After director Steve Ujlaki confirmed his movie Dangerous Religion on the convention on Public Theology and Public Coverage final February, the pastors and activists current wanted a second. They had been shook.
I had not attended the night screening as a result of, after a day of being launched to Venture 2025, I used to be already an exhausted puddle of concern.
A black, feminine colleague greeted me early the following morning and was nonetheless shook. Her takeaway was merely this: that Christian nationalism is (one more type of) racism-by-another-name; in different phrases, it’s white nationalism, maintain the Christian.
The movie gives convincing proof that this motion is racist in origin and goal, in addition to proof that Christian nationalism is simply anointed autocracy, thus the movie’s subtitle: “Christian nationalism’s unholy struggle on democracy.”
Ujlaki and his co-director Chris Jones interviewed historians, activists, and writers (together with interfaith activist Eboo Patel, considered one of S&P’s Dwelling Religious Academics). In addition they interviewed leaders and pastors from a big swath of the Christian tent: from the pastor of Patriot Church in Tennessee to the editor of Christianity At the moment (an evangelical journal based by Billy Graham) to Bishop William Barber of the Poor Individuals’s Marketing campaign (one other Dwelling Religious Trainer).
What emerges from these interviews and from historic footage is that, whereas Christian nationalism just isn’t new — Individuals throughout historical past have thought-about the U.S. a “Christian nation” “favored by God” — an excessive and divisive type of it has coalesced into the mainstream beneath Donald Trump’s Republican Social gathering.
(One level not nicely represented by the movie is that Christian nationalism is not totally partisan. Whereas within the political enviornment Christian nationalism is espoused by right-wing Republicans, mainline Protestants, who are sometimes Democrats, have supported Christian nationalism by, for example, selling the motto “in God we belief,” celebrating army holidays in church, and flying the American flag in sanctuaries.)
The present situations of Christian nationalism had been set in movement by a strategist named Paul Weyrich, who based the extraordinarily influential Heart for Nationwide Coverage and wrote a playbook for the ascendency of a theocratic state. This manifesto describes an “totally harmful” motion which might “weaken” and “finally destroy” all “current establishments.” It could make an enemy of non secular pluralism; it might de-center accommodationist republicans like Ronald Reagan (!), who betrayed Weyrich’s plan by appointing pro-choice Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Courtroom; and it might promote a mentality of “apocalyptic fervor.”
The movie does a good job of clarifying the considerably dizzying array of maneuvers that, over time, allied Christianity with a slim set of political opinions that, in flip, led to the ascendance of conservative, white, patriarchal, politicians and judges.
Right here’s only one instance of a maneuver that Dangerous Religion highlights: the Heart for Nationwide Coverage and its associates developed a community of loyalist pastors, and with their cooperation, the CNP did deep data-mining of church directories; this knowledge included self-reported psychological and behavioral well being points and coverings. The CNP then used this knowledge to focus on susceptible populations with its Christian nationalist message that voting your Christian values means voting Republican.
The cynicism Ujlaki and Jones unmask could be overwhelming within the second, however after just a few non secular practices to calm reactivity, we should push again. Resourced with the movie’s insights, we will higher defend the valuable proper that each American has to worship or not worship any God or no God. We are able to make the world safer for Muslim Individuals, Jewish Individuals, Hindu Individuals, Sikh Individuals, atheist Individuals, and the record goes on.
And maybe, seeing the utter cynicism of cloaking an influence seize in Christian phrases, we will act on behalf of Christianity itself, which is in grave hazard of detaching fully from what Jesus of Nazareth taught: excellent news for the poor and the oppressed; blessings on the meek and the peacemakers; love in your neighbor and your enemy.
