Christian Nationalism and the Mermaid Menace
This is the first episode of the second season of the podcast Stop Christian Nationalism. The last episode of the first season was six months ago, in the weeks after the midterm elections of 2022. On the whole, those elections were a repudiation of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalist candidates like Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano mostly lost, with notable exceptions, such as Christian Nationalist JD Vance, who won the election to represent Ohio in the United States Senate.
Christian Nationalism didn’t take the hint, though. Christian Nationalist politicians and organizations have continued to advance their extreme religious agenda through state and local government, and through violence on the streets. Just days after the end of this podcast’s first season, former President Donald Trump had dinner with Christian Nationalist and America Nazi Nick Fuentes.
This wasn’t the first time Donald Trump and his campaign had associated with known Nazis, and the consequences of Trump’s Nazi contacts go far beyond a theoretical weakening of America’s opposition to violent totalitarianism. Donald Trump’s public association with Nazi allies has encouraged violence by Nazis on America’s streets.
Just last week, a man with Nazi tattoos, including a swastika and the SS logo, shot and killed eight people and wounded seven others at a shopping mall near Dallas, Texas. The man wrote furious tirades against Jews and wore a patch with the acronym RWDS, which stands for Right Wing Death Squad. He’s not alone in wearing that patch. Right Wing Death Squad has become a popular label among American Nazi extremists, and as the attack in Texas shows, it’s not a joke.
The same antisemitic hatred that motivated the Dallas mall killer also drove Jack Teixeira to betray the United States by sharing large numbers of top secret documents that revealed to Russia the vulnerabilities of Ukraine and the international pro-Ukraine alliance. Teixeira wrote Christian Nationalist screeds alongside the top secret documents and filmed violent footage of himself screaming antisemitic insults while going through training exercises with a variety of guns.
Teixeira wrote repeatedly that he wanted to start civil war in which members of the military and right wing militias would kill Blacks, Jews, liberals, and LGBTQ Americans. His goal was to replace American democracy with a Nazi Christian Nationalist dictatorship.
While Christian Nationalists are doubling down on their violent extremism, the rest of America is taking note and talking about the dangerous direction taken by Christian religious organizations. A Gallup poll this year found that two out of three Americans believe that Christian priests and preachers do not have high ethical standards.
The portion of Americans who are non-religious is at a record high. Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of Americans do not practice any religion at all. However, less than 4 percent of members of Congress are nonreligious. There has never been a nonreligious President or member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Christian Nationalism is widely unpopular, but holds an unrepresentative degree of political power in the United States.
It’s not just Republicans who are spreading Christian Nationalist ideology, however. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has been loudly proclaiming that residents of New York City, and Americans in general, should recognize that they are under the power of Christianity, not democratically-elected government. Eric Adams says that the Christian god actually spoke to him, and told him that he had been chosen by the heavens to be appointed as Mayor of New York City. Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the chief advisor to Mayor Adams, doubled down on the Mayor’s attack against separation of church and state, repeating his claim that Eric Adams was chosen by the Christian god, and not by the people of New York City, to be mayor.
Meanwhile, Amanda Grace, a speaker at a recent pro-Trump Christian Nationalist rally in Doral, Florida, for example, declared that mermaids are real, and technologically advanced. “I have never seen more images of more mermaids and water people in my life,” she said, warning the crowd that mermaids are a “division in the kingdom of darkness.” Grace then urged the crowd to prepare to engage in “hand-to-hand combat” against non-religious Americans, saying, “We have to understand what we’re dealing with. We have to understand the rules of engagement in spiritual warfare.”
It’s easy to dismiss a movement of people who say that they are preparing to engage in hand-to-hand combat with mermaids and demons. However, this rally was personally endorsed by Donald Trump. The rally took place on Trump’s property, and featured a live telephone call from Trump, who told the crowd, “I want to thank you all for being there.”
Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, and he’s the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 election. Yes, Trump associates with Christian Nationalists who believe that mermaids are the most serious national security threat to the United States, but that hasn’t kept him seizing power before. In fact, Christian Nationalism’s willingness to use the most flamboyant conspiracy theories to motivate its followers has been a core aspect of its effectiveness.
Christian Nationalism is ridiculous. Christian Nationalism is dangerous. We can’t afford simply to laugh at it, because Christian Nationalists are organizing right now to regain power, with the wealth of big business and the resources of American churches behind them.
