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Quoting Greg Olear and Benjamin Cremer, William Lindsey shares the following via two Mastodon posts I couldn’t pass up:
“The Christian Nationalists’ God is petty, insecure, cruel, authoritarian. Their God, like their favored presidential candidate, demands above all else obedience and loyalty. Their God sees only a few as ‘elect’: Mike Johnson and his ilk, straight men, blastocysts and frozen embryos. All the others He casts out. Their God is not inclusive; their Paradise, a fascist state.” Source: Greg Olear via William Lindsey
and
“What Christian Nationalism means by … ‘Christian nation,’ is a nation dictated by neo-evangelical Christianity, tied to a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, which should drive the formation of laws, is deeply entrenched in patriarchy, and is largely white. This vision … not only excludes other religions and nonreligious people from having an equal voice in our country, but many other Christians….” Source: Benjamin Cremer via William Lindsey
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share my burgeoning understanding of Christian Nationalism, and the siren song that lures many believers to their doom. It seems so obvious now, but a few years ago, I suffered from my own set of scales over my eyes. I am reminded of this quote that applies to Christian Nationalists now:
“Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster.” Friedrich Nietsche
Unfortunately, the monsters of the Christian nationalist are ones of his/her own imagining, as recent events demonstrate.
A Response
My response is far from perfect, composed via a mobile browser with word limits, so pardon the brevity:
Christian Nationalism clarifies the fantasies it has sprung from. It is the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree. A twisted tree itself grown from a seed planted in falsehood and nourished with the blood of the oppressed throughout history. Once you know the history of its grafts and grifts, its use as a tool of enslavement, only science with its checks and balances can offer any measure of objective truth. The CNs are deluded, chaff bound for unquenchable fire.🔥
For me, given the dark history of Christianity, its current incarnation a derivative of an invented religion that little resembles the teachings after whom it’s named, Christian Nationalism is a rejection of Jesus' teachings. After all, who in their right mind can imagine Jesus totin' an assault rifle, or failing to do more than offer "thoughts and prayers" at the violent deaths of children in classrooms?
Given that response, I realized I had more to say:
Or to say it plain, they believe what they want because it empowers them to be “righteous “ while doing bad things against other people. Humans can’t see the world as it is, only as they perceive it.
For some, it is an evil world populated with powerful demons and do-nothing angels, only they are instruments of good. clinging to fake religion in the face of evidence makes them devils they imagined.
The irony? no evidence of their worst fears except their cruel actions towards others.
“When the stories that have glued together a culture lose their potency, things begin to fall apart. But new things rise up.” -Elizabeth Lesser
Things are falling apart. Christian Nationalism is, I suspect, an awareness that the religion that has been constructed can’t hold up to scrutiny, to the evidence. In the face of that evidence, a new story must be told.
In this new radicalized Christian Nationalism version, you do not turn the other cheek. You slap the other’s cheek and worse. In this story, Jesus carries a long gun. Helping others is not the priority, but ensuring your own prosperity and that of fellow believers, is.
In this tale told but never real, only the approved version of righteous belief can be allowed to thrive. You believe as they, or suffer the consequences.
Lindsey’s Response
William is kind enough to respond to my response, stating:
You put your finger very well on the central issue: from very early in American history, a powerful strand of thought among some of us has been that we are the righteous, and that means that everyone else is the unrighteous. This makes us good and makes even the evil we do good — so we choose to think. Well-stated. This is insightful and excellent commentary.
Reflection
As I read his response, I recall Smith’s How the Word Is Passed and Lesser’s Cassandra Speaks and I shudder at the horrors of an American nation bound and determined to do good with its eyes closed to its own past.
You might find Anne Lamott’s quote (as cited in Elizabeth Lesser’s Cassandra Speaks) as appropriate as I did:
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” -Anne Lamott
Thanks to Harold Jarche for sharing this quote:
“America could not bear to take a hard look at itself, especially the inconvenient truths of slavery, dispossession and genocide. Religion and profit, ‘jumping together,’ had little time for introspection. The slaveholder, the frontiersman and the fundamentalist all hated the historian — and anti-intellectualism has been a strong force ever since.” —Ronald Wright (2008) What is America?