If you do a search for ‘Christian Nationalism’ you won’t find much.
A quick Google search will reveal that the term ‘Christian Nationalism’ has yet to break 1 million results. For context, the term ‘QAnon’ returns more than 9 million results.
Revered news organizations don’t fair much better. On The New York Times’s website, there are only 58 results for Christian Nationalism. The Washington Post trails right behind the Gray Lady with 52 results. NPR comes in with a paltry 28 results. And unsurprisingly, you’re only going to find 5 results for that term in the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, terms related to Christian Nationalism garner far more attention. ‘January 6’ returns 927 results on The New York Times’s website while ‘QAnon’ returns 958 results. Over at the Washington Post, you’ll find 2,084 results for ‘Jan. 6’ but only 314 results for ‘QAnon’.
Americans are now realizing Christian Nationalism is a growing problem. Zooming out to look at Google Trend data for the term, there are two significant spikes in the search results: January 2021 and July 2022.
More and more people are becoming aware that it poses a threat to American democracy but I think there’s a much bigger problem. We aren’t talking about it and the search results prove that.
How can you learn about a threat if there is little if any analysis around it? Christian Nationalism is out of sight and thus out of mind. Americans won’t know what it is until it’s already here.
I can say without a doubt that Christian Nationalism is an existential threat to American democracy. I know this because I once was one.
I was born and raised in an evangelical Baptist church in Upstate New York. From early childhood through my teenage years I attended church weekly, recruited friends to come with me to Vacation Bible School, participated in youth group regularly, and attended every youth conference I could go to.
Many of my church friends grew up without the internet or cable television. Their only source of entertainment was Veggie Tales movies or the local Christian radio station, Family Life Network. Congregants at my church earnestly believed secular music was sinful, the Harry Potter books were witchcraft, and that the Second Coming of Christ would commence after the election of Barack Obama.
This formed the basis of an echo chamber of sorts. Viewpoints and perspectives were filtered through a Christian lens and disseminated among the faithful. If everyone else thought something was true and had no outside information to challenge it, then it had to be true, didn’t it?
To be clear Christian Nationalism is not a religion. And it is definitely not Christianity. It is a political ideology empowered through the integration – rather than the separation of – church and state. At its core is the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation and that modern-day Americans are deviating from our God-given birthright.
The ideology gains traction through a myth of persecution. Issues like abortion reinforce a belief that Christianity, and by extension the Constitution, is under attack. Christian Nationalists will argue that acquiescence is a slippery slope until the right to practice Christianity is outlawed altogether. When that happens America – as they know it – will cease to exist.
Political power brokers on the right understand the potency of this. That’s why they’ve harnessed the fear coming from the Christian Nationalists. By weaponizing the Bible they’ve mobilized them, casting Christian Nationalists into the role of saviors of American democracy.
Go to any Christian Nationalist church on a Sunday morning and you’ll hear the same message about sin and eternal damnation. The pastor serves as an interlocutor between not only the congregation and the Bible, but the Bible and the state. Salvation alone is no longer good enough to get into Heaven. Voting down the Christian Nationalist party line is essential too.
In the New Testament book of Romans, Christian Nationalists are commanded to abstain from conforming to the world. By fleeing from the temptations of society around them Christian Nationalists retreat. They seek fellowship with one another, strengthening the beliefs emanating from the echo chamber that surrounds them.
This inadvertently results in social isolation, leaving fact indistinguishable from fiction. As Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi’s head propagandist once said “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
For Christian Nationalists, their reality is the truth. And that reality is shaped by men with prestige and power. That is what this is really all about: the ascension of Christian Nationalists to power. Theocracy, if not by name but in practice, is the only way they can safeguard their faith from subversion by the state.
And this is enshrined in their theology. The Southern Baptist Convention represents the second-largest denomination of Christians in the United States. Article XVII of The Baptist Faith and Message put out by the Convention states:
“Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God.”
It would seem that when the “will of God” clashes with the government, Christian Nationalists are not obligated to obey it. What happens when that time comes? January 6 may have been a glimpse into what that would look like.
The coverage of the aftermath of January 6 would suggest that opponents of Christian Nationalism have no idea that this is what they are up against. Many have never set foot in an evangelical church let alone been exposed to the rhetoric coming from the pulpit on a given Sunday morning.
Without studying Christian Nationalism, its opponents will never see it as it is, they will only see it as they think it to be. Protests are becoming increasingly violent and discourse between neighbors is becoming more vitriolic because of this.
We’ve moved beyond petty partisan politics. There is little to no cognizance that one side operates from a place of reason while the other exists in a world governed by the realm of faith.
Regardless of what becomes of the January 6 hearings, the “steal” of the 2020 election lays the groundwork for Christian Nationalists to ascend to power in 2024. Those operating in a world of reason cannot fathom a return to a Trump presidency. But those living by faith pray for his return as if he were the Second Coming of Christ himself.
If Trump runs as the Republican candidate in 2024, which he very well may, he will either win or the election will be stolen again. A peaceful transfer of power is not possible under those two assumptions.
It’s time to start talking about the elephant in the room. Christian Nationalism is here. And our democracy will die if we don’t start shedding light on it.