End Christian Nationalism

End Christian Nationalism

With the US presidential election now only days away, Amazing Amanda Tyler releases her new book, How to End Christian Nationalism. Tyler’s task, she tells us, is to end Christian nationalism (CN) in order to support religious freedom (Tyler, 2024, p. 2).  We Christians have a special responsibility to root out and dismantle not only CN but also the white racism CN protects.

In what follows I’d like to explicate Amanda Tyler’s military strategy for defeating CN. Then I will ask whether or not we have fully understood why some Americans would be attracted to CN and why so many evangelicals would be attracted to the MAGA Moscow wing of the Republican Party. Expanded and deepened understanding is my goal here.

Steps toward the end of Christian nationalism

How shall we achieve the cultural victory that would end Christian nationalism? Tyler’s eight chapters provide an eightfold path leading to a religiously plural American society where “faith freedom for all is commonplace” (Tyler, 2024, p. 22).

1. 

   Name and understand the threat of Christian Nationalism.

2. Ground yourself in God’s love.
3. Denounce violence.
4. Commit to the separation of church and state.
5. Take on Christian nationalism close to home.
6. Organize for change.
7. Protect religious freedom in public schools.
8. Take your place in the public square.

If we end Christian nationalism, what’s next?

Tyler wants to replace CN with religious liberty in an idealized pluralistic society.

“As Christians Against Christian Nationalism, we know we cannot only state what we are against but we also have to state what we are for…. Together we are imagining a world of justice, equity, and no fear, and together we are making that world possible through brave acts of love” (Tyler 2024, 212).

Her military strategy is to fight with weapons of love and non-violence.

How should we understand Christian Nationalism?

Tyler wants to end Christian Nationalism and replace it. What is CN as Amanda Tylor understands it? She tells us.

“Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that seeks to fuse American and Christian identities…. Christian nationalism is a gross distortion of the Christian faith that I and so many others hold dear” (Tyler, 2024, p. 26).

Because CN is a pernicious ideology that distorts both the Christian faith as well as American patriotism, Tyler says, we should end Christian nationalism. I understand that. I even agree.

Nevertheless, I ask, what will happen to those people who today espouse CN after Tyler puts an end to it? Having replaced CN with pluralism, where will today’s CNers go tomorrow? Does Tyler anticipate a perpetual antagonism between CN supporters and those who support her vision of a religiously plural society governed by religious freedom? In Tyler’s pluralistic utopia, I ask, is there any room for CNers or post-CNers?

Again, how should we understand Christian Nationalism?

Let me add to Tyler’s polemical understanding of CN another layer of understanding. I’m thinking here of sympathetic or even empathetic understanding. Empathic understanding asks us to look at our existential situation from the point of view of the CNers themselves.

Let’s ask: why might some Americans be motivated to embrace an ideology such as CN? While we’re at it let’s also ask: why might a large number of evangelical Christians express modest sympathy to CN and vote enthusiastically for MAGA candidates within the Republican Party?

For a couple of years in this Patheos column on Public Theology I have been asking such a question. I have proposed an answer that Amanda Tyler does not consider important in her understanding of CN. My answer has to do with anxiety seemingly out of control within certain segments of American society. In short, many Americans fear their place in society – their jobs, their roles in culture, their public respect – is about to be taken away. They fear being replaced. This fear of replacement prompts a flight to security in the symbolic citadel of being Christian and being American.

In trying to understand CN and its sympathizers empathically, I’ve found helpful a couple French terms – remplacement and ressentiment. People in France are undergoing cultural upheaval just as we in America are. And they’ve worked hard at understanding it.

Remplacement or ‘replacement’ identifies a widespread cultural anxiety precipitated by the perception that past securities are being eroded by too much change too fast. Those white racists driving pick-ups with American flags Tyler so despises actually fear that their jobs and their livelihoods and their purchase on culture are being replaced by women, immigrants, and affirmative action. They feel excluded from America’s future. And they become anxious over this existential threat. When anxiety is high, so is the potential for violence in both rhetoric and the back alley.

Remplacement and Ressentiment

Quickly remplacement becomes ressentiment. Those subject to resentment feel unjustly victimized by forces that seem beyond their control. Ressentiment becomes politically potent. “Resentment is an emotion that has a lot going for it in the realm of politics,” Patheos columnist Anthony Costello observes. When a group perpetually re-feels a real or imagined injustice, the group can become a mob.

What do we feel when joining a political mob? We feel “revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.” That’s what  public theologian Martin Marty observes.

Are we beginning to understand why someone might be attracted to either CN or to the MAGA wing of the Republican Party? When Amanda Tyler and the Baptist Joint Committee trumpets – you white male Christians are going to be replaced by pluralism! – the net product is remplacement anxiety expressed in ressentiment politics.

Even though Amanda Tyler and her anti-Christian Nationalist army march quite self-righteously to war against the CN enemy, the pursuit of serious understanding behooves us to try to empathize with CNers. And while were at it, to understand empathically those evangelicals who similarly feel threatened by remplacement and are tempted by  ressentiment.

To end Christian nationalism

Before we issue marching orders to the anti-Christian nationalist army to defeat CN, perhaps we should ask about the end of CN—that is, the end or goal of CN. Or at least we should try to understand CN and its sympathizers in terms of what they feel and how they perceive cultural threats.

Such efforts to understand should not threaten Amanda Tyler or other anti-Christian nationalists. In no way does a pause to understand those who feel victimized obstruct Christian moral denunciation of evil. So, if Tyler and other anti-Christian nationalists would pause a moment to understand, perhaps their cultural and political strategy might change.

If we want to end Christian nationalism, it seems to me, a political defeat in the voting booth would be great, to be sure. Yet, in the wake of the upcoming US presidential election, some kind of pastoral understanding should be summoned to bridge the chasm dug by the anti-Christian nationalists.

Envoi

In this Patheos series, I’ve been advancing the following thesis.

Several Ex-Evangelicals along with Progressive Protestants are displacing their anger at Donald Trump’s MAGA party onto evangelicals by painting evangelicals with the colors of Christian nationalism. That is, Anti-Christian Nationalism blames white evangelicals for Christian nationalism. This is a waste of healthy political energy that should be directed against MAGA Republicans.

If this thesis holds, it asks the Christians among us to attempt empathetically to understand both Christian nationalists and those evangelicals who find security in supporting MAGA Republicans. It’s consistent with Tyler’s emphasis on love and non-violence.

Conclusion

If Amanda Tyler is serious about creating a future democratic society characterized by pluralism governed by religious liberty, this ideal society should make room for those among us who are CNers and evangelicals. These segments of our society who now feel threatened must be absorbed into Tyler’s pluralism in such a way that the threat of exclusion is diminished if not eliminated. How should we go about that?

PT 3254 End Christian Nationalism

Christian Nationalism Resources

PT 3247 Anti-Anti-Christian Nationalism, Part 1

PT 3248 Anti-Anti-Christian Nationalism, Part 2

PT 3249 Anti-Anti-Christian Nationalism, Part 3

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For Patheos, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3^rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. He recently published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com and Patheos blog site on Public Theology.

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References

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Butler, A., 2021. White Evangelical Racism. Chapel Hill NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Cooper-White, P., 2021. The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide. Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press.

Decker, A., 2022. Red State Christians: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage it leaves behind.. New York: Broadleaf.

DuMez, K. K., 2020. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. New York: Norton.

Gorski, P. & Perry, S., 2022. The Flag and the Cross: Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hendrickson, O., 2023. Christians Against Christianity: How Right Wing Evangelicals are Destroying our Nation and our Faith. Boston: Beacon.

Heritage, 2023. Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership, Washington DC: Heritage Foundation.

Ingersoll, J., 2015. Building God’s Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford Academic; https://academic.oup.com/book/10399.

Miller, P. D., 2022. The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism?. s.l.:Christian Audio.

Peters, T., 2023. The Voice of Public Theology. Adelaide: ATF.

Tyler, A., 2024. How To End Christian Nationalism. Minneapolis MN: 1517 Media / Broadleaf.

Whitehead, A. & Perry, S., 2022. Taking Back America for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wolfe, S., 2023. The Case for Christian Nationalism. Moscow ID: Canon Press.