The Christian Nationalist Hydra: In Era of Trump, Christian Nationalism Has Many Faces - TPM – Talking Points Memo

[discobot]

I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two decades. Over the past three years, I began to more frequently use the term “Christian nationalism” to describe the movement I cover. But I did not start using a new term to suggest its proponents’ ideology had changed. Instead, the term had come into more common usage in the Trump era, now regularly used by academics, journalists, and pro-democracy activists to describe a movement that insists America is a “Christian nation” — that is, an illiberal, nominally democratic theocracy, rather than a pluralistic secular democracy.

---

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1485781

[Fire_Joni_Ernst]

I heard this program yesterday, re-broadcasted on Iowa Public Radio. The interviewer spoke with NPR’s Sarah McCammon, formerly of Iowa Public Radio. She spoke of her own experience in an evangelical family and the social/political expectations of adherents. She spoke of the mental health trauma that often results. And the challenges for those who wish to break away in her new book ”The Exvangelicals” I thought that this hour long program offered some insight into this subgroup.

NPR correspondent examines her religious upbringing in 'The Exvangelicals'

[benthere]

"Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst." – C.S. Lewis

[canyoncountry]

Onward, Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus,
Going on before.

[isakindamagic]

What did Hillary say again, about a broad right wing conspiracy…

Truth is the church has been pimping for the rich since the beginning of churches.

[john_adams]

I think I have a solution for this Christo-fascist bullshit. The white evangelical “foot soldiers” are the dipshit mouthbreathing trailer trash cousin fuckers who adore Fat Boy. And they’re all stirred up with the ungodly liberals in places like New York and San Francisco. But, see here’s the fun part. These dipshits have never been to “liberal shitholes” like those because, well, they’re liberal shitholes ruled by Satan himself. That means that these dipshits spend their entire lives in fascist small towns under theocratic domination. They go from one to another and never go anywhere else. So, what if we created a media jamming system of sorts, so that the only news these a-holes get about liberal places is completely faked, so that it looks like Gilead is real. And they’re stupid so they’ll never figure it out, and those of us whoa re still sane can live out our lives in peace! C’mon let’s start building. Who’s with me?

[generalsternwood]

The problem is that they already have an option to live in a parallel society now. They’ve created charter schools, there are Christian universities, they have their own residential enclaves.

While that is what they say they want, the fact they have already achieved it and they are redoubling their efforts shows they actually want to make the country uninhabitable for the rest of us.

They could at this point leave well enough alone, but instead we get Mike Johnson, who seems so tidy and mannered that no one seems too worried about his extreme views — a pol that puts the “anal” back in the “banality of evil.”

[philmore]

The real problem is TPM doesn’t publish enough depictions of Donald Trump.

[nightshadow]

Nowhere does Jesus figure into this movement. What he said about loving your brother is considered weak for these Old Testament retreads.

[lastroth]

Yep Christian Nationalists only want to talk the man in charge-God.

[tindalos]

@discobot

The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps.

Hydra is a useful metaphor but this is not a single organism. The critical point is to remember they can always work together and fight each other for orthodoxy after they subdue us or, more accurately, a state that attempts to protect basic human rights for everyone.

They aren’t all Christianists either but the task of breaking a state protecting women, minorities, labor et al is what they all have in common; e.g., there is a reason conservative libertarians like Ron and Rand Paul, J.D. Vance, et al operate in the Republican party.

[FreddGMuggs]

I started using the term christian extremists in the bush 2 admin. It seems a fair term given the still current use of islamic extremists. The similarities of the extremist group are as significant as their differences.

[jim195]

I made a comment on a different thread here the other day, quoting De Tocqueville, who said that everybody he talked to, when asked to explain the vitality of religion in the USA (1831), said that it was due to the separation of church and state. I think this has been confirmed in the last two decades: as the politicization of Christianity by the evangelical Right has proceeded, young people have turned away.

When being loudly “Christian” brings power and preference, the young will see hypocrisy and opportunism, rather than inspiration.

Christian nationalist politics just supercharges this process. It will be a clarion call for the in-gathering of ambitious chameleons. This, in turn, will undermine real faith communities, as all will be suspected of hypocrisy.

[dangoodbar]

My question is, and I wish the article would have answered it, is what does this movement mean to the rights of White women.

While we know what this movement means for non Christians and non-Protestant and non-Catholic Christians to include Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses and especially everyone who is not White.

But what would a “Christian Nation” mean to White women? That is in a religion where the pronoun for the one God is “HE”, who has one son and apparently daughters don’t count, what would their governing a nation with these beliefs and principles mean to the rights of White women?

[tindalos]

@generalsternwood

we get Mike Johnson, who seems so tidy and mannered that no one seems too worried about his extreme views

Aye, reminds me of this concerning Johnson’s sociocultural background:

He is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they “love the sinner but hate the sin,” where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt. – Charle’s Blow

although the kicker in Blow’s piece for me was really this: “Trumpism is a religion developed to serve a man. What happens when it evolves into a pillar of an established creed and is viewed as a way to serve God? Johnson has taken that ethos into his politics.”

[indyundecided]

A bit off topic, but what’s your bet for Trump’s Monday play?

1. Your honor, I can’t go to trial. I broke my neck, see this neck brace and wheelchair?
2. I can’t go to trial, my legal team is incompetent so I fired them.
3. I can’t go to trial, inflation, Ukraine, crooked Joe, and I shit my pants.
4. I shouldn’t even have a trial, I’m the president. Mike Lindell has the evidence!

[eaharrison]

And they want everyone else to live in their parallel society as well.

Just stay in the back-end of beyond – physically and metaphorically. The rest of us are enjoying LIFE.

[eaharrison]

And don’t forget the part about paying your taxes – render unto Caesar, blah blah blah.

[alabamaken]

I am surprised that we never hear anyone discuss the Constitution’s provision in Article VI that
“no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

[richardinjax]

Christian Right, if both words are taken in their real definitions is an oxymoron. No Christian could side with billionaire tax cuts or treating “the least among us” as the Right currently does. GOP politics doesn’t work without hate and Christianity doesn’t work with it.

So fuck em. Evangelical means squat. Biblical World View means stone age view. It’s all BS and we should feel comfortable addressing it as such. No one want’s to take shit from these guys…they however want to control you.