The Historical Ignorance Of Christian Nationalism
The harsh, unforgiving morality of Christian Nationalism doesn’t match the moral values of most Americans today. It comes from a culture that shuts itself away from the world, supposing that ignorance is a form of virtue.
That’s where the historical illiteracy of Mike Pence and Larry Kudlow comes from as well. Christian Nationalists tell strange religious revisionist history that’s warped to fit the ideology of Christianity. Christian Nationalist churches teach children to believe ideas about American history that couldn’t possibly be true, placing their faith in it because it matches a biblical perspective.
So it is that Charlie Kirk, a leader of Turning Point USA, a Christian Nationalist organization that has attracted American Nazis carrying flags with swastikas on them to their events, made the following strange assertion this week.
“The founders had trust in a constitutional style of government because they always thought the church would be the counselor to the king.” - Charlie Kirk
The founders of Constitution of the United States of America thought that the church would be the counselor to the king? How could anyone who knows anything about American history believe such a thing?
First of all, in the United States of America, there is no such thing as “the church”, and there never has been. There were places in the British imperial colonies in North America where a single church was able to gain exclusive power. These colonies were terrible places to live, with people commonly fleeing their tyrannical church-run governments to live out in the wilderness or with indigenous people. Once the United States of America was formed under the Constitution, however, there was no such thing as the church. There were churches, and temples, and mosques, and sacred fraternal organizations, and secular fraternities and sisterhoods too.
One basic thing every kindergartener ought to understand about American history is that, after the Revolution of 1776, it was commonly understood that the United States of America was never, ever going to have a king. There might have been a few tory loyalists left in the population, but the founders of the USA were very clear about this. There wasn’t going to be any king of America.
There is not a single line in the US Constitution that suggests in any way that churches should have a role in counseling the government. Churches are simply never mentioned in the Constitution at all. There’s a reason for that. The collective wisdom of the founders was that churches had been a destabilizing influence in European and colonial political history. The founders wanted to keep churches far away from halls of political power, in order to avoid tyranny and bloodshed. That’s why the Preamble to the Constitution states that “We the People of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The Constitution is designed to put power in the hands of the people, and to keep power away from churches.
People like Charlie Kirk can believe that this isn’t true because they are raised to know more about the mythological history of kings in the Christian bible than they do about the facts of American history. Charlie Kirk can talk about kings in the United States of America because his vision of America considers our country to be merely an extension of the ancient biblical kingdom of Judea.
Christian Nationalists live in a fantasy, a fake history, a dark and violent history that Christian zealots believe must end in bloody global war that will end with not a single human being left alive on the Earth. Those of us who believe that humanity can do better than that need to communicate clearly the facts of actual American history.
The fact is that America is not a Christian nation. The United States is a culturally pluralistic secular democracy.
New survey research from the Pew Research Center shows that Christian Americans are increasingly unwilling to accept cultural pluralism, and are demanding that Christians be granted the governmental power to impose their religion on all Americans.
The survey found that 79 percent of Americans Christians believe that the Christian bible should shape the law in the United States of America. That is Christian Nationalism. 79 percent of American Christians are Christian Nationalists.
When the survey asked more directly about whether the United States should be a Christian Nation, fewer Christians were willing to admit to their Christian Nationalist ideology. In response to this question, 62 percent of American Christians said that yes, the United States of America should be a Christian nation.
So, it looks like 17 percent of American Christians support the goals of Christian Nationalism and the ideology of Christian Nationalism. It’s just that when they’re asked by a pollster to identify themselves as Christian Nationalists that they balk at the question. This 17 percent of Americans is quite willing to have the Christian bible shape American law for Christians and non-Christians alike. They’re just embarrassed to openly describe themselves as Christian Nationalists. They want Christianity to control the United States. They just don’t like to say so directly.
These survey results blow apart the claims by progressive Christians that Christian Nationalists are somehow “fake Christians”, and that Christian Nationalism is “imposter Christianity”. Only 21 percent of American Christians are willing to say that the Christian bible should not be allowed to determine what the legal system in the United States looks like.
Christian Nationalists are by far the majority of American Christians. There’s just no reasonable way to claim that Christian Nationalism is not representative of Christianity.
There’s been some dissembling about the alarming results of this survey, pointing out that there can be different kinds of Christian Nationalism, some harsh and unforgiving, others soft and mumbling. This podcast has explored the relationship between these different levels, and found that soft Christian Nationalism is used as a kind of deceptive framing in order to open the gate to the most harsh and extreme forms of Christian Nationalism.
When former Trump cabinet secretary Ben Carson, for example, told a crowd at the CPAC conference this summer that public schools should be forced to teach children to believe in the Christian bible, he used the presence of the motto “In God We Trust” on American money and the phrase “one nation under god” in the Pledge of Allegiance as justification. The whispers of Ceremonial Deism are used to create the Christian normativity that leads to Christian Nationalist campaigns for government programs of compulsory Christianity. For this reason, the claim of a difference between moderate Christian Nationalism and extremist Christian Nationalism is a false distinction.
The Pew survey results bear this out. In the Pew survey, the majority of those who stated that the United States should be a Christian nation also said that the Christian bible should have more power to shape American law than the will of the people. That means that most of the people who described themselves as Christian Nationalists want to subjugate American democracy and replace it with undemocratic Christian power. There’s no moderate version of a will to end American democracy.
There is some good news from this survey, though it will take a while for this good news to come to fruition. 63 percent of Americans over the age of 65 responded that they believe the United States should be a Christian nation. Only 23 percent of 18-29 year-olds, however, believe that the United States should be a Christian nation.
Young Americans get it. They understand that the United States of America is a culturally diverse country in which the government is supposed to be a secular neutral ground where no religion is allowed special privileges and powers.
If America is going to remain free, all Americans must be able to stand in equality.
The time for Christians to enjoy special powers and privileges that are denied to the rest of America is over.