The Christian nationalist movement is gaining ground. It is emerging from the shadows in a big way. To some it is just noise made by religionists who want everyone to know that they have faith. To others, they are seen as revolutionaries determined to have their way in pressuring Americans into adhering to their narrow version of Christianity. But to all of us, the Christian nationalist movement must be seen and heard as a movement for the identity – or the soul – of America, decades in the making.
Religionists are working furiously to force their beliefs on everyone else, for all of us to accept and live as they would have us live, and make laws to ensure it. It matters naught that we do not BELIEVE as they do, Christian nationalists want this country to be a Christian theocracy, and we will all be expected – required -- to behave (at least in public) as their brand of Christianity dictates.
It has happened most successfully and forcefully with the right to not be pregnant. It happened with the SCOTUS ruling on the right to determine health insurance coverage according to the employer’s religious beliefs, on the premise that a closely-held corporation has righteous religious beliefs its employees must accept or quit the company. It is happening with practices and laws that allow individuals and businesses to avoid doing business with people whose religious beliefs do not align with their own, in exceptions to using taxpayer monies to fund religious education, and to gerrymander voting districts to eliminate (heathen) Democrat majorities. This is dangerous to maintaining any idea of freedom and liberty we have ever understood. Witness the turmoil all around us.
I have plenty of arguments against these beliefs, since the rationale for them is based on an intentionally prescribed and selected set of writings by Church leaders eager to codify a patriarchal and misogynist Christianity. Scriptures are based only on faith, not on reason, history, philosophy, knowledge, or science. You can’t argue against faith. It has no logic, no reason, and no evidentiary basis. But the transmogrification of stories about how one group of “chosen,” oppressed people (the Israelites, who wrote the stories) were encouraged by their God to kill, enslave and ruin all non-believers so they could have a land of their own to call home resurges (not at all for the first time) in the present. Christian nationalists believe that white Americans are God’s chosen people today. This misappropriation is serious and potentially deadly.
Apparently, and thanks to preachers and “prophets,” today’s Christian God thinks women have too much autonomy. According to the thousands of people who claim to know God’s mind, women believe they are more significant than they actually are. They have become “like” men. They want rights to earn a living, make decisions, and be independent, thinking human beings. Today’s Christian God decries how the family doesn’t look the way it is supposed to, with one man, one woman, and several of their own offspring in one domicile, even though this is a recent phenomenon. Today’s Christian God thinks children are unruly, disrespectful, and not afraid enough of their authority figures and should be physically and emotionally “trained up.” Today’s Christian God thinks learning how the Earth came to be is willfully and wrongfully distorted by believers in science, those apostates! Today’s Christian God wants warriors to bring the United States back to him.
This is rather unnerving. Are we headed for armed Crusades against the perceived enemies of Christians – heathens and pagans and pro-choice people? For a renewal of the Inquisition? For self-anointed messengers of God to call for the taking up of weapons to subdue non-believers? For pro-life people to assert their beliefs by obliterating the disagreeable with the guns that God wants them to carry?
The threat is real and it is unfolding in so many corners in this country. We cannot allow this to happen. We are smarter, more conscious, and more ethical than this. This brand of Christianity (not one that God would recognize) will take no prisoners. It’s a brand that allows certain men, who say they have heard God speak to them, to rule. It allows these men and their apostles to force women to produce many Christian children and teach them Christian nationalism. It annihilates the very idea of autonomy from our vocabulary because God, through his preachers and prophets, decides who controls whom. Only Christian teachings are taught to children – science is a threat, as is a true rendering of history. We must embrace authoritarian rule where only a few speak for God and everyone else is required to obey those few. Where the contradictions of their scriptures and faith enable them to say whatever they want and justify it.
What motivates these people is immense hubris, the desire for unquestioned authority and power, the wealth that accrues to the powerful including the property which females will become once again, and the ability to stir up fear and chaos to suppress opposition.
The best defense of democracy is a good offense for totalitarianism, right? Do not let these people win elections. Do not let them corrupt our laws, take away our hard-won rights, and instill fear. We must pay attention. Don’t let this go. We just can’t.