White Christian nationalist beliefs have infiltrated the religious mainstream so thoroughly that virtually any conservative Christian pastor who tries to challenge their ideology risks their career, says New York Times bestselling author Kristin Kobes Du Mez, ” Jesus and John Wayne: Like White Evangelicals.” It corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.”
“These ideas are so widespread that any individual pastor or Christian leader who tries to turn the tide and say, ‘Let’s look again at Jesus and the Scriptures,’ will be rejected,” he says.
The ideas are also insidious because many sound like expressions of Christian piety or harmless references to American history. But white Christian nationalists interpret these ideas in a potentially violent and heretical way. His move is not only anti-democratic, but contradicts the life and teachings of Jesus, some clergy, scholars and historians say.
Samuel Perry, a religious studies professor at the University of Oklahoma who is an authority on the ideology, calls it “impostor Christianity.”
Here are three key beliefs often tied to white Christian nationalism.
A belief that the US was founded as a Christian nation
One of the banners seen at the January 6 uprising was a replica of the American flag with the caption: “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.”
Blurring the line between godliness and politics is a key feature of white Christian nationalism. Many want to reduce or erase the separation of church and state, say those who study the movement.
One of the most popular beliefs among white Christian nationalists is that the US was founded as a Christian nation; the Founding Fathers were all Orthodox and Evangelical Christians; and God has chosen the USA for a special role in history.
Such beliefs are growing among Christians, according to a survey last year by the Barna Group, a firm that conducts faith and culture surveys for faith communities and nonprofits. The group found that “a growing number of American Christians strongly believe” that the US is a Christian nation, has not oppressed minorities, and has been chosen by God to lead the world.
But the idea that the US was founded as a Christian nation is bad history and bad theology, says Philip Gorski, a sociologist at Yale University and co-author of “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American democracy.”
“It’s a half-truth, a mythological version of American history,” says Gorski.
Some founding fathers saw the nation’s founding through a biblical lens, Gorski says. (Every state constitution contains a reference to God or the divine).
But many did not. And virtually none of them could be classified as evangelical Christians. They were a collection of atheists, Unitarians, Deists and liberal Protestants and other denominations.
The Constitution also says nothing about God, the Bible or the Ten Commandments, Gorski says. And to say that the US was founded as a Christian nation ignores the fact that much of its early wealth was derived from slave labor and land stolen from Native Americans, he says.
For proof that the United States was founded as a secular nation, look no further than the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, an agreement the US negotiated with a country in present-day Libya to end the practice of pirates attacking ships americans It was unanimously ratified by a Senate still full of signers of the Constitution and declared, “the Government of the United States of America is not based, in any sense, on the Christian religion.”
Does this mean that any white Christian who salutes the flag and says he loves his country is a Christian nationalist? Not at all, historians say. A white Christian who says he loves America and its values and institutions is not the same as a white Christian nationalist, scholars say.
Gorski also notes that many devout black Americans have exhibited a form of patriotism that does not degenerate into Christian nationalism.
Gorski points to examples from 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Both were devout Christians who expressed admiration for America and its founding documents. But their patriotism also meant they “challenged the nation to live up to its highest principles, to become a place of freedom, equality, justice and inclusion,” he says.
The patriotism of white Christian nationalists, on the other hand, is a form of racial tribalism, says Gorski.
“It’s a ‘My tribe.'” We [White people] they were here first. This is our country and we don’t like people who are trying to change it or people who are different from the form of nationalism,” says Gorski.
A Belief in a “Warrior Christ”
Videos of the Jan. 6 attack show a chaotic, tear-gas-soaked scene at the Capitol that looked more like a medieval battle. Rioters punched police officers, used flagpoles as spears and smashed their faces against doors as a crowd chanted, “Fight for Trump!” The attack left five dead and nearly 140 police officers injured.
The incongruity of people holding “Jesus Saves” signs while joining a crowd whose members are beating up police officers leads to an obvious question: How can white Christian nationalists who claim to follow Jesus, the ” prince of peace” who renounced violence in the gospels, support a violent insurrection?
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 drenched in blood” who led the armies of heaven on white horses in a final and triumphant battle against the forces of the antichrist .
White Christian nationalists have turned Jesus into a savior who is willing to strike down enemies to restore America to a Christian nation by force, if necessary, Du Mez and others say.
Although warlike language such as putting on “the whole armor of God” has long been common in Christian sermons and hymns, it has largely been interpreted as metaphorical. But many white Christian nationalists take this language literally. This became clear on January 6. Some rioters wore caps emblazoned with “God, guns, Trump” and chanted that the blood of Jesus was cleansing Congress. One of them wrote “In God We Trust” on a gallows erected in the Capitol.
“They want the warrior Christ who wields a bloody sword and defeats his enemies,” says Du Mez. “They want to fight with that Jesus. That Jesus brings peace, but only after he kills his enemies.”
And that Jesus sanctions the use of righteous violence if a government opposes God, he says.
“If you feel that someone in power is working against the goals of a Christian America, you should not submit to that authority and you should displace that authority,” he says. “Because the stakes are so high, the ends justify the means.”
This ends-justify-the-means approach is a key part of white Christian nationalism, says Du Mez. That’s why so many rallied behind former President Trump on January 6th. She says he embodies a “militant white masculinity” that condones callous displays of power and appeals to Christian nationalists.
But with few exceptions, white Christian nationalists do not accept this “militant masculinity” when exhibited by black, Middle Eastern and Latino men, writes Du Mez in “Jesus and John Wayne.” Aggression by people of color “is seen as a threat to the stability of the home and the nation,” he writes.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin echoed this double standard last year when he said on a radio show that he never felt threatened by the mostly white mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 .
“Now, if … President Trump had won the election and it was tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little worried,” Johnson said.
Johnson later explained, saying “there was nothing racial in my comments, nothing at all.”
This embrace of a warrior Christ has shaped the attitudes of some white evangelicals on issues ranging from political violence to gun safety laws.
A survey last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that of all respondents, white evangelicals were the religious group most likely to agree with the statement: “true American patriots could have of resorting to violence to save the country”. There are also some white Christian nationalists who believe that the Second Amendment was dictated by God. Samuel Perry, co-author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” wrote in a recent essay that among Americans surveyed who believe “the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation” , more than two-thirds rejected the idea that the federal government should enact stricter gun laws.”
“The more you align with Christian nationalism, the less likely you are to support gun control,” Perry wrote. “Guns are practically a cult item in the church of white Christian nationalism.”
The belief that there is such a person as a “real American”
In the 2008 presidential election, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin introduced a new mandate to political discourse. He spoke of “the real America” and the “pro-America areas of this great nation.” Since then, many conservative political candidates have used the term “real Americans” to draw contrasts between their supporters and their opposition.
That language has been baked into a worldview held by many white Christian nationalists: The nation is divided between “real Americans” and other citizens who don’t deserve equal rights, white Christian nationalism experts say.
Gorski, author of “The Flag and the Cross,” says he found in his research a strong correlation between white Christian nationalism and…