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“Imposter Christianity”

Jesus is their savior, Trump is their president

Vintage shirt for sale on Etsy. Copyright is from 1990.

“We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists,” Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told an interviewer from Next News Network at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida. Greene has expressed that view before recently, and she means it. She speaks for a growing, radicalized faction that claims it is mainstream.

The fringe right wears Christianity the way it wears red, white, and blue. Nationalists wear the label the way others wear designer logos — as less-than-sterling advertisements for brands with which they identify but no longer represent. If they ever did.

The movement “uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants,” writes CNN’s John Blake. People who once insisted ahistorically that the United States was founded as a Christian nation now insist it is a White Christian one:

A report from a team of clergy, scholars and advocates — sponsored by two groups that advocate for the separation of church and state — concluded that this ideology was used to “bolster, justify and intensify” the attack on the US Capitol.

Much of the House January 6 committee’s focus so far has been on right-wing extremist groups. But there are plenty of other Americans who have adopted teachings of the White Christian nationalists who stormed the Capitol — often without knowing it, scholars, historians, sociologists and clergy say.

White Christian nationalist beliefs have infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge its ideology risks their career, says Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”

Wave the flag. Hug the Bible. Then advocate beliefs antithetical to both. The composite ideology was deployed to “bolster, justify and intensify” the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a team of religious scholars concluded in February.

In a statement issued in July 2019, Christians Against Christian Nationalism declared, “Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.”

Imposter Christianity,” says Samuel Perry, a sociologist specializing in religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.

The “Christian nation” idea is an oldy, as folk beliefs go, “a half truth, a mythological version of American history,” says the co-author of “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy,” Yale University sociologist Philip Gorski.

But several other elements make up the ascendant Christian Nationalism.

Warrior Jesus

Faith in a “warrior Christ” is another. How does violent insurrection square with “the prince of peace”? It doesn’t:

That’s because they follow a different Jesus than the one depicted in the Gospels, says Du Mez, who is also a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University — a Christian school — in Michigan. They follow the Jesus depicted in the Book of Revelation, the warrior with eyes like “flames of fire” and “a robe dipped in blood” who led the armies of heaven on white horses in a final, triumphant battle against the forces of the antichrist.

White Christian nationalists have refashioned Jesus into a kick-butt savior who is willing to smite enemies to restore America to a Christian nation by force, if necessary, Du Mez and others say.

“That Jesus brings peace, but only after he slays his enemies,” Mez adds. Thousands came to help Trump/Him do it on Jan. 6. There is some confusion about which is which.

The other element familiar to readers here is the Orwellian notion that some Americans are more American than others. The votes of Real Americans™ count. The votes of all others count less or not at all.

“It’s the idea that we are the people, and our vote should count, and you’re not the people, and… you don’t really deserve to have a voice,” Gorski says. “It doesn’t matter what the voting machines say, because we know that all real Americans voted for Donald Trump.”

With God and the Supreme Court on their side

With fewer Americans attending church and fewer than ever identifying as White alone, this movement should not enjoy ascendancy. But what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in fervor and long-term committment (see Federalist Society). Now this beset minority has a conservative Christian (mostly Catholic) conservative majority on the Supreme Court to help impose its will on everyone else, whatever the majority of Americans think. Plus a Republican Party ruthlessly committed to cementing its minority rule by any means necessary.

Gorski, the historian, says White Christian nationalism represents a grave threat to democracy because it defines “we the people” in a way that excludes many Americans.

“The United States cannot be both a truly multiracial democracy — a people of people and a nation of nations — and a white Christian nation at the same time,” Gorski wrote in “The Flag and the Cross.” “This is why white Christian nationalism has become a serious threat to American democracy, perhaps the most serious threat it now faces.”

So, here we are. Hoping that demography will save us before climate change slays us or fascism overtakes us. The irony behind Greene’s promotion of Christian nationalism is what the misogyny of her male allies means for her gender should the Christian right gain more power. Perhaps she should consult gay and black former Republicans.

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