including Christian religious books that were deemed likely to lead people away from the one true form of Christianity favored by the King and Queen. This banning of books during the Spanish Inquisition is part of the inspiration for the current campaign by American Christian Nationalists to ban books and shut down public libraries.
It was this same genocidal Christian royal court in Spain that sent Christopher Columbus out to claim new Christian lands to the West, across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Americas. Remember this: Whenever Christian Nationalists brag about the role of Christianity in founding the United States, they are referring with pride to the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition. They are boasting of the use of genocide to expand Christianity in Europe and the Americas. They are threatening to impose this terrible violence again, first against non-Christians, and then against any Christians who refuse to follow their specific, hateful version of Christian ideology.