Trump and Christian Nationalism
A satisfying but unlikely explanation.
In his latest column, David French offers “One Reason the Trump Fever Won’t Break.” While I agree with his conclusion, I’m skeptical of his argument.
The more I consider the challenge posed by Christian nationalism, the more I think most observers and critics are paying too much attention to the wrong group of Christian nationalists. We mainly think of Christian nationalism as a theology or at least as a philosophy. In reality, the Christian nationalist movement that actually matters is rooted in emotion and ostensibly divine revelation, and it’s that emotional and spiritual movement that so stubbornly clings to Donald Trump.
While I’ve read a bit about the phenomenon and even posted on it a couple of times* since the Capitol Riots brought it into focus, I must confess to making exactly this mistake and therefore finding it confusing.
Three related stories illustrate the challenge.
First, Katherine Stewart wrote a disturbing report for The New Republic about the latest iteration of the ReAwaken America Tour, a radical right-wing road show sponsored by Charisma News, a Pentecostal Christian publication. The tour has attracted national attention, including in The Times, and features a collection of the far right’s most notorious conspiracy theorists and Christian populists.
The rhetoric at these events, which often attract crowds of thousands, is unhinged. There, as Stewart reported, you’ll hear a pastor named Mark Burns declare, “This is a God nation, this is a Jesus nation, and you will never take my God and my gun out of this nation.” You’ll also hear him say, “I have come ready to declare war on Satan and every race-baiting Democrat that tries to destroy our way of life here in the United States of America.” You’ll hear the right-wing radio host Stew Peters call for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0” and death for Anthony Fauci and Hunter Biden. The same speaker taunted the Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor Fani Willis by shouting: “Big Fani. Big fat Fani. Big fat Black Fani Willis.”
I was blissfully aware of ReAwaken America, Charisma News, and Mark Burns until now. They sound like garden-variety bigots, unmoored from Christianity. But, again, that’s because I came of age with politically-forward Evangelical groups like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and saw them as being grounded in theology, if a selective one.
Then there’s Thursday’s report in The Times describing how an anti-Trump conservative group with close ties to the Club for Growth is finding that virtually nothing is shaking Trump voters’ confidence in Trump. As the group wrote in a memo to donors, “Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability.” Even video evidence of Trump making “liberal” or “stupid” comments failed to shake supporters’ faith in him.
I don’t know that we needed a focus group to tell us this. We’ve got eight years of Trump behaving abominably—everything from the “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape to a civil finding of rape to a judicial finding of massive fraud—with no impact on his core support.
And finally, we cannot forget the astounding finding of a HarrisX poll for The Deseret News, showing that more Republicans see Donald Trump as a “person of faith” than see openly religious figures like Mitt Romney, Tim Scott and Mike Pence, Trump’s own (very evangelical) vice president, that way. It’s an utterly inexplicable result, until you understand the nature of the connection between so many Christian voters and Donald Trump.
But if this is explained by “Christian nationalism,” then it’s a huge movement, not a fringe. While only ~25% identify as Republican (identical to the number who identify as Democrat in a recent Axios poll), that number goes to ~43% when you include leaners. I’m skeptical that their behavior is mostly explained by some mysterious quasi-religious movement rather than sheer partisanship.
In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, there was a tremendous surge of interest in Christian nationalism. Christian displays were common in the crowd at the Capitol. Rioters and protesters carried Christian flags, Christian banners and Bibles. They prayed openly, and a Dispatch reporter in the crowd told me that in the late afternoon Christian worship music was blaring from loudspeakers.
But I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t true. Christian symbology and rituals have been a part of rural, and certainly Southern, culture since time immemorial.
I started to hear questions I’d never heard before: What is Christian nationalism and how is it different from patriotism?
I’ve long thought that the best single answer to that question comes from a church history professor at Baylor named Thomas Kidd. In the days before Jan. 6, when apocalyptic Christian rhetoric about the 2020 election was building to a fever pitch, Kidd distinguished between intellectual or theological Christian nationalism and emotional Christian nationalism.
The intellectual definition is contentious. There are differences, for example, among Catholic integralism, which specifically seeks to “integrate” Catholic religious authority with the state; Protestant theonomy, which “believes that civil law should follow the example of Israel’s civil and judicial laws under the Mosaic covenant”; and Pentecostalism’s Seven Mountain Mandate, which seeks to place every key political and cultural institution in the United States under Christian control.
But walk into Christian MAGA America and mention any one of those terms, and you’re likely to be greeted with a blank look. “Actual Christian nationalism,” Kidd argues, “is more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” He’s right. Essays and books about philosophy and theology are important for determining the ultimate health of the church, but on the ground or in the pews? They’re much less important than emotion, prophecy and spiritualism.
So, doesn’t this undermine the whole argument? There’s this thing—or, rather, an overlapping group of vaguely similar things—that almost nobody in “Christian MAGA America” has heard of. And yet it explains Christian MAGA America?
That’s . . . implausible.
Arguments about the proper role of virtue in the public square, for example, or arguments over the proper balance between order and liberty, are helpless in the face of prophecies, like the declarations from Christian “apostles” that Donald Trump is God’s appointed leader, destined to save the nation from destruction. Sometimes there’s no need for a prophet to deliver the message. Instead, Christians will claim that the Holy Spirit spoke to them directly. As one longtime friend told me, “David, I was with you on opposing Trump until the Holy Spirit told me that God had appointed him to lead.”
Trump got over 74 million votes in the 2020 election. How many of those voters were persuaded by the Holy Spirit?
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the “rage and joy” of MAGA America. Outsiders see the rage and hatred directed at them and miss that a key part of Trump’s appeal is the joy and fellowship that Trump supporters feel with each other. But there’s one last element that cements that bond with Trump: faith, including a burning sense of certainty that by supporting him, they are instruments of God’s divine plan.
I skimmed the second link, an article by Damon Berry in the journal Nova Religio arguing “the conspiratorial and millennialist narratives propagated by those associated with the New Apostolic Reformation” explains evangelical Christian support for Trump. But it handwaves the obvious objections that those voters have strongly supported the Republican nominee for decades and harbored an especial distaste for Hillary Clinton, the only viable alternative.
For this reason, I’ve started answering questions about Christian nationalism by saying it’s not serious, but it’s very dangerous. It’s not a serious position to argue that this diverse, secularizing country will shed liberal democracy for Catholic or Protestant religious rule. But it’s exceedingly dangerous and destabilizing when millions of citizens believe that the fate of the church is bound up in the person they believe is the once and future president of the United States.
For sure! But is it really “millions”? And how many millions? There are over 330 million Americans, after all, a couple million believe just about anything you can think of.
That’s why the Trump fever won’t break. That’s why even the most biblically based arguments against Trump fall on deaf ears. That’s why the very act of Christian opposition to Trump is often seen as a grave betrayal of Christ himself. In 2024, this nation will wrestle with Christian nationalism once again, but it won’t be the nationalism of ideas. It will be a nationalism rooted more in emotion and mysticism than theology. The fever may not break until the “prophecies” change, and that is a factor that is entirely out of our control.
Again, I’d like to see some empirical evidence that demonstrates just how much of Trump’s support is based on “Christian nationalism” versus that based on simple partisanship (a belief that he’s our best chance of ousting Biden), white nationalism, or other political and cultural factors.
Fundamentally, the notion that some irrational force explains Trump’s hold on French’s and my former party is comforting. Trump, after all, rejects many of the precepts that we held to be fundamental to conservative politics. In terms of foreign policy, domestic policy, and personal morality, he would have been soundly rejected as recently as 2012.
Alas, I continue to believe something simpler is going on. The society is changing rapidly in a way that scares and/or disgusts large swaths of society. Whites are becoming a minority. Men are becoming less powerful and, indeed, less necessary. (Which explains why Trump is moderately more popular with Black and Hispanic men than recent Republicans who are demonstrably less racist.) Indeed, the whole idea of two distinct sexes is under challenge. While there’s some substantial overlap with Evangelical Christianity and various fringe religiosity and these grievances, I’ll need a lot more evidence than some anecdotes to be persuaded that they’re the driving factors.
_______________________
*See “Religion and the Capitol Attack” (July 7, 2021) and “Christian Nationalism and American Democracy” (March 26, 2022) and Steven Taylor’s “Evangelical Politics in the Time of Polarization and Covid” (October 21, 2021)
I think this is largely the case (though I would separate out “White Christian Nationalism” from Evangelical Christianity).
There isn’t a single cause of Trumpism–though the factors you listed above significantly contribute to it–especially when it comes to the primaries.
Once he’s the nominee then general partnership takes over.
The Seven Mountains Mandate is often linked to something called the NAR – New Apostolic Reformation and is pretty politically active. Ted Cruz and some other politicians can be linked to it. This stuff is sometimes called “Dominionism” by outsiders, not themselves.
I have been keeping a little file on the NAR, here are a couple of my linkies:
https://sojo.net/articles/distorted-gospel-charlottesville-rally-keeps-spreading-white-christian-nationalism
https://religiondispatches.org/new-apostolic-reformation-faces-profound-rift-due-to-trump-prophecies-and-spiritual-manipulation-of-the-prophetic-gift/
I don’t know what fraction of Trump’s support comes from Christian Nationalism, but it’s a significant fraction, as a wild-assed guess maybe 30% or so. And in the same way the Freedom Caucus influences the House GOP caucus, it is a tail that wags a lot of dog.
Consider too things like the Jehrico March linked to, for example, Jan. 6.
I suspect that French makes the mistake of assuming that believers are almost necessarily part of an organized ecclesiastical movement. Like, you have traditional and liberal Catholics, or Southern Baptists and National Baptists, etc. You pick one and you do what your elders tell you.
Maybe that was true at one point, but no longer I guess.
Many Trump supporters are both Christian and nationalist (although “nativist” would be more accurate), which, to be fair, makes them Christian nationalists. But that doesn’t mean that they are connected to some organized Christian nationalist movement.
Instead of a Church leadership telling believers what to think and defining what it means to belong to a certain denomination, you now have believers doing their own thing. And they don’t care about theological consistency.
I am quite certain that there are many people who consider themselves serious Christians, are much in favor of the 2A and stand-your-ground laws (despite what the Bible says about turning the other cheek), support Trump, and hardly ever (if at all) go to Church.
For them, being “Christian” is part of their self-constructed identity, much than an adherence to certain theological teachings that are rooted in an established and organized religious tradition.
Again, I suspect that French (due to his own background) is blind to this possibility.
More on Jehrico March
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/pro-trump-rallies-dc-attract-extremists-erupt-violence
James, you are viewing this through a very different lens than me.
Sure, they don’t know the theological terms for what they believe, but they certainly believe it, and in vast numbers. Should we be governed as a Christian nation? Hell yes! Should Muslims, gays and Jews hold office? Hell no – they haven’t found the truth. People’s motivations for getting behind someone are usually complex, but it seems obviously true that tens of millions of Trump’s voters are at least partially motivated by their belief that Trump is somehow protecting and advancing Christianity.
A vanishingly small number, of course. But given any “religious” movement what percentage of people are motivated by actual faith? I would guess that it’s in the single digits. Being part of movement is the primary motivation of, well, being part of movement. Feeling that you are part of something bigger than you and important is what motivates most people to throw in with a movement. Centuries ago, how many of the “Christians” who marched off to war actually even knew what transubstantiation was or had actual beliefs on the Virgin Mary’s role in the heavens? Did that make the people they killed protecting those tenets any less dead?
I don’t consider the question of how many of the 74 million who voted for Trump are Christian nationalists all that important. What’s important is that this bloc includes some of the most dangerous and unhinged people in the country. They were heavily represented among those who stormed the Capitol. It goes way beyond ordinary partisanship, as their worldview is apocalyptic; they see themselves as locked in a battle not for a political party but for the survival of mankind.* And these aren’t just some random deranged individuals. A lot of these messages–the idea of Trump as a messianic figure, whose ascendancy to the White House is part of prophecy–are being heavily promoted by evangelical leaders right now.
* I used the masculine form intentionally.
Although it would be delightful to hear the stories of “I was bamboozled by Trump, but now I’m voting for democracy,” it’s a lot to expect. It’s hard to know how many Trump supporters are “core.” What we need to do is peel away the people who voted for him because it’s funny or because they “just can’t see” voting for a Democrat. Or the people who only had a vague idea of who was running. All of those pose challenges, but the trials are more likely to break through to them than to “the core.”
@drj:
Which may be hearing from Donald Trump and his minions what to think.
Here is a little excerpt from this linky above:
https://sojo.net/articles/distorted-gospel-charlottesville-rally-keeps-spreading-white-christian-nationalism
Trump’s link to Christian Nationalism includes Trump’s love of stirring up violence, he loves to watch people rioting or being sadistic, especially if it’s ostensibly on his behalf as with him being glued to the TV watching the Jan. 6 insurrection. A lot of Christian Nationalists also have a pretty clear taste for violence, Jehricho March as an example.
@charontwo:
Just to clarify, when I threw out that 30% wild assed guess, that was in reference to the core GOP base, the sort that vote in primaries, not to everyone who voted for Trump.
@Cheryl Rofer:
To some extent, I’m sure.
But maybe it’s even more that Trump saw a bunch of marks to exploit and partially adapted his persona to meet their expectations.
The main thing is that Christianity (like any other religion) is what its adherents make of it. If most Christians claim that one has to be a hateful, authoritarian nativist in order to be a “true” Christian, that’s what Christianity is from now on.
Even well-established, deeply intellectual traditions like Catholicism have surprisingly little to do with what the Bible says. They almost completely ignore 90%, highlight the 10% they think is important, and, over the course of a couple of centuries, build some elaborate superstructure on top of that latter part.
If you want to learn about Christianity, don’t start with reading the Bible. That’s a rookie mistake.
I’ve been banging on for some time about the threat from Christian Nationalism. The threat was here before Trump and will be here after him. The Trump/Christian Nationalism hookup is a marriage of convenience. It is true that is it is emotional connections, principally because you wouldn’t want anyone to actually think about it.
Far right politicians tap into the emotion. You just have to follow their apocalyptic and violent language. Save the country. Prevent the destruction of our country. Democrats are terrorists. Enemies. Traitors. The country is being invaded. It goes on. The responses are even more violent. Trump calling for the execution of Gen Milley is just a reflection of what the fever swamps are screaming. It’s not the other way around.
BTW, here is a site that gives more info on the dangers of Christian Nationalism.
https://act.faithfulamerica.org/signup/christian-nationalism-resources/
You all might consider how easy it is for religious movements to create “echo chambers”.
https://philarchive.org/rec/NGUECA
https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUECA.pdf
@Scott:
Thanks for the link, I have been collecting them.
@drj:
This is a key point. Groups define themselves and their behavior and beliefs usually have very little to what their written tenets say. I think James is trying to impose a standard that might not have every been met in the history of the world: that all members of a mass movement are aware of and primarily motivated by the dogma of that movement. Has never happened in my lifetime and I haven’t seen such a thing in my reading of history.
Seems to me, as it did when I read the French article yesterday, that he’s working hard to see this as religious when it’s really tribal. These people would see me as Christian, by birth, and no amount of disbelief would change that. Nor would deep faith make a Black man who voted for Biden one of them. Nor would they fail to ally with the White fringe who identify as pagan.
@Scott:
Josh Hawley:
https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1437455962776825866
https://twitter.com/Lynz_Simmons/status/1437448036674940932
From the David French link:
This goes to my link above about “echo chambers” in which contradicting information actively reinforces belief because it confirms “they” are trying to deceive the true believers.
@gVOR10:
That wasn’t my interpretation, more that various religious interpretations are functioning as mascots or totems for tribes.
Oddly, FOX reported something I was unaware of. While DOJ has apparently dropped it’s investigation of Gaetz, the House Ethics committee is still looking into him. Apparently some of his Republican colleagues are hoping for a bad report to use to expel him. I certainly wish them well, although I doubt that with their thin majority they’d really push him out.
I think one point not yet mentioned is the common belief associated with bogus “historian” David Barton that America is a Christian Nation founded by Christians to be an example Christian Nation. Christion Nationalists can see themselves as fulfilling and enforcing that as a mandate.
@gVOR10:
Or, rather, it’s religious, but has nothing to do with Christian doctrine or tradition. The (self-)label is entirely misleading, like “Christian Scientist” or “Fat-free Half and Half”.
French sure needs a lot of words to finally realize “It’s a fascist cult of personality.”
Exactly. If you draw your cult members from a culture that equates “Christian” and “good”, they will think of themselves as the real Christians, no matter what they believe or do. What St. Paul or Boethius or Thomas Aquinas or Jesus said could not be less relevant.
You need to fix your quote blocks. As it is it looks like you are claiming you wrote parts of French’s piece.
I see the Christian Nationalists as the “tip of the spear” of the Trumpist movement (i.e., a big chunk of the GOP). They are not close to a majority even of the Trumpists, but they are active and very visible so they contribute a lot to the tone and direction of the movement, especially with Trump’s sadism and love of violence and violent people (illustrated, for example, by the Navy SEAL Trump pardoned).
@Jay: Fixed. A few months back, a WordPress update broke our backend—it’s somehow incompatible with our years-old theme—and I can’t see the blockquote anymore. It’s a giant pain in the ass. Sometimes, I double-blockquote and sometimes I forget one.
@charontwo: I may have posted this once before but this Texas Monthly article talks about a far right Christian Nationalist: Midland oilman Tim Dunn. Sample anecdote concerns the Republican Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, from a long time prominent Republican San Antonio family, who just happens to be Jewish.
From The Power Issue: Tim Dunn Is Pushing the Republican Party Into the Arms of God
@charontwo:
If so (and I see that you later clarify that this is of the primary electorate, not the broader group of general election Trump voters) are these mostly new voters Trump brought to the table? Or was this faction always there? If the latter, I’m not sure how it explains Trump.
@MarkedMan:
To me, that’s simply White nationalism. It’s been a powerful belief system pretty much since the founding.
@Scott:
I think that’s probably right. French and others are using this as something to explain Trump per se and I just don’t find that convincing. That it’s a powerful force within the conservative coalition and that Trump is especially good at appealing to it is quite plausible.
@MarkedMan:
Trump is using Christian Nationalism to explain why Trump’s appeal is permanent. But, if it’s a relatively small group and the broader version of its appeal is just something that has always been a large part of conservative politics, I just don’t find it a useful addition.
@James Joyner:
Ah, I think I see where we diverge. I don’t think Christian vs. White nationalism is an “or”. I think they are largely indistinguishable from each other. The percentage of White nationalists whose sense of identity isn’t also tied up in their bizarro world version of Christianity is vanishingly small.
I’m not sure I understand your POV here. Isn’t something that is a large part of conservative politics important in understanding those politics?
@MarkedMan: I guess I’m seeing French and others claiming to have identified some ominous new force in American politics that’s behind Trump. If it’s simply “a lot of people think White Christians should be in charge,” then that’s just not an interesting new finding. Further, I don’t think it explains Trump per se. George W. Bush appealed to these folks, too, but they eventually turned on him.
@MarkedMan:
There is a substantial bloc of white nationalist adjacent incel-techbro Musk-Rogan-Peterson fanboys types who do not care one whit for Christianity or any other religion. They are vastly outnumbered as a voting demographic and thus do not have an inordinate amount of electoral sway, but they do drive a good bit of political discourse.
@gVOR10:
Black Protestants have long recognized much of conservative and evangelical Christianity as a thin front for white supremacy.
We been knew.
@DK:
I know these people exist, and there are also bizarre offshoots that worship Norse gods or something like that, but I’d be surprised if it amounted to “substantial”. (Surpised, but not enough that I’d bet money on it.) At the leadership level, sure, but I always assume that the leadership of an avowedly religious movement probably has a fair percentage that is merely riding the whirlwind and really doesn’t have any serious belief in anything but themselves.
@charontwo:
As with, say, ANTIFA, it’s hard to say how numerous they are and how much influence they really have. Are they in the news because they’re important or just because they’re dramatic?
The connection, as French says, and you appear to agree, is emotional. It clearly does not come to them institutionally. There are many reports of church members demanding that their pastor get more political, and splitting off to join a different church should he decline that. My favorite quote comes when a pastor reminds the member of how Jesus said to love one’s enemies. The reply was, “That doesn’t work any more”.
There’s nothing in this other than emotion. Which has been fanned on FB, Twitter, YouTube and probably other social media. Probably it is fueled by two big elements:
1. The decline of people identifying as both white and Christian. It’s below 50 percent in the country. This has alarmed people.
2. All the gender-related social change. SSM, changing masculinity, and trans people. Trans people are just the easiest to attack, after the attack on SSM failed.
Traditional Christian (I know more about Protestant, not Catholic) teaching would focus more on what we might say “get your own house in order, and worry less about government policy”. This appears to be Pope Francis’ take, too, but the Catholic Church has a long history of political meddling. The Mormons have an avowed stance of no political meddling, but they broke it for California’s Prop 8 – and experienced blowback from membership, as seems highly appropriate.
I can’t rule out that the kinds of people who undertake influence operations have been active in this space. Social media makes it very easy to create echo chambers, and amplify a particular message within a subgroup.
@James Joyner:
Trump style leadership is very compatible with these people, they have increased their stature, influence and membership a lot during his presidency. There was, for example, a huge increase in politically motivated violence during the Trump administration, something the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Jericho March etc. like a lot.
@MarkedMan:
They don’t exactly worship Norse gods, they just really like Nordic symbols. The original Nazis did too, now neo-Nazis use symbols like Thor’s Hammer and the Odal Rune as tatoos, flags etc. (Tatoos can communicate identity).
You could look at the tatoos on the “QAnon Shaman” from Jan. 6 for example.
@MarkedMan:
I largely agree. It tends to be those who are more explicitly neo-Nazi who go for Nordic paganism (as some of the original Nazis did), and there is also a chunk of the movement that’s just plain secular. Furthermore, even many (probably most) of the people who identify as Christian nationalist are not regular churchgoers and in practice are contemptuous of institutional Christianity.
The very label “Christian nationalism” is in many ways a cover for white nationalism, because our society tends to accord more legitimacy to people describing themselves in terms of religion than in terms of race. I’m aware there are a few black ministers out there who align with the far right. (For that matter, there’s Laura Loomer, a far-right Jewish woman who claims to support Christian nationalism.) For the most part, though, people who call themselves Christian nationalist aren’t thinking about a multiracial coalition of Christians, even though they may occasionally pretend that’s what they mean. Christianity itself is subsumed into their conception of whiteness, and in many respects they see Christian-ness as more of an ethnic/racial marker than a religious one, and it’s tied heavily to the attempts to deny and rewrite the country’s racist past from a white-supremacist perspective.
1) You start by grooming children to be credulous, to accept authority, to reject doubt.
2) You raise that child up to be an adult who remains credulous, authoritarian and close-minded.
3) If the authority you’ve been groomed to obey decides White Christian nationalism is his jam, it’s yours, too.
I think what’s missing here is the growing number of “unchurched” mostly Southern evangelicals. These are people who claim to be evangelicals but don’t go to church and diverge in important ways from the doctrine of organized religion. There has been a lot written about this growing group over the past decade, and I’m a bit surprised French doesn’t mention it because I’m pretty sure he’s written about it before.
Here’s an article I have bookmarked from last year on the phenomenon, comparing it to Catholic “dechurching” in the Northeast and Ireland:
This cohort retains many of the politically conservative views but is much more individualistic. The examples cited are a much greater tolerance for drugs, alcohol, and sex but, more importantly, low trust in institutions, including the church, the media, and people generally. As this historian puts it:
So I think you can look no further than this cohort to understand how self-identified evangelicals who are “unchurched” are attracted to Donald Trump. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing individualism who is both conservative, “evangelical” and individualistic in very similar ways to them.
This is a cohort that I’ve been calling “Old Testament Christians” for several years now.
And it’s not a surprising development. We should expect that the ongoing atomization of society, the rise of an individualism closely tied to narcissism, the general decline in civic society, especially at the sub-national level, the rise of loneliness to epidemic levels, the constant “othering” of political opponents and the attempts to purge heretics, the attacks on institution across the social and political spectrum, are all examples of a social dynamic that goes way beyond simplistic, and often bigoted, broad-brush narratives.
@Andy: Beautiful stuff. I appreciate it.
I have to tell you, I am just tired of trying to understand morons. There’s always some right-minded person saying, ‘let us further our understanding of these morons.’ But morons are impenetrable. Like bricks. They don’t reason, they don’t think, they wouldn’t know a political or theological proposition if you slapped them with one. You might as well try to penetrate the reasoning of a person in a persistent vegetative state. They are trained, conditioned, deliberately mentally handicapped by the hucksters who use them, carefully raised to be morons.
It does not matter what they think because they don’t think, the only ones thinking are the parasites – preachers and politicians – who herd these morons, and their motives are crystal clear.
@Michael Reynolds:
That is an absurd take. My younger brother has a master’s from a well regarded university but is totally into this crap, listens to Mark Levin, believes whatever shit Dinesh D’Souza is spewing, takes David Barton seriously etc. You do not need to be stupid to be down the rabbit hole.
The echo chamber is there or anyone who wants it, and smart people are really good at figuring out reasons to believe stupid stuff.
@Andy: Adjacent to what you wrote about atomization of society is the rise of non-denominational churches and the decline of religious institutions. What you get with institutional churches is a fixed set of beliefs and traditions that have been discussed, fought over, written down and taught to a specific set of church goers. This is the Catholic catechism, the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, etc.
Today, just around my neighborhood are multiple denominationally unaffiliated megachurches and countless storefront churches. All of which have belief systems defined by their founder and not bound by any traditional beliefs or doctrine. Sure, they all say they are bible based but the belief system is defined by a single individual who is the founding faith entrepreneur.
Agree with Andy. Intended to add it after reading other comments but he beat me to it. I would add a couple of things. First, evangelicals have always mixed culture with religion. I remember all of the diatribes against rock and roll music. There is no verse in the Bible saying that music is sinful. It was a sin because it had the wrong beat, the beat of African music which is used to worship Satan ie it was derived from black people music. This has gotten worse with the mega-churches where the Bible is less important than the entertainment and trappings.
Second, evangelicals have deliberately mixed faith with politics and it has been going on and to more of a degree that most liberals/progressives know. The MSM doesnt cover religion especially well and they seem to be afraid, mostly, to investigate and report on it since it leads to claims of religious bigotry and suppression of religious freedom. It was pretty predictable that these “cultural evangelicals” Andy describes end up as MAGA types with total beliefs in a man, not in the Bible.
Steve
@James Joyner: I think still not fixed, unless you have random people addressing you as “David.”
@charontwo:
Education is not IQ and IQ is not wisdom.
I have a tested IQ of 154. I imagine I’ve knocked a few points off that due to, um, lifestyle choices, but I had all 154 on-board when my big old brain said, ‘You know what you should do, Michael, you should cut your way through the roof of a 24 hour restaurant and empty the safe.’ Now, over the years I’ve tried to figure out just what the fuck I thought I was doing, and after much introspection I reached this conclusion: I was a fucking moron.
I am the person best positioned to explain my choices and that’s my conclusion. Nothing anyone could have said would have had the slightest impact on me because I was a moron. Sometimes people are morons. Most morons remain morons. Some morons experience some growth and outgrow their moron phase, but most don’t, they remain morons. You cannot explain why morons make the choices they make because they can’t explain it to themselves.
All the sociology, psychology, anthropology, astrology and palmistry in the world cannot explain it rationally because it isn’t rational. Call it id. Is that the root word for, idiot?
Most MAGAts were raised to be morons, some come to moronism all on their own, but the essential feature here is that morons are morons until they stop being morons and there’s not a goddamn thing you or I can do to stop them being morons. So, I don’t think there’s much to be learned by studying the whys and wherefores of these people. They are fucking morons.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m reminded a bit about animal cognition studies.
One can plainly see what a cat or a dog does, and note how prevalent a behavior or set of behaviors is among different breeds and so on. But we can’t tell why they do it.
We can’t ask them because 1) they can’t talk, and 2) they very likely don’t know either.
We can ask people about their actions, beliefs, etc., but all too often they don’t know why they do or believe something, and even when they do they may not know what their underlying motivation, if any, happens to be.
We’ve found workarounds for studying dogs and cats, to some extent. We need something similar for studying some people.
@Andy:
French did do an article or two on those who claim to be evangelical, though not attached to any church, nor expressing religious beliefs that are consistent with what are generally accepted evangelical tenets. Specifically in relation to trumpism. I’m not sure that French has touched on it, but Peter Wehner has, that a subsection of attendees at evangelical churches are protesting church teachings because Jesus is too liberal. Christ’s social justice teaching also irritate conservative Catholics.
@Kathy:
That is an excellent analogy, thank you.
It’s absurd to think that just because someone has a master’s degree, he cannot be a moron. One can collect degrees with just memorization, test prep, and legible writing. This does not mean said person has common sense, critical-thinking skills, and emotional intelligence.
@DK:
The Harford Dunning-Kruger Principle states: we may not be members, but we all visit the Dunning-Kruger clubhouse from time to time.
Kathy’s Addendum states: 1) a person might be brilliant in one or several aspects of life, and an absolute moron on others. 2) everyone is a moron in subjects one doesn’t know, understand, or think about.
@Michael Reynolds:
This. And usually — not always — the people who do not understand this are well-meaning, educated white folk who are bewildered because they did not grow up around these types of people and are under the delusion these issues can be fixed from the outside.
Hate + hypocrisy is not some new, head-scratching phenomenon. Is it really a big mystery why people who idolize Confederate symbols love a president who tweeted a White Power video on 28 June 2020? Many just hate n****s and f****s and don’t practice what they preach. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Talk to black people who grew up in suburban/exurban/rural South and to the queer kids who are (still) fleeing their hometowns for less dangerous, more affirming communities. They’ll tell all these perplexed pop athropolgists what’s up.
Christian Nationalists think praying in schools is following in the way of Jesus, but providing free lunches is not.
@Scott:
Yeah, that’s a very good point.
I grew up agnostic but married a liberalish Lutheran who is still active in the faith and we (mostly her) participate in church activities. We’ve seen the demographic change with more people attracted to the “concert” type of church experience, rather than the traditional Lutheran customs that my wife was raised with. The church my wife grew up in, and still attended by her Mom, will probably close its doors in the next year. Part of that is local demographics, as the neighborhood has aged, but it’s also people – especially younger people – not wanting religion at all, or wanting that non-denominational, modern experience that much more easily allows individuals to engage in the faith on their own terms.
I think it’s akin to media segmentation. “Democratization” – writ large – allows people to easily choose whatever belief system they’d like.
@Sleeping Dog:
That is one reason I deliberately use the phrase “Old Testament Christians.”
Cherry picking the Old Testament to badmouth it – how about 1 Timothy or Revelation of John?
Hell is a Christian invention, as is the idea of a God who punishes beliefs, not actions – thought crimes IOW.
@steve:..I remember all of the diatribes against rock and roll music.
When Elvis hit the national TV Big Time in 1956 I was eight years old. One day when we were riding in the family Studebaker I remember my mom, a devout Missouri Synod Lutheran saying “I hate Elvis Presley!” with more than a tinge of contempt.
I was surprised. “But mom! I thought Jesus wants us to love everybody!?!” I said.
I don’t remember her response.
This might have been the first crack in my total acceptance of what I had been taught in Sunday School.
Looking back the contempt she expressed could well have been an early manifestation of the schizophrenia that she suffered.
Random Elvis quote from the 1956 per WikiP:
Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, “No, I haven’t, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. … I don’t see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it’s only music. … I mean, how would rock ‘n’ roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?”
When the Klan burned crosses on the lawns of black people, did anyone think the fundamental issue was religion? It was just a totem. Something to rally around because the real issue wasn’t proper.
@charontwo:
Well, you are free to pick a different term if you don’t like mine. That’s just the shorthand I use. I haven’t seen it used anywhere else FWIW.
As I see it, this strain of Christian thought is much more in line with the worldview of the Old Testament because it lacks the grace that lies at the heart of New Testament Christianity. The Old Testament is about law and judgment, and the New Testament is about love and grace. I’m looking at this in broad strokes, not minutiae.
And yeah, it’s easy to cherry-pick the bible. But to use a term my kids use, the “vibes” between the two are fundamentally different.
@dazedandconfused:
This is an important point, but I’d expand on it a little. The 20th-century iteration of the Klan started in reaction to the wave of immigration from Europe at the turn of that century, comprised heavily of Catholics and Jews. But even there, the issue was “religion” only in the sense of defining one’s religious identity in terms of whom to exclude. It’s similar to the way people who call themselves “patriots” don’t actually seem to love their country very much, they just use it as a pretext for bashing those they label as un-American. But it also points to how intertwined racism is with religious exclusionism.
@Andy:
The New Testament may be currently seen as being about love and grace, but Christians have committed torture, murder and genocide on a scale Old Testament Jews never would have imagined. As an evangelical religion the New Testament brings the sword and the motivation for conquest.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. – Matthew 10:34.
The New Testament enabled horror by offering Christians a get out of jail free card. Commit genocide on Monday, repent on Tuesday and it’s all good. However soft-hearted modern Christians choose to interpret the NT, the empirical fact is that Christianity has been a murderous force, a religion spread by conquest not conversion. The proof is in the pudding.
@Jay L Gischer:
Don’t forget the role of abortion as a wedge issue. In a sane world, there would not be people who decide who to vote for based solely on how the candidates stand on this one relatively unimportant* issue. And yet here we are.
*I mean this in the objective sense of “poses no existential threat to anyone or anything.” Climate change could kill us all; a pandemic could kill tens of millions of us; WW3 could devastate continents and trash the world economy for decades; cyber vulnerabilities of the public infrastructure are terrifying. The impacts of abortion policy, while worth caring about, are not on this scale.
Christian Nationalism isn’t very Christian. It’s about using God as a stand-in for whatever made up past their revanchism craves, and as a weapon to club anyone who doesn’t fit in.
God shuts down discussion.
Dr. Joyner asks, introducing a block quote:
Having been alive during the lead up to the second Iraq War, and watching as “Patriotism” was used as a club to enforce acquiesce if not support for that war… it’s roughly the same thing.
For Christian Nationalism, Patriotic Nationalism, or Foo Nationalism, the thing in front is just a tool. It’s always a movement to go back to some fabled earlier stage where minorities knew their place (minority of immediate concern can change) and there weren’t so many of them that they get uppity. It’s a movement that seeks to impose “small town values” on the country at large.
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s only really been true since Constantine. That’s roughly when Christianity went from being a religion of the oppressed to a religion of the oppressors.
@James Joyner:
That’s why I suggested way up top that we should be using “White Christian Nationalism.” I do think there is a really important intersectionality going on here. The two aspects: White Nationalism and Christian Nationalism (at least in its US formulation) are often tied together and mutually reinforcing, And frankly, I’m not sure you can understand one without understanding the other.
@Andy:
Thanks for the link and the analysis. I think you are right about the unchurched phenomena being a part of this as well. It also seems like a logical outgrowth of the explosion of Evangelicalism in the 90’s and early 2000’s, mixed with things like the development of the Prosperity Gospel.
If you’ve never heard this interview with Martain Marty on the rise of Evangelicalism from the mid 2000’s you might be interested: https://onbeing.org/programs/martin-marty-americas-changing-religious-landscape/
@Michael Reynolds:
I think hoisting up Christians as somehow more bloodthirsty and evil as anyone else is silly. Everyone’s history is full of blood, in all corners of the earth at all times. Civilization is not something we fall from but rather something we build despite our animal natures. As for the Old Testament Jews, I give you the poor souls of Jericho who did nothing more than live in a town the Jews happened to come across in their wanderings:
The Old Testament Jews slaughtered and killed in equal measure to their power, as did the Romans, the Egyptians, the Ashanti, the Inca, the Cherokee, and well, everyone else.
@Kathy:
Some of of us try not to be dogmatic about the latter. But many people are. Recent example, in COVID people who didn’t believe in evolution suddenly experts on epidemiology and virology.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, but Christians get extra points for committing mass torture, murder, and theft on behalf of the author of the Golden Rule. That takes some serious pretzel logic.
@MarkedMan:
Assuming what is in the Bible actually happened.
Again, assuming that really happened.
The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, was created by people with an agenda, portraying the Judeans as people with a glorious past as conquerors, back when that sort of behavior was admired. Canaan was an area that was constantly being occupied by conquerors – Abyssinians, Egyptians Babylon etc. Not so glorious. Doormats, IOW.
Hence, an invented Exodus followed by the conquest of Canaan. A lot more glorious than a religion that developed among people who were already there, not to glorious or glamorous. like conquering Assyrians or Babylonians.
@DrDaveT:
Genghis Khan is the GOAT at that. Had no religion at all.
I have no idea how the above happened. (Moderators, please fix).
[Matt: DONE! And wow, 16 blank posts in a row is definitely a record. No idea how that happened either!]
@MarkedMan:
See this:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/why-the-bible-began-an-alternative-history-of-scripture-and-its-origins-jacob-l-wright-book-review
snip
snip
@Michael Reynolds:
As MarkedMan pointed out, the ease with which our species will engage in brutality based on dubious pretexts is not limited to Christianity. It’s built-in to our species.
Similarly, Islam is a “religion of peace” except for those many practitioners who think it isn’t and believe that killing apostates is holy. And there is plenty of justification for it in the Koran.
But religion isn’t causing the brutality directly – it’s just one manifestation of the fact that humans everywhere tend to form ingroups and outgroups and come up with all kinds of self-serving justifications to kill the outgroups. Religion/spirituality or the trappings thereof is only one among many.
@DrDaveT:
As a liberal and utilitarian I, of course, fully agree. But we’re talking about people who regard being advised, not compelled, advised, to get COVID VAX as worse than the Holocaust. I’ve observed for years that many conservatives have no sense of proportion I would recognize. To them the importance of a thing is determined by how much it violates the natural order in their weird moral system.
a subsection of attendees at evangelical churches are protesting church teachings because Jesus is too liberal. Christ’s social justice teaching also irritate conservative Catholics.
I’m Jewish, but aren’t Jesus’ social justice teachings a cornerstone of Christianity?
I’d like one of these people to explain how the “holy spirit told them”. Like real details about how the whole thing went down. Is it just voices they hear in their head or do you just want to believe and just lie that some nebulous thing told them?
The closest I ever got to an explanation was when a nice elderly couple at the quick lube told me that they thought god put Bush Jr into the office of the presidency to keep us safe. This obviously was not long after 9/11 and I really wanted to ask about that but they were just too nice of people to bother being “mean” to by questioning their beliefs. They were utterly convinced that Bush Jr was single handily saving American citizens from harm.. You know except for those few days..
@charontwo:
Thanks for posting this. The book sounds interesting.
I’m looking for a history of Judaism that doesn’t take the Bible as true or even as a guide. Now, some of its historical portions can be confirmed from other sources, but not all.
I got some of it from histories of other people. For instance, some speculate monotheism arose from Akhenaten’s reforms in Egypt, where he declared all gods but the Aten to be false.
@gVOR10:
This is analogous to the echo chamber situation I described, where the cultists actually get angry at being exposed to outside information. Here, they are seeing the advice as an attack and reacting defensively.
The same thing with masks. I keep one in my car to put on when grocery shopping, the inconvenience is trivial, but they make it out as some big deal.
@charontwo:
Sorry. I’m with Michael on this one. Your brother might be “smart”, but he’s a moron if he’s down the Levin, D’Souza, MAGA rabbit hole. Simply put, so much of what he believes is so easy to disprove is renders any “smarts” irrelevant.
If your Master’s Degree brother believed the earth was flat, would you be saying he’s smart? How is this different?
@EddieInCA:
I am not impressed with inability to distinguish motivated reasoning from stupidity. That is not showing me superior intellect, no matter how much pride someone takes in one’s measured I.Q.
And it’s easy to keep falling farther down after entering the rabbit hole.
@charontwo:
Yeah, everyone is primed to confirm their priors and interpret evidence toward that end. This isn’t something that just afflicts right-wingers.