There is much merited concern over the rising of Christian Nationalism. Though what is often not also mentioned is that there are several definitions of Christian Nationalism floating around. For example, Anthony Costello defines Christian Nationalism as the reliance on the basic Judeo-Christian for a nation's moral code (click here for his article on Christian Nationalism). While a more common definition of Christian Nationalism is that it merges Christian identity with national identity so that, in America, America is seen as a Christian nation (click here ). A difference between the two definitions is that with Costello's definition, a faithful Muslim could could more comfortably live in America that could the same person live in an America where Christian identity and national identity are one.
But we should note here before the concern about Christian Nationalism were expressed existed concerns about the close ties between religiously conservative Christianity with political conservatism. And, in fact, Christian Nationalism might be very similar to, if not based on, political conservatism. Growing up in a family and a conservative church where many of the adults merged political conservatism with American patriotism/nationalism, the conflation of the Christian faith with either political conservatism or American patriotism/nationalism, I was taught that that political conservatism was in sync with American Nationalism and that religiously conservative Christianity was closely linked to both.
In a podcast conversation between Albert Mohler (click here for a bio) and Yoram Hazony (click here for a bio), the origins of American political conservatism are traced back to the English Constitutionalism which consists of several sources starting with the Magna Carta from 1215. There is no single document that contains this particular Constitution. But the key part of this conservatism is to identify what conservatives should want to conserve or preserve.
For Hazony, conservatism is about having the nation still revolve around its religious and national traditions. But that becomes problematic when one looks at those traditions or history. For England, white supremacy was continued not in slavery, but through its colonialism.
America itself was founded as a white supremacist nation that exhibited those racist beliefs mainly through its treatment of Native Americans and Blacks. And while a significant amount of that racism has been corrected, another significant amount of that racism still needs to be acknowledged and corrected.
It is American conservatism that wants the England part of our traditions and history along with its language to still be the center of how we define America. American conservatism is greatly opposed to recognizing America as being a bilingual, multicultural nation despite the percentage of Americans who are fluent in Spanish or from other nations. It is American conservatism that tries to minimize how much racism has and still exists in our nation. The education bills being passed by some states put a limit on how much one can teach school children of all ages about slavery and racism in America.
When listening to the above referenced podcast between Mohler and Hazony, we hear how conservatives should sometimes collaborate with liberals as long as they outrightly reject and oppose Neo-Marxism and Wokism. Why is that? They reject Neo-Marxism because of how it challenges the conservative notion of American and English history. They reject wokism because they still speak of America as systemically racist. The combination of the two challenges how much we should still favorably look on America's past and traditions. For example, Reagan's Conservativism favors a "colorblind" approach to post American racism which views systemic racism as having been eradicated by the Civil Rights Movement. That is despite the fact that what Martin Luther King Jr was working for was pretty much in line with what CRT would like to see be accomplished now--even though King would probably not approve of some of the tactics and teachings that some later followers of CRT have been promoting. King said, 11 months before his death that while his earlier work was a 'struggle for decency' as compared to his then current work as a 'struggle for genuine equality' (click here for an interview with King).
Regarding America's past and tradition, we should note that most of the contributors to one of the key documents that serves as the backbone for American traditionalism, The Constitution, were believers in white supremacy with many of them owning slaves. There is only one race of people whom original version of our Constitution, including the Bill Of Rights, recognizes as meriting rights and equality: the white race. And though a significant amount of that has been corrected, as noted before, there is a great reluctance for conservatives to fully face the degree of racism expressed or implied in our founding documents and in the history of our nation.
And none of the above even addresses the economic class warfare that has existed in America for much of its history. And conservatives, more than anyone else, have sided with the wealthy. That American Christians would join them would continue the history of the Church in the latter part of the 1900s where the predominant branch a given nation's Church has sided with wealth and power.
There is a simple explanation for why American conservatives resist fully facing and acknowledging America's history of exploiting and abusing people on the basis of race and economic classes. That explanation has to do with the fact that ideologues often struggle with facing the facts as Ted Koppel reminded Sean Hannity (click here for the clip). And traditionalists of all stripes whether they be conservative, liberal, or leftist are, by nature, ideologues. Their struggle with facts is because to ideologues, truth is more often determined by a given source's ideological credentials than by the facts and logic employed by that source. For an ideologue, facts must never end up challenging what is taught by their ideology. And that is what we have with Mohler and Hazony as well as any other ideologue whether they are American or English Conservatives or not. In short, ideologues have a strong penchant for authoritarianism.
American Political Conservatism is what the American Conservative Church is wed to. It just happens that American Political Conservatism is highly nationalistic. And if one would rather say that American Political Conservatism is very patriotic, then realize that patriotism can be the opiate for nationalism.
The solution here is not to get American Conservatives to renounce their conservatism. The solution here is to help all ideologues, not just conservative ones, to recognize that no ideology is omniscient. And therefore, we need hybrid solutions for our nation's problems and governance rather ideological pure ones. And I am saying that as a Christian Fundamentalist who politically leans toward Marx. Realize that I only lean toward Marx, I am not a Marxist ideologue.
References
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXU5XYqEzSE
- https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/christian-nationalist-identity-marjorie-taylor-greene.html
- https://wng.org/opinions/the-evangelical-left-loses-its-prophet-1659699634
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