Evangelicalism''s Mistress Is Not Christian Nationalism, Its Mistress Is

 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

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXU5XYqEzSE
2. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/christian-nationalist-identity-marjorie-taylor-greene.html
3. https://wng.org/opinions/the-evangelical-left-loses-its-prophet-1659699634
4. 
   

Ideology And Tribalism

I am a socialist. But when I tell my friends, both conservatives and non-conservatives, that, I try to explain what I mean. I believe in the workplace and political structures promoted by the kinds of Socialism that emphasize democratic rule rather than elite-centered rule. I favor those kinds of workplace and political structures because they provide a degree of protection against the centralization of power. I do not spend my time talking much about socialist ideology though. Why? It is because I want to avoid the kind of tribalism that comes with relying to heavily on ideology. For what comes with being too much of an ideologue is the act of excluding people who hold to different ideologies or belong to different groups from decision making processes simply because they belong to different groups.

Now some fellow Socialists may not consider me to be a Socialist. For just as Rosa Luxemburg claimed that Lenin was operating a bourgeoisie dictatorship rather than a socialist state because he depended too much on the central committee to rule Russia. She might classify my beliefs as supporting a bourgeoisie democracy because I don't want to exclude the bourgeoisie from participating in making decisions.

But that doesn't deter me. I very much believe in elevating the status and power of workers and thus I also believe in leveling the playing field in making decision between those who own businesses and their workers. But I don't believe in elevating the position of workers so that the voices of the owners are silenced. Here I believe that we should have two bases for ownership: ownership by wealth and ownership by labor. And that both groups should share equal power in making decisions.

Having said that, I am emphasizing a structure rather than an ideology or logical model of thought or rules by which reality is predefined. If I was an ideologue, I would be more concerned with the models of thought being used to determine what people should be experiencing than the facts on the ground and testimonies of people.  That is one of the problems with being an ideologue. The more of an ideologue I am, the more I use deduction to determine what is real than I use observation and listening to others. In fact, I might build a hostility to observations and facts on the ground because they could possibly challenge what my model of thought says should happen. This is perhaps why Ted Koppel challenged Sean Hannity the way he did. First Koppel flattered Hannity by saying how good he was at doing his job. But then he told Hannity that a result of his effectiveness was that his followers think that 'ideology is more important than facts (click here).'

It matters not whether the ideology is political or spiritual--theology can be called a spiritual ideology. It also doesn't matter how conservative or non-conservative a given ideology is. The more one depends on a given ideology, the more one approaches reality by deducing what it is than asking people what they are experiencing. This is as true for the ideology of trickle-down economics as it is for ideologies used by Lenin, Mao, and Castro.

In addition, the more one adheres to an ideology, the more loyal one is to that ideology's model of thought and to others who share that thinking. So here, we are talking about group loyalty. And the more one is loyal to an ideological group, the more tribal one becomes. Why?  It is because tribalism occurs when there is a high degree of loyalty to a group. And what that high degree of loyalty does is to take away one's objectivity when looking at the real world.  In addition, the more group loyalty there exists in a group, the more insular the members of the group become. And with that comes a group authoritarianism so that there is a growing hostility to those outsiders who challenge one's group.

Group authoritarianism is simply a natural result of being an ideologue. This authoritarianism feeds an us vs. them mentality. And we see much of that in the world today both in the past, with communists vs capitalists, and in the present, with liberals vs conservatives. Conservative, liberal, and leftist ideologues see the members of the other groups as threats because their ideologues challenge one's own ideology. And such challenges prompt authoritarian-like, anti-social responses.

Now, it isn't that ideologies are unimportant. They provide a way of organizing our thinking which help us understand the world around us. So the existence of ideologies are not the problem per se. Rather, the problem is our dependence on these ideologies to define more and more of the real world. There comes a time when our dependence on a given ideology grows so great that it causes us to predetermine reality instead of relying on observation. And that dependence yields loyalty and that loyalty, when it reaches a certain threshold becomes ideological tribalism.

All of that is why I limit my adherence to any kind of Socialism as an ideology. I like the workplace and political structures of Socialism because they provide a hedge against the consolidation of power. But that hedge is not invincible. And limiting the consolidation of power doesn't always produce the best decisions. But when socialist workplace and political structures are maintained, they do more to limit the centralization of power than limiting government does. Why? Because those with government authority do not have a monopoly on political power.