The Greatest Threat to American Political Integrity is Coming into Shape
Beware of Christian Nationalism
What’s the most disconcerting issue driving voters to make decisions and changes in the 2022 midterm election?
Democrats are likely talking about Donald Trump and his hoard of election deniers that are rejecting people’s democratic choices and the grim consequences after the Supreme Court overthrew the federal guarantee of the right to an abortion. Republicans are likely talking about the flailing economy, rising inflation, increasing numbers of migrants seeking asylum at the border, and an uptick in crime in certain cities. Undoubtedly, these are all polarizing and crucial issues that are receiving a great number of attention and observations from the media and political analysts.
However, almost two years after Donald Trump left office in disgrace and Republicans lost control of Congress, another unsettling trend is surging in the party that had long lost its pursuit of any coherent political philosophy. It is the rhetoric and supposition that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation, and people living in this country should all obey Christian religious doctrines that would be imposed to regulate people morally and socially.
Despite it being a fringe movement that lacks mainstream influence for decades, people on the far-right have increasingly embraced this theory and are making their opinions louder and clearer than ever. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican Representative known for her indulgence in conspiracy theories and election denial, claimed more than once that the Republican party should positively embrace Christian Nationalism, a claim repeated by other members of Congress such as Colorado’s Lauren Boebert and North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn.
One dangerous man and his distorted holy mission
However, there is no one louder, clearer and more fundamentalist on this issue of championing Christian Nationalism than Pennsylvania State Senator, retired Army Colonel, and current Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial election nominee Doug Mastriano. Since the beginning of his campaign for Governor, Mastriano has surrounded his central message in relations with Christianity, and has justified many of his polemic rhetoric and actions, including his fervent support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, having a virulent anti-Semite as his political campaign consultant, participating in the Stop the Steal campaign and sending trucks of mobs to the Capitol building on January 6 as “holy campaigns for God.”
Before he urged followers to ransack the Capitol building, and allegedly even crossed the police barricade himself, he said in a pep rally that “I’m praying that God will pour His Spirit upon Washington, D.C., as we’ve never seen before.” In 2020, during an online call where he and other election deniers were planning their harassment campaign against election officials to change the result in Pennsylvania, he compared the undemocratic effort to the actions of Todd Beamer, one of the heroic passengers in United Flight 93 that attempted to regain control of the plane and prevented it from attacking another building.
A typical Mastriano rally is often opened by a Christian singer singing about their love for America. After that, Mastriano comes to center stage, evokes scripture, and attacks his opponent, Democrat and Jewish current Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, calling him unpatriotic and claiming that he would take away religious freedom. He often uses heavy religious metaphors, such as at an event in April where he was presented with “the Sword of David” with the words “For God and Country” inscribed on it.
The appeal to the omnipotent force became the most persuasive tool for Mastriano to rationalize his actions and statements. His stalwart submission towards anti-democratic ideologies caught the attention of a more and more desperate Trump, winning Mastriano his official endorsement in the Republican primary that became the most significant contributing factor for him to defeat Lou Barletta in that race, a four-term moderate former congressman.
Mastriano often uses the term “appeal to heaven” when rationalizing his beliefs, an idea that first came from John Locke arguing in defense of violent uprisings against tyranny, which is decidedly not something the U.S. government had ever done against white Christians. It is an idea warmly received and purposefully distorted by conservative, fundamentalist Christian groups that use it to attack any political thought or social trend they dislike. It became more militant during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, leading members of the self-proclaimed militia to attack state capitols and to attempt kidnapping the Governor of Michigan.
In a highly contested state where Trump won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020, Mastriano made no effort to tone down his brawny rhetoric after winning the primary despite it making him trail in the polls, which is one of the clearest signs that his adherence to Christian Nationalism is genuine and not a publicity stunt. The views he expressed as the Republican nominee during this election cycle are being amplified further by the media and others, which is a dangerous sign of Christian nationalism’s gradual emergence as a popular perception in current American politics.
Christian Nationalism’s origin and progression
The most persuasive argument against Christian Nationalism is simple: America was not founded as a Christian nation. This is a historical fact well documented and recognized by historians and theologists.
The first American colonies established by British settlers existed because these people wanted to have a Puritan lifestyle, pledging their allegiance to only God and not the King. But that changed in the 18th century when leading figures fought to liberate the 13 colonies to establish an independent nation of equal rights. England-born revolutionary Thomas Paine argued in Common Sense that the need for independence was exactly because the British monarchy was ruling with absolute and unquestionable power, similar to that of the Pope.
Historians like David Holmes believed that their approach to religion can be described as Deist, which was popular during the Enlightenment era, and believed that empirical reasoning and logical observations should be the best approaches to determine the existence of God, and not supernatural revelations. Most founding fathers were skeptical of religion’s influence on politics, especially Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1802 that “religion is a matter that solely lies between man and his God” and that legislatures should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It became a principal doctrine in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. One of the other signs that the founding fathers did not want religion to meddle with political sovereignty can be found in Article VI of the Constitution, which deemed that no religious tests are required to hold any office in the country.
The modern-day Christian Nationalist movement came much later, in the 1950s, with “One nation under God” in the pledge of allegiance as a law and “In God We Trust” required to appear on U.S. currencies, and with the emergence of ceremonies like the National Prayer Breakfast and charismatic, popular evangelists like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.
Religious studies researcher Andrew Whitehead believes that Christian Nationalism is not simply a religious doctrine but a “political theology that co-opts Christian narratives and symbolism” in ethnic terms, making white American Christians fearful of any other ethnic and religious groups living in this country that would “replace” them. In this narrative, the purpose and reasoning are similar to the unabashedly white supremacist “Great Replacement” theory that supposed the rise of the non-white population in the United States constitutes racial genocide. Beliefs in this theory were the root cause of several hate-filled mass shootings across this country, including this May in Buffalo, New York, where ten Black people were killed while shopping at a supermarket.
Whitehead also pointed out that there is a long history of white Christian leaders pushing back against a democratic republican system in America. They first did so to resist the abolition of slavery and the end of segregation, providing Biblically nonexistent rationales for the need to dehumanize all non-white people to preserve racial and religious purity.
The trend became much more influential in the 1970s with the rise of figures like Paul Weyrich and Richard John Neuhaus. Weyrich became disillusioned with what he believed was the increasing liberal bias of the Catholic church after the Second Vatican Council. He started participating in right-wing policy in the 1970s to infuse his conservative religious beliefs into public policy. Using the financial donations of the wealthy Coors family, he co-founded The Heritage Foundation as a think tank to push pro-laissez-faire and anti-regulation views. He also co-founded The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a nonprofit organization full of right-wing state legislators and private sector lobbyists that share model legislations across every state to push for a more Christian, anti-regulation cause that opposed environmental oversight, undocumented immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor unions, gun control and expanding voter access. ALEC has now become the most effective arm in the right-wing political sphere for creating new ways to hold states back against federal reforms.
Neuhaus, who was first a Lutheran minister and later a Catholic priest, preached relentlessly in his magazine, newsletter, and books against abortion, once comparing the effort similar to the civil rights movement. His identity and influence helped to connect Protestant evangelicals and conservative Catholics, despite their disagreement on the interpretation of Christianity, to fight as one against liberal cultural causes. He was adamant in his writings that he was leading a moral fight against the 1960s “counterculture” such as abortion, the abandonment of family values, drugs, and homosexuality. He later became a close confidant of President George W. Bush, serving as his unofficial advisor, and became one of the largest influencers for Bush to oppose stem-cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage during his presidential tenure.
What do Christian Nationalists want?
Sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel L. Perry have noted in their book The Flag and The Cross that Christian Nationalism has always been about some form of self-centered individualism that could not care less about the rights of people sharing different identities, starting from the campaign to eliminate Native American settlements once they started to create colonies in North America. The majority rule of white male Christians continued in this country for more than two hundred years until the rise of Obama, who became President in 2009. As soon as he became President and started to implement liberal policies usually for the public good, some white Christians felt like their majoritarian identity and status were challenged and began using religious imageries in protests to symbolize their pursuit of freedom, such as appeals to God against liberal policies and calling Obama “not a real Christian.”
These appeals worked surprisingly well with the rise of the Tea Party movement, a group of Republicans espousing small government principles and cutting taxes and lamenting about increasing national debt and government spending. Lawmakers who identify with the movement won the majority in the House in 2010, significantly undercutting Obama’s chance to pass meaningful reforms and legislation. Polls show that most members of the movement identify themselves as evangelical Christians. However, more importantly, 57 percent of these members, in a poll, agreed that “America has always been a Christian country,” which became the cultural bond that held these people together, as well as the source of active support of wealthy conservative donors. This idea urged them to believe that America, as the land itself and as its Constitutional political system, was “God’s blessing,” and sanctifying the Constitution as almost unchallengeable, leading to the rise of originalist right-wing jurists and lawmakers becoming more defensive in their rulings.
The Tea Party movement’s conflict with secular and liberal forces in society is fueled not by their differing economic views, but by America’s racial tensions. To justify the Tea Party and the dangers of its enemies, Obama often associated them with separatist Black Nationalism, with radical figures such as his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Tea Party members often support the spurious theory that Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim.
All of this culminated in the rise of Donald Trump, who not only became President Obama’s successor but effectively secularized Christian Nationalism into a crushing white populist movement. Trump’s messages and narratives on the campaign trail are adept at evoking apocalyptic metaphors and the battle between good and evil. His frequent use of the word “disaster” to describe any liberal policy he does not like resonates strongly with white Christians who fear the displacement of their majority rule. Gorski and Perry argue that the underlying messages of Trumpism and Christian nationalism are the same: freedom, order, and violence; in other words, it was whites who used “justified” violence to defend their freedom, so they can establish order.
That’s why Trump and right-wing politicians have been using the term “law and order” to counter appeals for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer sparked angry protests across the country. Christian Nationalists only use such words when it suits their narrative. When Trump asserted a Big Lie about the election being stolen and urged his supporters to storm the Capitol — as a result of which more than 100 Capitol Police officers were injured — they were unconcerned, even calling the riot a “legitimate discourse.”
Christian nationalism is likely the most dangerous political ideology that has emerged in the United States since Nazism. As a theory of hierarchical order and freedom, it explicitly distinguishes people and divides them by their racial and religious identities, encouraging white Christians to demonize any other people, and distorting historical fact to justify their need to remain as both the demographical and moral majority. The separation of church and state was enshrined in the Constitution from the beginning and has long withstood reactionary challenges — until today. The gathering momentum of reactionary challenges in recent years, however, has deadlocked the debate on the separation of church and state. The Supreme Court, with its conservative and originalist majority, is considering cases that are likely to amplify the influence of Christianity in the social sphere and may even make it mandatory in public education. While these people do not represent the majority of the population and are often condemned by other Christian groups, the failure of the American public to become aware of their dangerous plans can lead them to power and the ability to impose their hierarchical, theocratic rule on anyone living in this country, plunging it into a regression that is difficult to restore.
