Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith

by April Ajoy

In the 1980s, Graham distanced himself from Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” when he said in an interview, “It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”1

Eisenhower shared this sentiment and invited Graham to the White House as a spiritual adviser. Soon after, in 1953, the tradition of the National Prayer Breakfast began, and Graham urged Eisenhower to attend.7 Then in 1954, Congress officially added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time in history.8 In 1956, Eisenhower made “In God We Trust” the country’s official motto, signing it into law and putting it on all US currency (it was already being displayed on coins).9 Because if God was a capitalist, which American Jesus obviously was, it’d be easier to defeat communism.

Remember when I mentioned in the last chapter that Bob Jones University took its fight to maintain racially discriminatory policies all the way to the Supreme Court? Yeah. That happened. They lost the case and their tax-exempt status for not conforming.15 Then, perhaps realizing that overtly fighting for White supremacy was a losing battle, the Religious Right soon pivoted their focus to abortion, gender roles, homosexuality, and other issues that are still at the frontlines of the culture war today.

It taught me a very important lesson from an early age: Character mattered to Christians and Republicans (which were basically one and the same) and that made us good. Democrats, on the other hand, were scandal-filled heathens

But Trump did much more than just change my mind on Christian Nationalism. He drastically altered my ideology altogether, and here’s why: Trump said the quiet parts of Christian Nationalism out loud. He proclaimed that America should be first. That it’s about winning no matter what. That life is about fighting and defeating those who work against you. That bullying and name-calling and oppressing groups of people are legitimate ways to act. But instead of being condemned by evangelicals, he was celebrated for it.

Good character mattered. But this was where Trump disrupted Christian Nationalism at large. After Republicans lost two presidential elections in a row, the movement seemingly no longer required a certain level of morality or faith. They were so tired of losing, they were willing to overlook a video of Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals. This would have doomed any candidate of either party in the years before.

Remember, Christian Nationalism requires a narrow view of the world. Too many voices or influences will expand someone’s mindset, making them less focused at best or causing them to backslide at worst. If someone hears too many dissenting voices that open their mind up to too many new ideas, they may turn into a LIBERAL SHEEP WHO HAS SOLD THEIR SOUL TO SATAN!

What I began to understand over my time there is that people who only watch Christian shows on Christian networks, or conservative shows on conservative media, could spend their whole life believing that God makes all LGBTQ people straight if they just ask. Or that everyone who prays while sick is healed by God. Constantly silencing or ignoring stories that don’t fit this narrative creates a false message. A harmful message. One that leads people to believe that every outside narrative is a lie. This is the reason why “secular” or “liberal” content is so often branded “FAKE NEWS!” If you censure every voice except your own, you become the ultimate source of truth for your followers.

In fact, media played a huge role in the January 6th insurrection. “The big lie” that the election was stolen was wielded on conservative and Christian media alike. Because the message was repeated so often, some people were convinced there was widespread fraud, despite credible evidence to the contrary.

biases. I threw myself into the overtly Christian environment at CBN because I was trying to keep my worldview from unraveling. This is what the movement wants. No matter what their followers experience, Christian Nationalism wants to offer answers through their media that keep their own in line. By demonizing other sources, their approved media become the only voices their followers listen to.

We were constantly on guard against the lies the world was trying to sell us. We heard it preached from the pulpit and shared in Bible studies and the media we consumed: We alone had the real answers. Anyone who tried to tell us differently was a liar. As we covered in the last chapter, if you control the information people consume, you can convince them of all sorts of things.

I’ve wondered a lot about why the more ludicrous theories seem to spread faster in times of crisis, and in the end, I think it’s a defense mechanism. A survival tactic. When faced with immense suffering, we all look for something or someone to blame. It gives us a reason for why something bad is happening, which makes the experience more palatable.

It’s kind of like how I thought all the teenagers coming out in the nineties were a result of MTV’s lies. I refused to accept that they were… just gay. Because if they were just gay, that would open a whole can of worms. If people weren’t turned gay, that means they were born gay. And if they’re born gay, then that means God made them gay. But the Bible says… Nope. That is a recipe for an existential crisis. Let’s just blame those music videos.

the Great Tribulation, the rise of the Antichrist and what he will do. There are a few other verses scattered throughout the Bible that are used to push end times theology (such as Matthew 24:30–44, 1 Corinthians 15:51–53, Mark 13:32, Acts 1:7, Daniel 12:1–2, Luke 17:26–37, Philippians 3:20–21, and John 14:3).

Let me be clear: Believing in the rapture does not make someone a Christian Nationalist. But I also want to be clear that the movement uses end times eschatology to manipulate its base into cheering on harmful foreign policy in the hopes of fulfilling Biblical prophecy, fighting against world peace in favor of American independence, and remaining fearful of whatever villain they can compare to Revelation bad guys. It’s bad enough that Christian Nationalism affects American policy. But the influence it has on worldwide political events makes it even more dangerous. And we need to be paying attention to it. And I would go into more detail, but I oddly just heard a trumpet sound, so I’m going to go check and make sure everything’s oka— 14

The push to be good and avoid sinning was reinforced through all sorts of Christian kid shows: a man in purple-and-gold tights called Bibleman, a giant singing songbook with a human face named Psalty and his creepy Pennywise-looking dog named Blooper, an old man named Mr. Whittaker who provided Adventures in Odyssey, a man with a talking doughnut who taught us that God’s love could fill our doughnut-sized heart holes, talking vegetables… the list of odd spokespeople-things for righteousness goes on and on.

Here’s the point: If you believe that Satan and his demons are on the prowl to deceive people through any means—including godless Democrats—so he can imprison them in hell for all eternity, then voting becomes about more than just politics. It’s not just about the soul of America but the souls of Americans.

Belief in hell is another tenet of evangelicalism that Christian Nationalism exploits for its own gain. The threat of hell is another tactic of the movement. While preachers and ministers can be very overt with this fear tactic, Christian Nationalist politicians are more pragmatic about it. They can’t say things like “turn or burn” so they use less obvious language like “turn America back to God.” That teenage girl is convinced getting an abortion is just women’s health care? That’s a lie from Satan! We can’t convince her abortion is a sin that will lead her to hell, so we better ban abortion altogether! To save babies and souls! Satan is making countless people think they’re gay and they’re not listening to our warnings?! Well, we must ban gay marriage, then. Take away their choice to sin and they’re more likely to get saved! That’s the logic behind it.

Sean Feucht used the threat of hell as justification for the large worship events he held during the pandemic. “I refuse to let a virus with a 99% survival rate keep me from plundering hell to populate heaven!” Feucht posted in January 2021.15 This way of thinking is a total disregard for Luke 15, the parable Jesus told of the lost sheep, where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to save the one. Thank goodness for that one sheep that Feucht wasn’t his shepherd.

The threat of hell is not at the forefront of today’s Christian Nationalism, but it would be a mistake to overlook it. It’s there quietly beneath the surface, influencing the decisions being made at the highest levels of government. It’s especially scary when you look at devout Baptist Mike Johnson, who became Speaker of the House in 2023. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said “For Southern Baptists, it’s like winning the lottery,” about Johnson becoming Speaker.18 Would they be this giddy if Johnson was just going to objectively pass laws and not let his staunch, Bible-believing worldview decide policy? Probably not. Johnson has worked closely with Pastor Jim Garlow, a proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate, whom Johnson said has “been a profound influence” on his life.19 A few weeks before becoming Speaker, Johnson was on a web show with Garlow and lamented that America’s culture was “depraved.” Some of the evidence he cited for this was people not attending church and the rise of LGBTQ youth. Johnson then prayed on the show, saying, “We repent of our sins individually and collectively and we ask that you not give up on our nation, not give us the judgment that we clearly deserve.”20 He doesn’t need to say hell for us to understand what ultimate judgment he’s talking about.

assumed the people screaming at us probably believed they were doing the right thing, too. I know I did when I was part of the “All Lives Matter” crowd. What got to me was that, despite seeing us kneeling in prayer, they seemed to refuse to believe we were also Christians. We were just the enemy and had to be painted as such. This, too, was familiar to me from my days in Christian Nationalism. The ideology uses Christian language and Scripture to justify their position and demonize whoever is against them. That summer, I found it convicting to be on the receiving end of a tactic I had once used so freely against others.

former county commissioner was interviewed by the local paper and encouraged fellow citizens to “have a plan” in case we turned violent. He told the paper, “This is a communist insurrection. If you believe anything else, you are naive. These communists are your enemies. They would kill you, your wife and there’s no telling what they would do to your kids.”3 This statement surprised me. I was a Christian wife and mother of two who went to church every Sunday and had no affiliation with the Communist Party. He thought I would kill kids if given the opportunity?! All because I was silently asking for a statue to be relocated less than a mile away? Who would’ve thought? Suddenly, I was doubting all the accusations I had ever heard, believed, and thrown out myself about people being communist and socialist. I believed the Clintons were communists. Obama was a socialist. Democrats were one welfare policy away from becoming full-on dictators and ushering in the New World Order. Capitalism was godly, and communism/socialism were satanic because… Oh shoot, I don’t even know why.

What is fascism, you ask? Well, fascism is a right-wing political movement that pushes extreme nationalism, militarism, and an authoritarian government with a leader holding ultimate power. It sounds a lot like what Christian Nationalists want, honestly.

This makes Antifa a logical enemy of Christian Nationalism, and as a result, Antifa must be destroyed. But here’s their biggest problem: Antifa is a decentralized movement. There is no leader. There are no official meetings. There is no budget or bank account. Anyone can claim to be Antifa at any time, anywhere in the world. When no one can be blamed, anyone can be. Christian Nationalists use this lack of centralization to accuse people they don’t like of being masterminds in the group.

Being hated by the world was a foundational piece of the faith I grew up in.

However, in a country whose presidents have all claimed some form of Christianity themselves, this sort of persecution can be hard to come by. This requires Christians to get creative. Target is allowing trans people to use the bathroom they identify with? Christian persecution. A business is being sued for refusing to provide service for a gay couple? Christian persecution. Not being given a city permit to gather a crowd of people for a worship service during a global pandemic? Christian persecution. People leaving the church and exposing the abuse they endured? Christian persecution. The government removing a tax-exempt status because a Christian university refused to allow interracial dating? Christian persecution. Queer people don’t want to eat the Lord’s chicken anymore? Christian persecution.

This act of turning any pushback into an attack on “Christian values” is a primary tactic of Christian Nationalism. You can’t be held responsible for hurtful things you say and do if you can turn accountability into persecution.

Persecution also creates sympathy and loyalty. Just think for a moment how many impeachments, trials, and indictments Donald Trump has gone through. Do these turn followers away? Hardly. Every punishment he faces is viewed as persecution, which makes him a martyr. With each new indictment brought against him, the closer he gets to being Jesus incarnate. And I’m not really exaggerating. I’ve seen lots of posts openly equating Trump to Jesus. Umpteen photos of Trump side by side with the Son of God get reshared by Christians every time he faces the consequences of his moral failings. Trump even shared one of these images to his Truth Social account following a court appearance in October 2023. It was an image of Jesus sitting beside Trump at the defendant’s table with a caption that read, “This is the most accurate court sketch of all time. Because nobody could have made it this far alone.”7 When Trump was arraigned during Holy Week in 2023, the comparisons of Trump to Christ were everywhere. Even Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene compared Trump’s charges to the arrest of Jesus.8 You know, because Jesus was arrested for challenging religious leaders with radical love, and Donald Trump was arrested for falsifying hush money payments to a porn star and keeping classified nuclear documents in his shower. Totally the same thing.

are actually being impinged upon—the persecution card is played. It all seems so obvious now from the outside looking in. The movement I supported for so long is not oppressed, but instead frequently plays the role of the oppressor. Christian Nationalism casts its followers as victims in order to harness the power of collective outrage in an effort to center its own agenda and enforce its own preferred morality on others. It’s devious, it’s insidious, and it’s unfortunately kind of genius. It’s also enormously effective. Way more effective than my campaign to replace condoms with Bibles in public schools. 8

had been led to believe that any gun control was a means to an end—the end being the government banning all guns, letting communism take over, and outlawing Christianity.

I think growing up in the “peaceful” religion of evangelical fundamentalism, which was also pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-violence against anything we deemed evil, was finally getting to me. All of this helps explain why I was not surprised as I watched the violence unfold on January 6th. Insurrectionists waving Jesus flags while joining a mob that bludgeoned police officers and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” was the perfect embodiment of the cognitive dissonance I grew up with. The only thing new about the rage happening under the banner of Christianity was where it was aimed. Trump found a way to harness something that had been there for years and wield it for his own political gain.

Repressed anger builds over time until it can no longer be contained. Christian Nationalists finally had a place to release it. I believe that was one of the initial draws of Trump in that crowded Republican primary field of 2016.

He said the things you weren’t supposed to say, to the delight of many evangelicals who were tired of playing nice. He emboldened the violence and hate that had remained quietly under the surface in churches across the country. Christian Nationalists wanted a bulldog. They wanted a figurehead who could fully channel the anger they couldn’t really express in their own Christian lives.

It’s much easier to justify violence if you can paint the other side as more violent.

Imagine my surprise when I investigated the history of the pro-life movement and learned it was actually a Republican-nominated Supreme Court that made the decision to legalize abortion through Roe v. Wade in 1973. At the time, polling showed that most evangelicals were either indifferent on the issue or supported access to abortion.11 In addition, two years before the Roe v. Wade ruling, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that encouraged SBC members “to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”12

W. A. Criswell, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, pastored First Baptist Church in Texas at the time (now pastored by famed Trump enthusiast Robert Jeffress). He was so pleased with the SCOTUS decision that he said, “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”13

The more I learned, the more nuanced the issue became. Sure, I could’ve researched it myself at any point prior to this, but I had no reason to doubt my Christian leaders. You don’t know what you don’t know, and it’s not exactly fun to learn things that undo a lifetime of beliefs. It’s called an existential crisis for a reason.

Demonize the doubters, sensationalize the issue, make it about saving children. Who wouldn’t vote Republican when you believe the other side is literally murdering babies?!

The United States spent $8 trillion on two decades of wars since 9/11 that caused 900,000 deaths and delivered murky results at best.6

The problem is that to return our country back into a Christian nation—which is the explicit goal of Christian Nationalism—we must believe in American exceptionalism.

Anything that shows the United States in a bad light is a threat to Christian Nationalism. How can we get back to the “good ole days” if the ole days were actually bad?

There’s a reason education is also one of the spheres of the Seven Mountain Mandate. The idea is that by successfully taking over the education system, Christians can conform the minds of the youth, which will lead to a better, Christian culture in the future.

Control what people learn, and you can control what they believe. This is why education is another frontline issue of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is now trying to put this simplistic worldview back into public education. We see this in the war against Critical Race Theory. Any history that shows America in a bad light is quickly given a “CRT” label and dismissed as some evil woke agenda. The age-old “demonizing” tactic.

But it’s not just conservative Christian politicians dismissing CRT and other topics of race. A quick Google search will bring up countless articles and posts from Christian pastors and media critiquing CRT from their Biblical perspective. Ken Ham even wrote in a rebuttal, “CRT says only the oppressors are guilty. The Bible, however, says we are all sinners.”12 Another Christian wrote an opinion piece in The Tennessean that posited that CRT and rehashing sins of the past only causes division because, at the end of the day, “Only Jesus can change the heart of a racist.”13 You’d think CRT was teaching people to worship Satan with the vitriol it receives from the Christian right. So I looked up the definition to find out what it really is. Critical Race Theory is a decades-old academic tool that looks at society through a racial lens, acknowledges that racism doesn’t solely exist in individual bias, but continues through systemic means. Ah. There it is. Systemic.

grew up under the same educational system that Christian Nationalism wants to implement for everyone, and in the end, I realized it wasn’t working and I left. I didn’t change my mind because of a book I read in the library that acknowledged racism is real, or because the Ten Commandments weren’t posted large enough in the cafeteria. I came to think differently and question what I had been taught because the life I experienced and the knowledge I learned pushed me beyond what Christian Nationalism taught me.

mean, I went to conservative Christian schools and still left my Nationalist beliefs behind. There was no atheist professor brainwashing me. I just lived my life, expanded my knowledge of the world, and came to see that things just didn’t add up.

My most liberal friends were raised by staunchly conservative and Christian Nationalist parents. I don’t think it works because stunting our learning goes against our instincts. Questions are a part of life. There are things Nationalists don’t have answers to and deflections only work for so long. Even the Bible says in Romans 12:2 (ESV) to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Well, thankfully my mind has been renewed and has the latest iOS update, which rid itself of the Christian Nationalist bug. 20

It’s so clear to me now that my previous fight against gay marriage wasn’t actually about gay people. It was about how they threatened my worldview. My brother coming out forced me to confront that. It’s hard to stay in a black-and-white belief system after you’ve seen glimpses of color. I’ll forever be grateful that Andrew showed me the rainbow. 5

This only-two-kinds-of-genitals push comes in response to a culture growing more accepting of transgender identities, and queerness in general. Beyond their theological belief around LGBTQ issues, I believe Christian Nationalism fights against this inclusion because it goes directly against traditional gender roles that uphold the patriarchal system the movement needs to survive.