{"id":25838,"date":"2022-06-19T03:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=25838"},"modified":"2022-06-18T11:57:28","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T17:57:28","slug":"which-god-are-white-christian-nationalists-praying-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2022\/06\/which-god-are-white-christian-nationalists-praying-to.html","title":{"rendered":"Which God are White Christian Nationalists Praying To?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A couple days ago I got an e-mail from Karen Phillippi, who\u2019s taking one of the Under the Ancient Oaks online classes<\/a>. Now, I do my best to answer questions from students. But most of the time, those answers are a line or two \u2013 a paragraph at most. I started answering this one and before I knew it I had written 1200 words. Apparently I have thoughts on this matter. So I cleaned it up and turned it into a blog post.<\/p>\n

Karen asked:<\/p>\n

[The demon] Astaroth is listed as the ruler of the Americas. When evangelicals pray, and I\u2019m including white nationalists, given their agenda, are they automatically invoking Astaroth?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a good question. It\u2019s also a rather complicated question. It has no definitive answer, but contemplating it and suggesting provisional answers can be quite helpful.<\/p>\n

What do we know and what can we infer?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Who are <\/em>they praying to?<\/h2>\n

In the interest of fairness, let me start by saying that not all Evangelicals are white Christian nationalists\u2026 though the overlap between the two groups is considerable.<\/p>\n

The white Christian nationalists aren\u2019t praying to Jesus \u2013 that much is obvious. They may use His name, but they use it very much in vain. I saw a meme a short while back that said \u201cconservative Christians love to quote the Bible \u2013 except for the words of Jesus.\u201d They ignore the parable of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Lost Sheep, and the whole concept of teaching with stories. They ignore the Sermon on the Mount and the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, twisting that into \u201cuse political power to force others to live by our moral code\u201d (or rather, the moral code they hold up for others, while they live exactly like they want to live).<\/p>\n

Most of the Christian nationalists are praying to a God I\u2019ll call \u201cYahweh-Paul-Calvin\u201d \u2013 the vengeful God of the Old Testament (who is not<\/em> the God of contemporary Judaism, as many Jewish people have told me. Let\u2019s leave Jews out of this \u2013 for the most part they aren\u2019t part of the problem), filtered through the missionary zeal and misogyny of Saul of Tarsus, and presented in the context of the cruelty, patriarchy, and might-makes-right of John Calvin.<\/p>\n

All of the United States\u2019 core problems \u2013 slavery and its aftermath, environmental desecration, misogyny and sexism, hyper-individualism and disconnection, unrestrained exploitative capitalism \u2013 can be traced back to Calvinism. Not that Calvinism is our only problem or even our first problem, but it\u2019s our core philosophical and metaphysical problem.<\/p>\n

The multiplicity of the Gods<\/h2>\n

The multiplicity of the Gods<\/a> is complicated, but for polytheists it\u2019s a real thing. In ancient times Zeus Olympios was understood and worshipped differently from Zeus Chthonios and Zeus Aetnaeus, and yet all were \u2013 and are \u2013 Zeus. Syncretism is real: Serapis is the syncretism of Osiris and Apis. His syncretism may have been politically motivated, but He was actively worshipped for 700 years. The many names for \u201cGod\u201d in the Old Testament are a clear sign of syncretism \u2013 Gods who were understood and worshipped separately were combined (or combined themselves) into one God.<\/p>\n

Monotheists will say this is simply different people calling the One God by different names. They are entitled to do so. This is a question of worldview, of foundational assumptions. Monotheists begin with the assumption that there is only one God. I\u2019m a polytheist, who looks at the wide diversity of how different people understand and worship widely different Gods in wildly different ways and comes to the conclusion that there are many Gods.<\/p>\n

We live in a society dominated by monotheism in general and Protestant Christianity in particular. It\u2019s important that we contemplate these questions on our own terms and not default to the foundational assumptions of those who wiped out our ancestors\u2019 religions, more by coercion and demographics than by honest persuasion. I believe in respecting the right of everyone to self-identify and to describe their religions on their own terms. But that doesn\u2019t mean I have to accept their interpretations for myself. If I\u2019m going to be faithful to my own religion, I can\u2019t. That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m going to confront them on the street or go into their spaces telling them they\u2019re wrong. But in my own spaces \u2013 including this blog \u2013 I\u2019m going to do my best to understand what they\u2019re doing on my terms as a polytheist.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Multiple, not dual<\/h2>\n

I think assuming white Christian nationalists are praying to Astaroth (or any other demon) plays too much into the dualism of the monotheist worldview. It assumes that if they aren\u2019t worshipping the One God (because He is assumed to be good and they are not) they must be worshipping a demon. That\u2019s too dualistic for me.<\/p>\n

I think a better explanation is that they\u2019re praying to a syncretic God whose values are conquest and domination, materialism and literalism, hierarchy and patriarchy, and the rejection of Nature and her goodness and pleasures.<\/p>\n

Which is one of the reasons I worship a God of Nature<\/a> and of wildness, and a Goddess of Sovereignty<\/a> \u2013 among others.<\/p>\n

Demons on a spectrum of spirits<\/h2>\n

If we reject the duality of monotheism, we\u2019re left with the question of where demons fit into a polytheist worldview. Because we find demons \u2013 who I\u2019ll loosely define as spirits who are generally antagonistic to humans \u2013 in virtually every culture. To say \u201cthe Gods of the old religion became the devils of the new religion\u201d is an oversimplification, even though it\u2019s likely true in some cases \u2013 Astaroth (whose name has origins in the Goddesses Ishtar and Astarte) being a prime example.<\/p>\n

We have to walk a narrow line between taking the world\u2019s many religions at face value and falling into the trap of literalism. If, as I do, we assume that all spirits exist on a spectrum from the simplest and most basic to the strongest and most complex \u2013 with Gods being at the far end of that spectrum \u2013 then demons can be assumed to be spirits who are less powerful than Gods but more powerful than humans.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that their stories have been told by their enemies (that\u2019s changing, but that\u2019s another topic for another time, and probably for another writer), but also that our ancestors who warned against dealing with them weren\u2019t fools. Jason Miller\u2019s book Consorting With Spirits<\/a><\/em> is a good, practical, experienced-base guide to why we might want to deal with them, and now we can do so effectively. That said, I have my hands full with my Gods, ancestors, land spirits, and various and sundry Fair Folk (who are not demons, as some Christians have suggested, but who are close to them on the spectrum of spirits).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Affirming our own worldview and recognizing our allies<\/h2>\n

So, what does all this mean for us as Pagans and polytheists?<\/p>\n

The first and most important thing is to remember to interpret what we see through a polytheist worldview and to not default to a Christian worldview. We need not and should not tell Christians they\u2019re praying to different God than they think, but we absolutely should understand this in our own spaces and especially in our own personal interpretations.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important for us to pay attention to what we see. Karen\u2019s observation that white Christian nationalists aren\u2019t praying to Jesus is an accurate one. We need to remember that not only are all Christians not the same, they aren\u2019t even praying to the same God \u2013 even if they think they are.<\/p>\n

It also reminds us that liberal, moderate, and other inclusive Christians are our friends and allies, even if we see the world and the Gods differently. We cannot worship together, but we can work together to build a better world here and now.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a further question behind this question: what conflicts are going on in the world of spirit? We don\u2019t like to think about these things, but the stories of our ancestors \u2013 including our Christian ancestors \u2013 speak of such conflicts with some regularity. I find such things incredibly interesting, but I have my hands full dealing with the conflicts in this world. Still, I do wonder\u2026<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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