White Christian Nationalists Want More Than Just Political Power

As a prior post noted and a number of news stories and columns have noted, white Christian nationalist were very heavily represented among the insurrectionists who attacked and sacked the U.S. Capitol last week. While few in number in comparison, I have followed right wing Christian organizations and these "Christians" who I refer to as Christofascists for more than twenty five  years.  Their agenda is two-fold: (i) to inflict their religious beliefs on all Americans, and (ii) put themselves in control of the government and to maintain white Christians as the ruling class in America. To achieve these goals, they will lie, slander others, rewrite history to promote the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation (which is diametrically opposed to the views of the Founding Fathers) and make a mockery of Christ's message. Leaders of this anti-democratic movement include Franklin Graham - a worthless individual and grifter in my view - and hate group leader James Dobson who continue to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.  Most frighteningly, to these people, the end justifies the means, hence there should be no surprise over the level of violence witness inside the Capitol last week, including threats to execute Mike Pence who was viewed as a traitor.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this dangerous and delusional segment of society.  Here are excerpts:

“What about my gun?” a man in the back called out . . . . I was with a busload of white conservative Christians who had come to D.C. from all over the country to learn a Christian nationalist interpretation of the history of the United States. They loved the Second Amendment almost as much as the First. The man reluctantly disarmed and disembarked with the rest of us, and we began the trek up Capitol Hill. What followed was a series of indignities that made most of the group long for the pre-9/11 days when visitors could simply walk into the Capitol and wander the halls of power at will. This was, after all, their house. 

From 2014 to 2015, I spent two years observing and participating in Christian heritage tours in Washington, D.C. I had grown up in a white evangelical family, and even though I was no longer evangelical myself, I remained fascinated by conservative Christian politics. White Christian nationalism—a movement that believes the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be ruled by conservative Christian values—was on the rise. For scholars, Christian heritage tours provide a rare window into the formation of certain kinds of nationalist ideas, including Washington, D.C.’s peculiar place in that ideology.

Some commentators have called last week’s insurrection at the Capitol a “desecration” of a national sacred space, if not of democracy itself. But to white Christian nationalists, this claim fundamentally misunderstands what is sacred. To members of this group—now a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s political coalition—the Capitol has already been desecrated by lawmakers who fail to enact God’s will for the nation. The building may be full of relics from America’s Christian past, but real Christians and their God have long since been exiled.

When Trump’s insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, they were living the dream of countless frustrated white evangelical Christians on those tours. For a brief moment, they bypassed everything designed to keep them out, and claimed the Capitol for their own. They ran wild through the halls, toppling furniture and smashing windows. They sat in prohibited seats and snapped selfies of their rebellion. They lived out a fantasy of taking back the country, or at least its Capitol, for God.

At the siege, the presence of white conservative Christians was unmistakable. The Proud Boys stopped to pray to Jesus on their march toward the Capitol, and the crowd held signs proclaiming Jesus Saves and God’s Word Calls Them Out. One flag read Jesus is my savior. Trump is my President.

Not all of the January 6 insurrectionists were white Christian nationalists. Some represented themselves as pagan, while others were later identified as Orthodox Jews. Many came because they were inspired by QAnon conspiracy theories. But they were all united by the idea that the establishment should be overthrown and the nation returned to its founding principles, an idea white Christian nationalists have been promoting and normalizing for decades.

For white Christian nationalists, taking back the country is about more than just political power. They see themselves as faithful patriots fulfilling the American Founders’ covenant with God to maintain a righteous Christian nation. Their success means the nation will be rewarded with economic prosperity and military might, while failure will lead to divine wrath and, eventually, the demise of the nation itself. The stakes of the battle could not be higher. Washington is where this great battle must take place, whether in the streets or on the Senate floor.

The capital looms large in the imagination of many white Christian nationalists. On Christian heritage tours, guides dissolve any distinction between American icons and Christian imagery, spotlighting the countless statues and paintings of Christian leaders and the biblical inscriptions on buildings and memorials all over the city. To them, these symbols are proof of the nation’s Christian past, and a promise of its future restoration.

[T]heir chief complaint was about the lack of “real Christians” in the federal government, as evidenced by lawmakers who supported abortion rights, prohibited school prayer, and failed to defend traditional marriage. In many ways, D.C. embodied what they saw as the nation’s decline from its righteous past.

Although not all of Trump’s white evangelical supporters embrace Christian nationalism, the ideology is prominent among a wide range of American conservative Christians. Since the 1970s, leaders of the Christian right have been calling for Americans to rise up and retake their country from the forces of evil. They have shared this message in many forms, including sermons, films, and art. Christian heritage tours, which draw a few thousand people to D.C. every year, are an ideal recruiting opportunity: As participants tour the city, they learn the key arguments of white Christian nationalism and are called to join the cause.

One mother told me that she’d brought her two children on a Christian heritage tour to prepare them for what lay ahead: “I truly believe they will be persecuted in their lifetime,” she said, explaining that when that happened, she wanted them to know what they were fighting for.

But white Christian nationalism also unites nostalgia for a lost age of Christian power with a profound sense of victimization, and it baptizes death as a heroic sacrifice for the nation. No one should underestimate how dangerous this combination is, particularly among those who decide that their faith requires them to retake their nation.

Adherents are right about one thing: The fate of this nation is at stake.

As noted may times on this blog, the Christofascists' warped sense of persecution is not so much actual persecution by restrictions upon their ability to persecute and abuse others be they blacks, gays or non-Christians.  They are anathema to Christ's message yet are so brainwashed and so lusting for superiority and power that they do not see that they are the modern day equivalents of the biblical Pharisees.