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How prominent is “Christian nationalism” becoming i= n the U.S.? Curtis Chang on the challenges for American democracy, and Amer= ican Christians, from “the secular god of politics.”

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Dominion

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How prominent = is “Christian nationalism” becoming in the U.S.? Curtis= Chang on the challenges for American democracy, and American Chri= stians, from “the secular god of politics.”

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Thomas Vitali

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&ldquo= ;We need to be the party of nationalism,” the U.S. Republica= n Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told an interviewer earlier this yea= r: “We should be Christian nationalists.” Green is well known i= n America for her far-right politics and extreme rhetoric—the Republi= can Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even once called her views a &ld= quo;cancer” for their party—but the idea that the United States= should be a “Christian nation” appears to be moving further in= to mainstream American public opinion. There are cartoonish versions of thi= s idea at play in the media, including Nick Fuentes’s—Fuentes i= s a white-supremacist influencer who recently made headlines for having din= ner with Donald Trump and Kanye West—which is that America needs a di= ctatorship to enforce his vision of reactionary Catholicism. But Christian = nationalism did motivate many of the Donald Trump supporters who attacked t= he U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And according to recent polling from the Pew Research Center, most American adu= lts say their country was founded to be a “Christian nation”&md= ash;with 45 percent saying it should still be one. At the same time, Pew no= tes, “many supporters of Christian nationhood define the concept in b= road terms, as the idea that the country is guided by Christian values.&rdq= uo; How are these movements in American Christianity shaping U.S. political= life?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Curtis Chang is the founder of the Evang= elical organization Redeeming Babel, a= senior fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary, and on the consulting facult= y of the Duke Divinity School. To Chang, most American Christians aren&rsqu= o;t really Christian nationalists—but it’s hard to make sense o= f what exactly they believe altogether about their religion’s role in= the public square. Chang sees a lot of confusion and contradiction in the = views of American Christians, many of whom are receptive to illiberal rheto= ric—and from there, to being taken in by political tribalism—no= t because they’re inherently illiberal, but because they’re jus= t not experiencing any powerful alternative messages about how to live thei= r faith in a way that’s consistent with democracy and pluralism. =09=09=09=09=09=09

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——= —

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Graham= Vyse: How do you understand the phenomenon of Christian nationali= sm in the U.S.?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Curtis Chang: I understand it as part of= the broader phenomenon of nationalism we’ve seen rising globally&mda= sh;in which a subset of a country’s population will try to claim that= its beliefs, values, and politics ought to shape the entire country &helli= p; and that people who don’t share those beliefs, values, and politic= s should be relegated to a subordinate status in the country, if not exclud= ed from it altogether. In this sense, nationalism contradicts the idea of p= luralism—the idea that each person can have a unique set of convictio= ns while coexisting with people who have different convictions.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09America’s Christian nationalists tend to have a nar= row understanding of Christianity, which they associate with the dominance = of white, right-wing political power—and they tend to be hostile to d= iffering viewpoints, including left-wing, progressive, or “woke&rdquo= ; ideas. They tend to have a very binary, = us-versus-them attitude, based on the notion of opposing them,= who are out to get us. Frankly, it’s a very paranoid outloo= k.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Vyse: How widespread do you see it being= ?

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Chang<= /strong>: That’s a difficult question to answer. You might see public= -opinion surveys asking self-identified Evangelical Christians whether they= hold Christian-nationalist views, but it’s often hard to know who in= that group actually believes in Evangelical theology, who attends church r= egularly, and who treats being Evangelical as less of a spiritual or religi= ous orientation and more of a cultural or political orientation. We also kn= ow that the loudest voices are often the most extreme—that’s as= true on the left as it is on the right—and in that context, there&rs= quo;s an exhausted majority of American Evangelicals that’s increasin= gly withdrawing from political engagement.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09I find it hard to make sense of Pew’s data showing = that 45 percent of American adults think the U.S. should be a Christian nat= ion but two-thirds of American adults say churches should stay out of polit= ics. I certainly believe that people with views like Nick Fuentes’s a= re a small minority of the population, but when Donald Trump elevates their= voices, they can influence other people who’re trying to figure out = what it means to be a Christian—or to have Christian politics.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09Think about the phenom= enon we saw around Covid vaccines. Historically, vaccines haven’t= been politicized in the U.S., and American Evangelicals have been in favor= of them. Then Trump and others on the right sent the message that Republic= ans should be against vaccines, and Evangelicals became the most vaccine-sk= eptical population in the world. That demonstrated just how much the action= s of national leaders—including the messages they send about who Chri= stians should be and what Christians should do—can have a significant= influence on the people at large.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09Vyse: I sometimes worry about overstatin= g the influence of someone like Fuentes, who was a little-known figure befo= re his dinner with Trump, and Greene, whose politics are unusually extreme = even within a Republican Party that tolerates a lot of extremism. At the sa= me time, as you point out, it’s undeniable that Trump has elevated th= eir voices. What role do you see them playing in shaping the Republican Par= ty and public conversation about Christian nationalism?
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=09=09=09=09=09=09Chang: They’re very influential, b= ecause they shape the boundaries of conversation. Views like Fuentes’= s won’t be embraced in the mainstream of Republican politics, but the= y will shift the boundaries of mainstream discussion simply on account of b= eing introduced into mainstream dialogue. In this way, Trump and his allies= have given seats at the table to extremists who wouldn’t have been m= entioned a decade ago.
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Terren Hurst

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More from = Curtis Chang at The Signal:

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“Given the extent of political polarization= in America, many church leaders are now disincentivized from prea= ching about politics—desperately afraid their words will be misinterp= reted. Most Evangelical pastors avoid politics in order to try to hold thei= r congregations together, but in doing so, they’re ceding the ability= to influence the minds of their congregations to Fox News and MSNBC—= and even worse influences.”

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“If you’re in progressive circles—including progressive Christian circles, which I traffic in som= etimes—you can see a dogmatic, inflexible, impulse toward persecution= . If you don’t always use the right pronouns or adhere to the progres= sive party line, you can be ousted in much the same way you can be on the r= ight. The Christian Left can be as prone to following the secular god of po= litics as the Christian Right can.”

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“There’s a very real, very strong imp= ulse on the left toward banishing conservative Evangelical Christi= an views from the public square. Conservatives aren’t making that up.= This truth can be weaponized by extremists to foment us-versus-them sentim= ents and conspiracy theories, but the core concern is entirely rooted in re= ality.”
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The Signal explores urgent question= s in current events around the world—to support it and for full acces= s:

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