Resisting White Christian Nationalism

“Christian nationalism” has become a widely maligned target for many in the mainstream and left-wing news media, for many former (especially “exvangelical”) Christians, and for many “nones.” But there are also Christians who (mistakenly, I believe) promote that position.

The term “Christian nationalism” is used, and misused, in a variety of ways, and it is not easy to define it non-controversially. Here, though, is a succinct definition by two sociologists that gets to the heart of the matter:

Christian nationalism is a cultural framework…that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.*¹  

MORE² is a local group in the Kansas City area,*² and its “clergy caucus” is actively resisting White Christian nationalism—and it should be recognized upfront that Christian nationalism is largely promoted and abetted by White (and male) Christians.

The picture above is of a poster given to each of us who attended the May 9 rally sponsored by MORE² and held in Quindaro, Kansas City (Kan.). Stephen Jones, co-pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City (Mo.), is the leader of the clergy caucus, and his church emphasizes the Beloved Community.

There are many good resources for learning/sharing about the meaning of White Christian nationalism and its threat to democracy and religious freedom in the U.S. Here are some of those for you to consider:

◈ The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty (BJC) has long been working on issues related to religious freedom and church-state separation. At the meeting on resisting Christian nationalism organized by Pastor Jones in Kansas City on March 7, a staff member from BJC was the guest speaker.

In 2019, the BJC launched a new movement called “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” In December 2022, Time magazine ran a rather lengthy article about Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the BJC, and the work of that new group she started.

◈ The documentary movie Bad Faith was released on March 29, and it is a highly informative film depicting the growth of the Christian nationalist movement in the U.S. from the 1970s to the present. I encourage you to read about this powerful film on their website*²—and to see it, if possible.

In stark contrast to my high praise of Bad Faith, it is strongly criticized by some conservative evangelicals. For example, a review on MovieGuide.org says that it is “a bad, abhorrent piece of progressive propaganda” produced by “Christian socialists” such as William Barber, the “heretical black activist.”

◈ Jim Wallis’s new book The False White Gospel was published on April 4, and as I wrote in my review of that book,*⁴ he avers that the old heresy of white supremacy is now operating with a new name: white Christian nationalism.

That heresy, he says, is “the single greatest threat to democracy in America and to the integrity of the Christian witness” (p. 17). 

◈ The Summit for Religious Freedom, conducted by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) was held in Washington D.C. on April 14. The May issue of Church and State (C&S), AU’s monthly periodical, is largely about that. I encourage you to read about it here. *⁵

As Rachel Laser, the Jewish woman who is the president and CEO of AU, writes in the above issue of C&S, “The wall of separation between church and state is not a wall that divides us; it’s a wall that unites us—that ensures no one is favored, that allows us to thrive in our differences.”

In summary, we who oppose White Christian nationalism need to clearly state what we are for, not just what we are against (as Wallis emphasizes in the last chapter of his book). Broadly speaking, we are for the freedom of religion for everyone.

We are also for the freedom of Black people, Latinx people, Indigenous people, LGBTQ people, immigrants seeking asylum, and others who are so often mistreated and scorned by those who foster Christian nationalism. (I will be writing more about freedom (= Liberty) in my blog post planned for May 30.)

Let’s resist White Christian nationalism and welcome all into the Beloved Community!

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*¹ Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God (2020), p. 10. Whitehead is also the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (2023).

*² MORE² stands for the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity. It was formed in 2004 and is financed by supporting “members,” most of whom are churches in the area, now including Rainbow Mennonite Church (where I am a member). Ruth Harder (my pastor) spoke at the beginning and end of the May 9 rally.

*³ One of the many prominent progressive Christians speaking in that documentary is Randall Balmer, an ordained Episcopal priest and a professor of religion at Dartmouth College. Balmer (b. 1954) is also the author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021). Further, last month he wrote an important article on Christian nationalism, published here.

*⁴ The book review I submitted to The Englewood Review of Books (ERB) last week is available for your consideration here. It should be available on the ERB website before long.

*⁵ Last week I learned that after 20 years of writing for Baptists Today, Baptist News Global, and Good Faith Media, Thinking Friend Bruce Gourley has become the new editor of Church and State.  

 

Do MAGA Christians Support Trump Because of Malice or Stupidity—or Something Else?

Recently I learned about the adage called Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

The author of an article who cited those words wrote that he knows “lots of MAGA Christians but his efforts to understand ‘why’ they honor Trump have been futile. Since he has failed to find other reasons, he thinks that perhaps it must, indeed, be either because of malice or stupidity.

However, I don’t agree that it must be one or the other of those two choices. 

As most of you know well, I am not a MAGA Republican supporter. But I think that to attribute the reason that many Christians do support Trump and the MAGA movement as being due either to malice or stupidity is too harsh and inaccurate.

What can we say, then, about why there are so many MAGA Christians who do support Trump? That was an issue that Thinking Friend Jerry Jumper wrote/asked about in an email I received from him last month, and many others of you likely puzzle over that same question.

What could it be other than malice or stupidity? Several other reasons are feasible. and I think that the percentage of people who vote for Trump because of malice or stupidity is markedly smaller than those who did and will vote for Trump for other reasons.

Here are five reasons that might explain why many self-identified Christians have voted for Trump and are likely to do so again this fall, and this list is not exhaustive:

◈ Nostalgia. Many people who remember the 1950s—and still live in rural communities that fondly recall then as the “good old days” with an esteemed Republican President—wish that the U.S. could be like it was then. Thus, they are drawn to the Make America Great Again slogan.

◈ Fear. Closely related to the above is the fear of things changing for the worse. Nostalgic people often fear the loss of cherished values of the past. There is a close connection between religious and political conservatism, and one subsection of my book on fundamentalism is titled “The Fear Factor.”*¹

◈ Consistency. Some voters say they’ve always been (or ever since Reagan have been) a Republican, so naturally they vote for the Republican candidate. This was the sort of response June got from close relatives when she asked why they voted for Trump in 2016.

◈ Disinformation. Many people get misleading/erroneous information from “news” sources such as Fox News, “talk radio,” and publications such as Epoch Times.*² Last week I listened to the former some each evening—and was amazed at how their “news” differed from the “mainstream” media.*³

◈ Misinterpretation. Influential conservative evangelical Christians such as Pastor Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church, Dallas), Ralph Reed (Faith and Freedom Coalition), and Franklin Graham (Samaritan’s Purse), among many others, have fostered misinterpretation of what the Bible says, or doesn’t say, about abortion, gay rights, etc.

Many people who support Trump for the above reasons may, indeed, lack sufficient understanding and/or information. But that doesn’t mean they are stupid. And while such reasons may trigger malicious actions by some, surely those who are MAGA supporters because of malice are few.

So, we who are steadfast opponents of Trump and MAGA Republicans need to beware of fostering arrogant, condescending, and/or belittling attitudes toward people we disagree with politically. Neighbor-love must be extended to them also, and that includes not labeling them as being either malicious or stupid.

Even the leaders of the Christian Right who for decades have sought to change this country into a theocracy, as vividly portrayed in Bad Faith, the new (2024) documentary about “Christian nationalism,” were certainly not stupid nor acting out of malice from their (mistaken) point of view.*⁴

But make no mistake about it: seeking to understand and being friendly toward MAGA Christians definitely doesn’t mean agreeing with their misguided views or minimizing the danger lurking under their unwise support of a wholly unworthy candidate for President.  

_____

*¹ Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), pp. 100~103.

*² Here is the link to an informative, and rather long, article about The Epoch Times.

*³ One evening last week, the top story at 8 p.m. was the campus unrest at Columbia University and elsewhere. Repeatedly they were referred to as “pro-Hamas” activities. The next morning the mainstream websites invariably called that unrest “pro-Palestinian.” That is a marked difference.

*⁴ This film traces the development of the Christian Right in the U.S. from the early 1970s to the present. June and I rented it from Amazon Prime and watched it last Friday evening. We thought it was a helpful film, fairly done but clear in showing the ongoing threat of Christian nationalism that seeks to overthrow USAmerican democracy. I highly recommend the viewing of, and sharing information about, that fine documentary.

 

 

In Opposition to Monarchism (and Christian Nationalism)

It is Saturday morning on May 6 as I am writing this. Perhaps many of you are watching the coronation of King Charles III at this time. I am not, intentionally, for I am among the growing number of people who stand in opposition to monarchies in this modern world. 

Archbishop Welby crowning Charles III 

Opposition to the British Monarchy

“God Save Us from Christian Empire” is the name of a May 4 article by Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners. (It was because of reading that thought-provoking piece that I decided to write this one.)

According to CNN, the coronation in Westminster Abbey was “a symbolic coming together of the monarchy, church, and state for a religious ritual.” The Archbishop of Canterbury anointed Charles III with oil and placed a heavy crown on his head.

Since the days of Henry VIII, the British monarch has been the supreme head of the Church of England and often referred to as the “defender of the faith.”

Taylor calls attention to the problematical “global legacy” of the British Empire. That legacy “includes centuries of exclusion; racism; and plundering of land, resources, and human beings on nearly every continent—a legacy that is inseparable from both the British monarchy and the church.”

In recent years, Barbados and Jamaica have both announced their intention to sever ties with the British crown. Quoting Taylor again,

In both nations, enslaved people were forcibly brought from Africa and toiled in brutal conditions for hundreds of years, all to the economic benefit of the empire and its sovereigns—just one chapter of a long history of the royal family’s role in financing human enslavement that goes back to Queen Elizabeth I.

This is a large part of my ongoing opposition to the British monarchy—but there are other reasons that I will not mention at this time.

Opposition to the Japanese Monarchy

As Wikipedia accurately explains, the “Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. The Imperial House recognizes 126 monarchs, beginning with Emperor Jimmu (traditionally dated to 11 February 660 BC), and continuing up to the current emperor, Naruhito.”

I remember well the opposition to the monarchy in Japan when Emperor Showa (Hirohito) died in early January 1989, and his son, Emperor Akihito (the present emperor’s father), ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the current constitution of Japan, which went into effect on May 3, 1947 (and May 3 is now Constitutional Memorial Day, a national holiday). There is no state-sanctioned religion in Japan, and the constitution prohibits any religious group from exercising political power.

Accordingly, Japanese Christians, among others, expressed strong opposition to the enthronement ceremonies of the new Emperor in 1990, which was couched in Shinto rituals.

Part of that criticism was linked to the role of the Emperor in the ruthlessness of Japan in expanding the Japanese Empire in the 20^th century, which was partly modeled after the colonial expansion of the British Empire in the previous centuries.

Opposition to Christian Nationalism in the U.S.

Last week my friend Brian Kaylor, president and editor-in-chief of the Baptist periodical Word&Way, posted an article titled “Coronating Christian Nationalism,” indicating how the coronation of George II was giving Christian nationalism “a global spotlight.”

The U.S. fought the Pacific War in opposition to the Japanese monarchy and the concomitant excesses of the Japanese Empire. The U.S. colonists fought the Revolutionary War against King George III and the British Empire which wanted to rule as much territory as possible in North America.

But now there is a dangerous movement of right-wing Christians and politicians to override the principle of the separation of church and state in the U.S. That would make it more like Great Britain now and like Japan of the 1930s in its union of the nation with State Shinto.

Let’s not go there. It’s too late in the world for a King as a religious leader and national allegiance given to that King as a defender of the faith. I stand with the early religious dissenters to the British monarchy and the state church, men such as John Bunyan and Roger Williams.

What about you?

Why are Teenage Girls “Not Okay”?

Soon after posting my February 16 blog article in which I referred to Diana Butler Bass, I read Bass’s latest newsletter on her Substack blog called The Cottage (which has 32,000 subscribers!) It was partly about teenage girls, which hit home with me. 

Image from Bass's newsletter

Natalie, my youngest granddaughter, turned 13 that very day. I first mentioned her in the blog post I made on February 19, 2010, three days after her birth, and I will probably refer to that article again in an upcoming blog post.

Naomi, Natalie’s sister, is celebrating her 19^th birthday today, so the youngest two of my five granddaughters are both teenagers. They have been, and are, a great delight to June and me. 

“The Girls Are Not Okay” is the title of Bass’s newsletter (click here to read it). Bass was not writing about all girls, and I am deeply grateful that she was not writing about girls such as my granddaughters, who both seem to be well-adjusted young women. But sadly, many girls are “not okay.”

Bass’s article begins by referring to the new study of USAmerica’s teens released by the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Rick Behavior Survey (YRBS), and she reports the findings were “stark and frightening.” She writes that “the crisis is particularly urgent among teenage girls.”*

The YRBS report states that according to the data, “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to YRBS.” (A summary of the YRBS report can be found here.)

Interestingly, Bass seeks to link the malaise of teenage girls to an aspect of contemporary society that would not at first glance be considered a cause of that dis-ease.

“White Christian Nationalism” is part of the problem, according to Bass. She refers to “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” a study released by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on February 8 (see here).

That study indicates that White Christian Nationalists, by and large, “believe women must submit to men” and that “society is diminished when women have more opportunities to work outside of the home.” These ideas reflect a belief in “complementarianism,” a widely held view by evangelical Christians.

Bass (who celebrated her 64^th birthday last Sunday) states, “There is little doubt among historians that second wave feminism of the 1970s improved the lives of women and girls in terms of education, health, work, finances, and overall equality.”

She mentions the significance of the 1974 book All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, authored by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. As Bass says, that book “caused a sensation in evangelical churches and theological circles.”

June and I, along with many other progressive evangelicals, read that book with much appreciation during the mid-1970s. But a decade later, conservative evangelical opposition had grown to the extent that an organization to oppose the emphasis on gender equality was formed.

That organization called The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded in 1987.** That group was the result of anti-equality backlash, and it forwarded the position of “complementarianism.”

While, of course, there are several other important reasons why so many teenage girls are not okay today, I think that Bass is right in declaring that “evangelical theology” with its emphasis on complementarianism for a generation now “bears a significant part of the blame.”

As Bass gladly notes, formerly prominent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader Russell Moore ten days ago now posted “a somewhat repentant editorial against complementarianism” (see here).

Unfortunately, though, the SBC continues to support male supremacy. Just two days ago Religious News Service reported that “Southern Baptists oust Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor.” That’s a bad sign for teenage girls in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 
Strong egalitarian homes with nurturing parents is one of the most important keys to rearing teenage girls who are okay. I am truly grateful that my teenage granddaughters have such a home—and have also been strongly supported by their egalitarian American and Japanese grandmothers.

_____

* Not long after reading Bass’s newsletter, I read “American teens are unwell because American society is unwell,” a Feb. 15 opinion piece on The Washington Post website. It was directly related to the same YRBS report. And then on the morning of Feb. 17, the WaPo posted “The crisis in American girlhood,” another opinion piece regarding the same report.

** In “Fed Up With Fundamentalism’s View of Women,” the eighth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I wrote about the founding and influence of this organization among “fundamentalists” (see pp. 240~2). 

India at 75: Still the World’s Largest Democracy?

Today is my birthday, and most of you know that I am “as old as the hills,” as the saying goes. But do you know that I am older than India?! Well, I am older than the Republic of India, which became a sovereign and democratic nation at 12:02 a.m. on August 15, 1947 (my ninth birthday). 

India is perhaps the world’s most complex nation. There was no nation of India until 1947, but the history of the Indian subcontinent is a long and complex one. There were numerous empires, kingdoms, and sultanates that ruled various parts of the area over the centuries.

The subcontinent was (and is) populated by a host of different ethnic groups. Even today India has 22 separate official languages and at least 121 languages altogether.

India is also quite complex religiously. The major religion, of course, is Hinduism. But “India” was also the birthplace of Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. There are also a large number of Christians in India; for example, there are only two countries in the world with more Methodists than in India.

India began to come under greater and greater European influence/rule after about 1500, first by the Portuguese followed by the Dutch and then especially after the formation of the English East India Company in 1600.

After the short-lived independence movement of 1857, “India” was under the British Raj, the rule of the British Crown, from 1858 until 1947, when it finally achieved its independence.

India will soon become the world’s most populous nation. India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country just next year, according to the 27^th edition of the United Nations’ World Population Prospects, released about a month ago.

The population of China was 1,144 million in 1990 compared with India’s 861 million. But with the continuation of India’s rapid growth rate causing its population to surpass China’s, next year nearly 19% of the people in the world will live in India.

With nearly one out of five of the world’s population living in the one nation, India will increasingly have significant impact on the world as a whole.

Is India still the world’s largest democracy? As India celebrates its 75^th birthday today, there will be those who will again point out that, among other things, it is the “world’s largest democracy.”

On January 26, 1950, when the Indian constitution took effect, the Republic of India did in fact become the most populous democracy in the world—and it has been so regarded until the present. But there are some who now question whether India, in fact, is still a democracy.

In The World Ahead 2022, published in Nov. 2021 by The Economist, the first article about Asia is regarding India, and it was titled “A museum for democracy?”

Democracy is in danger there as in other places in the world, including the U.S. That danger both there and here is rooted largely in religious nationalism.

Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India and Christian nationalism in the U.S. are both linked to religious fundamentalism—and both are a real danger to the perpetuation of democracy.

In my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I have a short sub-section titled “Hindu Fundamentalism.” There I briefly introduce the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That is the Party of Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, who was first elected PM in 2014.

Under Modi, the BJP is now much stronger than when the first edition of my book was published.

Hindutva is an ideology that disregards Indian Christians and other religious minority believers as true Indians because they have allegiances that lie outside India, and it asserts the country should be purified of their presence.

To be real democracies, both the Republic of India (75 years old today) and the USA (which turned 246 years old this July 4) must accept the diversity and the equality of its citizenry, seeking the greatest good for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Christians in India, of course, oppose Hindu nationalism there. Many progressive Christians in the U.S. also oppose Christian nationalism here (see Christians Against Christian Nationalism).

_____

** On Aug. 12, The Washington Post posted “As India marks its first 75 years, Gandhi is downplayed, even derided.” I was sad to see that.

 

WWBD (What Would Bonhoeffer Do?)

The German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo nearly 79 years ago, on April 5, 1943. He was implicated in the plot to overthrow the German government under Hitler and sentenced to die—and, indeed, he was hanged on April 9, 1945. 

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1933)

What Did Bonhoeffer Do in Germany?

On the 110^th anniversary of his birth on February 4, 1906, I posted a blog article titled “Honoring the Memory of Bonhoeffer.” Thus, this post focuses on Bonhoeffer’s activity as a part of the resistance to Hitler from 1933 until his arrest by the Nazis ten years later.

Bonhoeffer was one of the first prominent German Christians to speak out in opposition to Hitler. Two days after Hitler was installed as the German chancellor in January 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he criticized Hitler.

In April of that year, he raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, and in the following year, he joined with Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth, and others to form what came to be known as the Confessing Church.

These anti-Nazi Christians in Germany drafted the Barmen Declaration in 1934. They sought to make it clear that Jesus Christ was the Führer, their leader and the head of the Church, not Hitler.

In 1940, Bonhoeffer became even more active in the German resistance and finally, he was arrested because of that activity. At that time, he was charged with avoiding military service, advising his students to do the same, and also for helping some Jews escape Germany.

Despite what is often said/believed about Bonhoeffer, he was not arrested for participating in any assassination attempts. The main attempt to kill Hitler came on July 20, 1944, and after that plot failed, some 7,000 people were arrested and nearly 5,000, including Bonhoeffer, were executed.

Bonhoeffer was, indeed, a part of the resistance and until his arrest worked closely with those who devised the July 20 assassination attempt, especially with his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, who was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.

It is obvious, though, that Bonhoeffer was not directly involved in the 7/20/44 assassination attempt itself, for he was imprisoned fifteen months before it occurred.*

What Would Bonhoeffer Do Now in Ukraine/Russia?

It is difficult to know what Bonhoeffer would do in Ukraine if he were living there now, for he lived, wrote, and was martyred in a country that was waging war, not one suffering from the horrors of unprovoked invasion.

Being a Christian in Ukraine now is far different from being a Christian in Germany in the 1930s. We know what Bonhoeffer did there then; we don’t know what he would do in Ukraine now.

However, I think we do know what Bonhoeffer would do if he were a Christian living in Russia today. He would undoubtedly become a part of—and likely the leader of—a resistance movement that would agree with Pres. Biden’s moral outrage: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

It is not evident, though, that all Christians should do the same—or that we who safely live in this country should “tell” Christians in Russia what they should do. (This issue is dealt with at some length in the March 11 posting in Christianity Today: Do Russian Christians Need More Bonhoeffers?)

What Would Bonhoeffer Do Now in the U.S.?

With some certainty, we can assume that were Bonhoeffer alive in the U.S. today he would speak out strongly against those American Christians who advocate Christian Nationalism—as, thankfully, some American Christians are. (See Christians Against Christian Nationalism.)

More specifically, he would doubtlessly oppose efforts to “make America great again” and the growth of White Christian nationalism since 2015.**

Bonhoeffer’s most widely read book is Nachfolge (1937; Eng. trans., The Cost of Discipleship, 1949, and Discipleship, 2003), the theme of which is faithfully following Jesus and living by his teachings, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount.

That, surely, is what Bonhoeffer would do here now—and what he challenges us to do also.

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* Bonhoeffer’s persistent pacifism is a central theme of a new book by Mennonite scholar Mark Thiessen Nation, Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2022).

** White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (April 2022) by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry promises to be a helpful analysis of the latter; see this interview with Gorski in the March 15 post of YaleNews.

Christianism: What It Is and Why It’s Objectionable

Christianism isn’t exactly a household word, but it expresses an important, and troubling, aspect of USAmerican religious and political life. Let’s look at what it is and why it’s objectionable. 

What is Christianism?

The contemporary use of the word Christianism/Christianist seems to have started with Andrew Sullivan. He coined those words in a June 2003 post in his political blog “The Daily Dish,” which he maintained from 2000 to 2015. Sullivan (b. 1963), wrote,

I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam.

In a June 2005 blog posting, Sullivan wrote, “Christianism—politicized Christianity—argues for the imposition of one religion’s values over the entire society.”

Sullivan later expanded on his usage of the terms in a May 2006 Time magazine article titled “My Problem with Christianism.”

Mark Shea, another blogger, who like Sullivan is a Catholic, is more contentious in his description of the current meaning of the term(s). He begins his Oct. 2018 Patheos.com article called "I keep getting asked what I mean by ‘Christianism’” with these sharp words:

A Christianist is an adherent of a political [cult] centered on Donald Trump and informed by a magisterium of FOX, right wing talk radio and right wing social media, which uses Christian imagery and jargon in the service of a diabolical antichrist gospel of racism, war, torture apologetics, gun fanaticism, misogyny, mammon worship, cruelty to the least of these and hatred of both science and orthodox Christian belief.

Christianism and Christendom

Politicized Christianity, however, is certainly nothing new. In fact, it can be traced all the way back to Constantine in the 4th century. When Christianity was co-opted by the Roman Empire, Christendom was established—and it flourished for fifteen centuries until weakened by the historical process of secularization.

In his 2019 book Postcards from Babylon, Brian Zahnd writes negatively about Christendom: “Tying the gospel to the interests of empire had a deeply compromising effect upon the gospel, as seen in the sordid history of the church being mixed up with imperial conquest, colonialism, and military adventurism around the world” (p. 16).

Contemporary Christianism is manifested differently, but is similar in many ways to the ethos of Christendom that goes all the way back to Constantine—and to what we Anabaptists sometimes refer to as the “fall” of the Church.

Christianism and Christian Nationalism

The move toward “Christian nationalism” is one of the main ways Christianism has been apparent in recent years, although many seem to be unaware of that movement. The stealth activities of The Family and Project Blitz, both of which I wrote about last year (see here and here[LS1] ) is a part of the movement toward Christian nationalism.

Last year, the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC), an organization I have supported for decades, started a campaign called Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN). This campaign is clearly in opposition to Christianism, even though they don’t use that word.

(To learn more about BJC and CACN, see this important October 2019 article by Frederick Clarkson—or you can read directly about CACN and even sign the statement opposing Christian nationalism, as I did last year, by clicking here.)

Even though much more needs to be said, I close with more from Brian Zahnd, who wrote that “in the American experiment the United States deliberately broke with Christendom practice of claiming to be a Christian nation with a state church. It was America that pioneered the experiment of secular governance.”

And then he asserted:

America is not a Christian nation; it never was and never can be. The only institution that even has the possibility of being Christian is the church. When we confuse the nation with the church, it may not do any particular damage to the nation, but it will do irreparable harm to the church (p. 46).

Yes, Christianism is highly objectionable, for, indeed, it does “irreparable harm” to the work and witness of the faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

* * * * *

Two new books about Christian nationalism have just been published, and I am looking forward to learning more about Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (2/20) by Andrew L. Whitehead and The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (3/20) by Katherine Stewart.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of War

For all of my life since high school days until the present, I have considered myself a pacifist. Thus, I have always been at odds with the predominant “just war” tradition in most Christian denominations—but never more so than for the support for war by conservative evangelical Christians in the U.S. after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. 

The Support of War by the Christian Right

Until the fourth century, almost all Christians eschewed war, but things changed dramatically after Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity for political and military reasons in 312 A.D.

Augustine (354~430) was one of the first great Christian theologians, and he developed a position that came to be known as the “just war” tradition. That position became predominant in the Roman Catholic Church—and then later in most Protestant denominations.

In this century, however, Christians who are now generally called conservative evangelicals have been the main supporters of the USAmerican “war on terror,” and they were especially prominent in giving President Bush almost unqualified support in launching the attack on Iraq in 2003.

Moreover, the mass of conservative evangelicals who are Trump supporters are highly favorable, it seems, to the military build-up by the U.S. government since 2017.

Nationalism and the Christian Right

As I explain in the seventh chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, to which this article is linked, there was a proclivity toward patriotism in the first decades of fundamentalism in this country.

There is nothing wrong with patriotism, unless it is carried to an extreme. But patriotism becomes a problem when it morphs into nationalism, as it often does.

In the first volume of his three-volume Systematic Theology (1951), the eminent theologian Paul Tillich wrote about idolatry and averred that the best example of such is the “contemporary idolatry of religious nationalism” (p. 13).

If Tillich (1886~1965) were still alive and writing today, he would most likely say the same sort of thing even more emphatically.

Near the end of last month, a group of Christians issued a statement titled “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” and asked those who agreed with their statement to sign it. I did, and I encourage you Christians to access that here and to consider doing the same.

The Position of the “Christian Left”

In contrast to the Christian Right, which is the political/social stance of most conservative evangelical Christians of the present or fundamentalists of the past, there are those who hold a much different position. For convenience, I am calling them the Christian Left.

In the seventh chapter of my book, I refer to them as “Christians for Peace and Justice.” They are the ones who advocate taking a consistent “sanctity of life” position. In that connection, I quote Jürgen Moltmann, the renowned German theologian, who wrote in The Spirit of Life (1992; German ed., 1991):

. . . anyone who really says “yes” to life says “no” to war. Anyone who really loves life says “no” to poverty. So the people who truly affirm and love life take up the struggle against the violence of war and the injustice of poverty.

But, sadly, conservative evangelicals in the U.S. have often been supporters of war and the strengthening of military armaments at tremendous cost—and the latter being done by cutting back on funds that might be used for helping those caught in the web of poverty.

Above all else, followers of Jesus are expected to seek God’s Kingdom, a realm characterized by righteousness (=justice) and shalom (see Matt. 6:33). That expectation, though, clashes with the longing of many conservative evangelical Christians to “make America great again,” a stance that could even, God forbid, lead to another major war.