A national Christian prayer event occurred in our nation's capital this past weekend. The basic concern of the event was about how to rededicate our nation to Christ. Such an event sounds harmless enough, but was it really?
Rededicating the nation to Christ meant that those in the event want our nation to return to being what it used to be: a Christian nation. And so, the event was really about Christian Nationalism.
How was our nation a Christian nation? It certainly wasn't the aim of The Constitution. We should notice that not only was there an absence of any statements in that document which affirms America being a Christian nation, there are a couple of statements that contradicts such a notion. In addition, the Constitutional debates indicate that basing the nation's federal government on any religion was something to be avoided at all costs.
But what we should note, however, is that in several of the state constitutions, were statements that endorsed some form of Christianity as a state religion. In addition, we should note that in terms of culture and the religious self-image of many of the people, we could call our nation a Christian nation.
There is something else we should note, however. That our nation's Christian self-image was due to demographics. That is that, because of Christendom, the demographics were so affected so that many people identified as Christians. And this is an important point because our nation's religious demographics ain't what they used to be. And so how close can should we return to the past.
There is something else to note. That if we claim that America was a Christian nation at its beginning, then we Christians own some unsavory history from the past. That dubios history revolves around racism. Our nation was at least partially based on racism. It's in our early practices such as race-based slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land. It was in the federal laws governing citizenship. They stated that only free white men could become citizens of the U.S. And even after Black men could become citizens, which was after the Civil War, we had Jim Crow and Redlining among other practices.
And so if America was to return to the good old days, would we also include a return to the racism of the past? Or would we employ new forms of racism? We should note that we don't call the current move toward Christian Nationalism in America, we call it 'White Christian Nationalism.'
There are two ways by which we could call America a Christian nation today. The first way is if the majority of Americans were actual Christians. The problem with that way is that we cannot manipulate people into becoming Christians. Making a person a Christian is the work of the Holy Spirit and we have no control over the Spirit. And so we have no control over making the majority of Americans Christians.
And so the second way is to change our nation's laws so that they resemble Church laws to a significant degree. And though there are Church laws that are already a part of the laws of our land, not all are.
The above has always been a challenge for the Church. What Church laws should also be laws governing society? And this is where it gets sticky for Christian Nationalists and society because not all agree on the same set of laws. Do we want so many Church laws to also be a part of the laws the govern society? At what point in instituting Church laws, are we showing privilege to Christianity over other religions? And which Church laws would cause people to violate their own religious practices?
When answering those questions, we should note again that religious demographics ain't what they used to be. That we don't have the Christian consensus in America that once existed. And so we have to then consider the amount of control that we Christians should have to exert over unbelievers to pass and enforce the Church laws that we want to become the law of the land. Such is an important consideration because both Jesus and Peter tell us not to 'lord it over' others.
In addition, the Apostles' approach to fulfilling the Great Commission was through teaching and preaching only. Jesus once said that if people do not accept the preaching of the disciples, that His disciples were to move on. There is also a misreading of the Great Commission as seen below (click here for the reference):
16 But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated to them. 17 And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The issue here has to do with the Greek word for 'nations.' For some take that to mean to force each nation to be Christian. The Greek word for nations here is 'ἔθνη.' According to the Greek-English lexicon of Bauer, Arendt and Gingrich, the form of the Greek word there means outsiders. That instead of talking about discipling each nation, the disciples were ordered to preach to those outside their group. And, indeed, the use of the form of the word for nation, 'ἔθνη,' often means outsiders both in the Greek Septuagint, which is the Old Testament in Greek, and in the New Testament. And such an understanding would relieve the pressure to feel compelled to make each nation a Christian nation, since such is not in our control in the first place.
There is another issue to consider here. The modern movement toward Christian Nationalism promoted by some of my fellow believers in Christ, was given its greatest impetus by the Obergfell decision in 2015. Many Christian ministers and leaders opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage. Some said that it should be prohibited because such would interfere with the flourishing of society. After the decision was announced, many Christian leaders advocated that Christians should take a semi-monastic approach to society, which is they sequestered themselves into groups of like-minded believers, until such a time when they could be assured that society no longer had a negative view of the faith. The Benedict Option was such an example. We should note that Aaron Renn described Christianity as going through 3 stages of acceptance by society. According to him, the negative perception of the Church started in 2014 , which was part of the time when the Obergfell decision was being considered.
That decision recognized a greater equal status for the LGBT community in society. Apparently, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians then feared that if same-sex marriage was considered equal to heterosexual marriage in society, the property values of marriage would drop. In addition, many of my fellow Christians feared that if society welcomed the LGBT community as equals, that such an acceptance would have a corrupting influence on the Church
But it was also more than the fear of what would happen to heterosexual marriage. With the emergence of the LGBT community from the margins of society came a shock to many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. Society had changed too much and too quickly for them. Many of my fellow believers no longer recognized the nation in which they were living. And considering how patriotic many of those fellow believers are, they were not just in shock, they were grieving for the loss of what once was. This loss speaks predominantly to white religiously conservative Christians because for many Black fellow believers, what had been also lost over time was Jim Crow culture and laws. It's not that there is no more systemic racism with the current gerrymandering at the expense of representation for Blacks in the House of Representatives serving as just another reminder that systemic racism lives. That is because the loss of representation for Blacks in the House was not enough of an impediment to stop the current gerrymandering in red states. It is that even though there was less systemic racism, thing had been changing. In the end, more whites felt negatively about the drastic changes in society.
Christian Nationalism concerns itself with societal laws that affect culture for both unbelievers and believers. What garnered such a high percentage of Evangelical votes for Trump is that he took the side of many religiously conservative Christians, as well as that of Putin (or wannabe Emperor Putintine), in the culture wars. The emergence of the LGBT community from the margins of society created the same reaction in my fellow Christians that the bourgeoisie dictatorship did in Marx. Marx thought that the only way to overthrow the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie was to replace the bourgeoisie dictatorship with a proletariat one. Such was an example of Marx's black-white thinking on that oppression. He never, that I know of, thought that one way of eliminating the oppression by the bourgeoisie was to get the bourgeoisie and proletariat to collaborate together. And so for many of my fellow believers, the appropriatae response to the emergence of the LGBT community from society was to return that community to the margins of society.
An alternative response would be to replace the culture wars with cultural coexistence as equals and then depend on evangelism and other forms of teaching, as well as discipline in the Church only, as ways of fulfilling the Great Commission. Such a dependence seems to be the way of the Apostles to fulfill the Great Commission.
The tragic thing here for the conservative Church in America, this call to some degree of Christian control over society just might be a front for installing an oligarchy. For that seems to be the battle in Europe. That Democracy with equality is being challenged by authoritarianism with hierarchy that take the form of ethnocracy. And not all examples of ethnocracy are religiously based. But regardless of the form, using ethnocracy as a façade appeals to many conservative voters.
And so some leading the charge for Christian Nationalism are using that label to monopolize conservative votes to support oligarchy. And that would make oligarchy a preferable form of governing to Democracy with equality.
