Christian Nationalism and Dog Obedience

In Christian Nationalist America, strong leadership means shouting at people, making threats, carrying a gun, and shooting your puppy when it misbehaves.

Think about what that could mean with a Christian Nationalist in the White House.

This week, Americans were riveted by the horrifying spectacle of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem bragging about how she shot and killed her own puppy because it had misbehaved.

A casual reaction might dismiss Kristi Noem as an isolated case of a politician with psychological problems. Understanding Noem’s violence in the frame of Christian Nationalism, however, helps us to see a larger problem with an ideology that confuses brutality with strength.

A key to this understanding is found in the case of Kelley McAtee, a member of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, the organization of Christian Nationalists that propelled Donald Trump to victory in the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

Donald Trump claims that McAtee is a “ministry leader”, but really, she’s a dog trainer with a certain religious obsession. She frames dog obedience as a moral imperative that has been established by the Christian god as a part of the dominion of humanity over all of the Earth and the animals that live upon it.

This will sound outlandish to people who haven’t spend much time in the company of Christian Nationalists, but Kelley McAtee believes that dogs need to accept Jesus Christ as their savior as much as people do. She cites the Bible’s Gospel of Mark, chapter 16 verse 15, which in some translations reads, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Other translations of this New Testament say that Jesus commanded his followers to preach more broadly to all Creation, rather than specifically to every creature.

The point here is that Kelley McAtee is using the translation of the Christian Bible that commands her to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to every animal, including dogs. Her way of doing that is through dog obedience training.

McAtee explains, “God doesn't want us to be confused, He gives us the BIBLE that outlines a set of BASIC COMMANDS for us to follow, also the RED LETTER teachings of His Son Jesus to keep us on track and help us overcome our enemy.”

Enemy? What enemy is there in dog training? For Kristi Noem, that enemy was her own puppy.

In her explanations on why she killed her own puppy, Kristi Noem explained that she wasn’t really trying to take responsibility. Instead, she was overcome with the furious emotion of hate. “I hated that dog,” she said. What kind of person hates a dog? What kind of person hates a puppy? A person who is afraid would have these extreme emotions, a person who interprets disobedience not just as a behavioral challenge, but as a sign of pure evil.

To be fair, McAtee often speaks of the need for compassionate leadership over dogs, training them with respect rather than fear. However, this compassionate trust often comes into conflict with the fearful aspects of her conservative version Christianity, which focuses on the belief that demons are always looking for an opportunity to lead people and their dogs into wickedness. She warns, “If there are cracks in our walk with our dogs, they will find them, and if there are cracks in our walk with Christ the enemy will find those too.”

The “enemy” that McAtee writes about is, of course, Satan. In a social media advisory to her dog training clients, McAtee provides the Bible’s warning that life’s struggles, in dog training as in everything else, are really part of a greater war between the Christian god and an army of devils.

“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

McAtee writes that the Christian god has a kingdom that “rules over all”. So, she has a difficult time subduing the Christian belief that people, and animals, are inherently evil and can only attain some kind of moral reliability through strict control by a great father god.

This danger of this biblical approach to leadership is that it frequently skirts the boundaries of paranoia, which in turn leads to violent bursts of outrage. Such an erratic, fearful, angry style of leadership is seen most clearly in the example of Donald Trump, who speaks more of persecution and the evil of his opponents than of any specific policy proposals.

Donald Trump’s version of strength is brittle, requiring him to dominate and humiliate others. He can only feel strong by making others weak. Instead of learning how to work with people who disagree with them, Donald Trump seeks to destroy his opponents, as Kristi Noem destroyed her own puppy down in that South Dakota gravel pit. Should he regain the White House in 2024, many of us may find ourselves in the position of a dog gazing up at the barrel of a gun.

Christian Nationalism begins with an autocratic model of leadership, with a cosmic king who insists upon uncompromising control and demands absolute obedience, ready to punish those who disobey with eternal suffering.

How can we speak out against this kind of religious totalitarianism? This week on Stop Christian Nationalism, I’m trying a new feature, something that we call Country Music against Christian Nationalism.

We can talk all the sense we want about the dangers and failings of Christian Nationalism, but that way of communicating can lack the kind of punch that it takes to cut through all the political chatter.

Country music has a way of getting back to basics, or at least feeling that way. Country music speaks to the foundation of American identity in a way that feels authentic. So, for a few weeks at least, I’m going to try adding an original country song into the mix, one that fits with the theme of the show.

This week, the song is: Go On Home Kristi Noem (follow the link to listen on YouTube)

A leader is not strong who has to scream to be obeyed.

I think that's wrong.

I know there's a better way.

If you got a dog you don't shoot him dead.

If you got workers you got to give them bread.

Go back on home Kristi Noem.

Donald Trump, you're a chump.

I want a leader who inspires,

not one who shouts and fires.

So Kristi Noem, go back on home.

(…and Donald Trump too.)