The revision of the revision of the Department of Defense’s “religion codes” was something of a win for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.
Prominent LDS figures had objected to the first revision to the list not designating their church as a sub-category of “Christian” — along with the Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and the unworkably small set of other Christian denominations included in the new, “streamlined” list. The Pentagon responded by removing that sub-category.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who spent the weekend complaining about what he perceived as a snub in the initial revision, was pleased and grateful for the latest change, even though the government list still does not characterize his LDS church as “Christian.” What matters to Lee, it seems, is that his own MAGA Republican regime is not explicitly excluding the LDS Church as part of its “anti-DEI” crusade (yet). Latter-day Saints are still, for now, included in the limited diversity tolerated by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s white/Christian nationalist agenda.
This whole business can help us to explore the difference between two very different things that sometimes both get described with the words “Christian nationalism.”
On the one hand, there’s a sort of generic, flag-waving, “God Bless America” patriotism that merges with or emerges from some strains of American Christianity. This includes a providential view of American history — the idea that our country and its founding were uniquely blessed and chosen and guided by divine inspiration or even divine intervention. This is influenced by (and exploited by) political ideologies, and it clearly has political implications, but it’s not necessarily a deliberately political view. It mostly comes from personal affection.
It works something like this: I love my God and my church and they are very important to me. I also love my country and it is very important to me. Therefore it is easiest for me to assume that these dual allegiances and dual devotions are (or, at least, can be) unified, thereby also unifying my identity. Because identity is involved, this can be a fraught and frightening assumption, but it doesn’t always become belligerently defensive or politically assertive. People can and do hold this view of godandcountry without feeling threatened by pluralism or perceiving a synagogue in town as cause for alarm.
I have an extremely Baptist aversion to this kind of star-spangled, red-white-and-blue, nationalistic Christianity. An American flag in the sanctuary of a church makes my skin crawl and I’m happy to offer a long-winded, multi-pronged rant about why I consider that an abomination that leads to desolation. I also think this view leads to a shallow, dangerously credulous, form of “my country right or wrong” pseudo-patriotism that abdicates the responsibility of citizenship and weakens our democracy. I could give you a long rant on that subject as well.
But my point here is that many American Christians hold some version of this generic, civil-religious outlook with its mutually reinforcing (and mutually shallowing) merging of patriotism and religion and that they do so without becoming theocrats who want to see the full force of law used to establish, to restrict and to require, their particular form of religion.
And that, of course, is the other thing often referred to as “Christian nationalism.” This is more than just a generic, unexplored vibe of “I love God and I love America.” It is an explicit agenda — a politics — that sees One True Religion as the only legitimate option and thus as the only religion that ought to be recognized and, ultimately, permitted by law. This is the Christian Nationalism that hung Mary Dyer on Boston Common and chased Roger Williams out of Massachusetts. It is the Christian Nationalism of Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam. It seeks cultural and legal hegemony and formal establishment.
The LDS Church is a helpful case-study for this distinction between these two very different forms of “Christian nationalism” or nationalistic Christianity. The first, generically patriotic version is quite common among Latter-day Saints. They tend to hold a providential view of American history that’s even more explicit than David Barton’s myth making. The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (formerly known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) can do a very stirring rendition of “God Bless America.”
But most Latter-day Saints also understand that they are — and will likely always be — a minority religion here in America.
Some LDS believers may seek a kind of cultural or even legal hegemony in those parts of Utah where they predominate, but this tends to be more defensive than expansionist — more about seeking enclaves than seeking empire. Latter-day Saints don’t talk about taking over America the way a Reconstructionist like Doug Wilson (Hegseth’s mentor) does. And because they appreciate what it means to be a minority religion — one that has faced real, sometimes lethally violent, persecution — they tend to understand that their own free exercise of religion depends on the Establishment Clause.
When you realize that your particular religion is not likely to be the one that would be established, you’re less susceptible to demagoguery that rails against the separation of church and state or that pretends not to understand that everyone’s free exercise of religion requires secular government and the prohibition of religious establishment.
White evangelicals often indulge in a fantasy of “persecution,” conjuring up imaginary resentments and grievances like a “war on Christmas” or the lack of state-mandated prayer in schools. But the LDS Church can remember actual persecution and thus doesn’t have the luxury of such role-playing. The memory of persecution and the simple arithmetic of being a minority religion usually keeps their patriotic godandcountry impulses from turning into the full-on pursuit of legal hegemony.
Theocratic Christian nationalists often find general support from culturally conservative Latter-day Saints. Back in the ’90s, someone half-jokingly said that the goal of white evangelical politics seemed to be “to make the world safe for Mormons.” Evangelical and conservative Latter-day Saint culture overlap in many ways — the suburban whiteness, the fear of feminism, the antipathy to everything about “the 1960s” and the pretense that this aversion is mainly about Woodstock and not about Selma (even though it’s much more about the latter). The sheer Donny and Marie of it all. So white evangelical political crusaders from Jerry Falwell to Pete Hegseth have always found support for their cause from LDS believers and those LDS believers may even say amen to generic religious-right talk about “taking back America for God.”
But once that talk gets more specific and more insistent about legislating or establishing religion, many LDS folks recognize that they’re not going to be included in the “Christian America” being described and prescribed by evangelical nationalists.
Some religious minorities see the existential threat of sectarian government and sectarian law and respond to that threat to their religious freedom by fighting to defend the First Amendment and the separation of church and state. They recognize that the free exercise of their religion depends upon secular government. This is why most minority religious groups in America have the ACLU on speed dial.
But other religious minorities pursue a different strategy. Some politically ultra-conservative LDS believers or Jews (think of the rabbis who make a living on the Christian-right circuit) seem to think it will be possible for them to carve out some kind of enclave or reservation in the sectarian “Christian America” dreamed of by their theocratic political allies. If they help their friends now, surely their friends will look out for them later.
I think of this as the “Lex Luthor, King of Australia” approach.
Latter-day Saints like Sen. Mike Lee who have hitched their fortunes to the MAGA vision of sectarian rule are like Gene Hackman’s cartoon villain in Superman 2. Luthor figures that General Zod and the other super-powered Kryptonian criminals will probably conquer the whole world, so he offers to help them — hoping to thereby convince them to give him one little piece of that world as his own. Maybe if he helps them take over everything else, they’ll let him have Australia.
There’s a certain logic to such a strategy. But once you kneel before Zod, you’re at Zod’s mercy. And General Zod is not generally known for being merciful.
The generic enthusiasm for flag-waving “God Bless America” civil religion can also be an expression of something like Mike Lee and Lex Luthor’s attempt to transact a deal. Some religious minorities may hope that by performing patriotism and singing along with Lee Greenwood’s greatest hit they will curry favor with the sectarian hegemons and be thought of fondly by them once they come into power. This performance of “patriotism” can be a way for minority religious groups to say “See? Even though we’re not exactly like you, we’re still just like you in some ways — just look at our lapel-pin flags!”
Maybe that works to some extent. But I’m not sure it’s all that effective when you’re dealing with theocratic sectarian Christian nationalists who ultimately view all minority religions as the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel.
(For a look at a different minority religious group’s attempt to strike a bargain with the sectarian nationalism of the MAGA movement, see Karen E. Park and Emma Cieslik’s report on one Adventist group’s attempt to make a splash at the MAGA-theocrat “Rededicate 250” rally last month on the National Mall.)
* Top officials in the LDS church announced a few years ago that they no longer preferred the use of “Mormon” as a proper noun or adjective. That’s their prerogative and their choice and I don’t have to understand it to respect it. I just wish the change had come with some viable, colloquial alternatives that matched the efficiency of the church’s former terminology, which offered a single two-syllable word for use as both noun and adjective.
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