For months I've been starting, not finishing, re-starting, still not finishing, pieces on Christian Nationalism (CN)- or, more precisely, the media discourse about it. How should we think about what "it" is, allowing us to assess claims about its supposed rapid growth? How should we understand its blend of "same old" and emergent? How dangerous is it? Insofar as it's dangerous (no one denies that it often is) what is the best response? And how should we handle the implication hidden in that last sentence-- that some things deemed CN may not be very dangerous, or that their dangerous dimensions are bound up with complex layers of good intentions and plausible fears, or that there are risks for CN critics, too, if they swing too wildly and demonize only the worst things called CN without pondering why people may be drawn to stronger parts.
I have been studying and teaching about these things for decades and I have a lot to say about it. So I agreed to help facilitate a study group about it. I thought surely I could leverage my preparation for the group, first, into some half-concise talking points to post here along the lines of "Christian Nationalism in 1000 Words or Less." Second, surely I could gather miscellaneous other pieces drawn from my books and lectures for background.
The result? A growing pile of failed essays that I've tinkered with, which have eaten the time I might have spent getting the "miscellaneous" pieces organized.
Now I'm up against a deadline. If I want our group to read any part of this for a Monday discussion, I need to send them an URL for this post I'm writing now... by yesterday!
I type this current sentence still nursing a hope that I can return, after I post this URL, to a draft of that "core talking points" piece I've been working on, and link to it right here. But if you don't see a hyperlink that's still in progress.
I do have this poem. Does it help at all?
It may help to mention past essays from my blog. Here's one about anti-Trump evangelical big-shots, similar to people like David French and Tim Alberta in the news cycle recently. How many swing voters do they represent? How do they relate to other evangelicals and/or other Christians against Trump? Here's one about Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwell's legacies. Since at minimum there is much continuity between today's CN and an older "New Christian Right" they remain highly relevant. As we try to figure out what is distinctive and emergent in this space today, they are the baseline we're thinking against.
In a presentation to our group I talked about my suspicion of reported numbers about all things CN and/or evangelical. Yesterday the media cycle offered a jaw-dropping example of the problem, related to reports on a rally by a group commonly said to be paradigmatic for CN (for example in this recent Fresh Air interview.) This rally attracted-- watch for it!-- somewhere between 250,000 and "hundreds" of participants. Click for what I wrote about it, with fascinating details. We could go on to speculate about the proportion of hardcore Trumpians from this group-- the type who would storm the Capitol and set up a gallows for Mike Pence-- compared to people from these churches whom its hardcore definitely do lobby (and yes they might vote for Trump which is a big deal) but meanwhile they are fairly apolitical and/or wondering if they should leave. This gap could well be equally extreme.
I also have been thinking about this symposium, especially the interventions by my esteemed colleague Gary Dorrien. More about that here.
[I'm going to offload the next three paragraphs and rework them into a separate post, but if I haven't done that by the time you're reading, that's still in progress. It's a great example of how I bog down in the various levels of this subject. But I definitely want to talk about this in the group!]
Dorrien distinguishes three meanings of "nationalism," each of which can take Christian forms: (1) "civic nationalism" (in its strong versions evoking what Robert Bellah valorized as needful for a "common good" or Reinhold Niebuhr valorized as "vital center" New Deal patriotism-- both weighed down with drawbacks that Dorrien knows well, but both also intensely anti-fascist and with political priorities far to the left from Kamala Harris if we wish to introduce lesser evil calculus). (2) revolutionary anti-colonial nationalisms (black and red nationalisms, the Sandinista movement, Nelson Mandela, etc.), and (3) right-trending ethno-nationalisms, not all of them Christian, often stressing "anti-globalist" and anti-immigrant policies. This way of setting up definitions leads into other valuable comments by Dorrien and other panelists that I won't summarize here. We might underline how it does not traffic in "CN isn't really Christian at all" rhetoric."
If we wish to use a stipulated definition of the "nationalism" in "CN" as restricted to Dorrien's third meaning (perhaps conflating this with Trumpism?), we can get somewhere... maybe... certainly a lot of this media discourse slides right there, apparently assuming "we all know" there is no other option. Yeah, I'm good with attacking ethno-nationisms. Still I do wonder, is that really what everyone is talking about-- especially if within "everyone" we include swing voters whom Democrats hope to switch from undecided into the Harris column? It's understandable why someone might move toward this narrower focus, in light of the clear and present dangers of Trumpism. But this can introduce confusions when the vernacular meanings of "nation" are so murky-- confusions that don't always help the left. What about evangelicals who think they are "civic" but not "ethno"? What about poor confused people like me still pondering whether I want to talk of Trumpism as a whole as ethno-nationalist, or explore the weight of ethno-nationalist fractions compared to other fractions of the Republican coalition?
Literally as I typed the past two paragraphs, another esteemed friend who knows I'm thinking about this has written to ask me -- "why valorize nationalism"?" She knows she's hitting where it hurts because have written long articles attacking Niebuhr and Bellah for thinking too much from a national standpoint, which can become like a bright moon blotting out their ability to see the stars. If we are serious about addressing poverty, racism, sexism, empire, or climate change, doesn't this presuppose a different frame than the national-- so that we should think more about subgroups of nations in conflict with other subgroups and about transnational trends that cut across nations? Yes it does! I've often written to insist on this exact point and I'm not taking it back now. I just want, alongside this common sense (that is, don't forget to think about sex, race, capitalism, religion, etc., cutting across nations; don't forget that national frames often set up minorities to fail) to also remember that nation is a non-trivial factor along with the others. Policies at a national level are places where battles about race, or taxing billionaires, or whether poor women have decent healthcare are fought. Is focusing on this "nationalism" and am I "valorizing" it? Well, maybe not...probably not. But is that clear every time someone launches a sweeping attack on nationalism? I doubt it.
I've also been thinking about this interview. which I wish our group could talk about although it's behind a paywall. (It's from Know Your Enemy, which deserves the support of all well-meaning seekers of truth.) I love this conversation for nailing its nuance so well-- talking with understanding and compassion about concrete people growing up within the right, yet not without righteous anger about the suffering that such (often well-meaning) teaching can cause. Specifically they talk about aspects of the rightwing ecosystem that start from people being taught about the presence of temptation and evil in the language of "demons" -- which does not always come in ways one can easily mock-- and relatable grounded worries about how to be good parents in a world where this not easy. Starting from these places, evangelicals may end up being swept into wider authoritarian mindsets and/or conspiracy thinking. Sooner or later this will intersect with whatever they fear related to race, economics, and so on. This also could lead us toward one of the best books I have read about today's configuration on the right, Naomi Klein's Doppleganger. For the many who use this book as a benchmark, this interview adds fresh insights, not much stressed by Klein, about Christian aspects of the conspiracy thinking she diagnoses.
All this touches on something I've discussed in our group: are we sure we know what makes the Christian Right tick? Are we sure it's primarily, in most cases, bound up with anti-immigrant racism, as so many pundits attacking CN stress so heavily? Have we thought hard enough about consequences that flow, as we move from case to case, from accusing every conservative of being driven by racism, pure and simple--especially if one of our priorities is to persuade new generations to rethink toxic forms of evangelicalism?
This query resonates with a recent piece from the New York Times, which concerns people of color who support Trumpism largely because they are concerned more about economic hardship than racial identity. Many of them have likely been socialized into an "American Dream" which is roughly equidistant from Trump and Harris. (Yes! we should problematize this dream-- maybe even tell such black folks it's a "white" dream if we dare-- and we should also go down warranted rabbit holes of worry about how this piece frames "the economic," so bring your own analysis).
I mention this mainly to say that, although the article doesn't focus on it, many of these folks are evangelicals or Latinx Catholics. The rally mentioned earlier drew a large contingent of such people. This complicates a boiled down root image of CN (white!) versus everyone else (mainly thinking of race.) We circle back to the poll spinning; what minority percentage of "growing white CN" (read as racism) is actually counting people of color who are worried about economics? Does this matter for counting white people worried about economics too? Then suppose we notice that most evangelicals are trying to be "colorblind"-- admittedly a low bar to pass but is it "CN"? How do these questions relate to a perception of "white liberal elitism" that is flagged in this article and heavily stressed in evangelical churches of all races and flavors?
The perfect is the enemy of the good! So I hit "publish" now for whatever it's worth!