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June 16 - June 19, 2024
We have to become adept at addressing white Christian nationalism when and where we see it. This will take a rare kind of courage that stands against the status quo at great risk to oneself.
White Christian nationalism is one of the oldest and most powerful currents in American politics. But until the insurrection, it was invisible to most Americans. It was invisible to most conservative white Christians, because for decades it has been the water they swim in and the air they breathe.3 It was invisible to most secular progressives, because they live in a bubble of their own in which white Christian nationalism seems “fringe” rather than mainstream.
Throughout 2020, President Trump routinely spouted debunked claims of mail-in ballots from pets, dead people, and undocumented immigrants, virtually promising rampant voter fraud come November.4 Following his election loss, he desperately stoked his followers’ rage via Twitter, sowing lies about a stolen election. His efforts were fanned by pro-Trump pundits on the Christian right and loyal congressional allies like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz
The numerical influence of conservative white Protestants is declining.5 The US population is becoming less white and more secular. The nation has become less powerful and more unequal.
White Christian nationalism is a “deep story” about America’s past and a vision of its future. It includes cherished assumptions about what America was and is, but also what it should be.
Their “deep story” goes something like this: people like them have been standing in line, waiting patiently for their chance at the American dream. But up ahead, they see people cutting in line—immigrants and minorities and other people who haven’t paid their dues. What’s worse, they see politicians helping the line-cutters, liberal politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So, they vote for conservative politicians who (they believe) will send those people to the back of the line where they belong. The unstated (and incorrect) assumption is that “white people were here first.”
White Christian nationalism’s “deep story” goes something like this: America was founded as a Christian nation by (white) men who were “traditional” Christians, who based the nation’s founding documents on “Christian principles.” The United States is blessed by God, which is why it has been so successful; and the nation has a special role to play in God’s plan for humanity. But these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from “un-American” influences both inside and outside our borders.
The plot revolves around conflicts between the noble and worthy “us,” the rightful heirs of wealth and power, and the undeserving “them” who conspire to take what is ours.
But this story is a myth. The religious views of the Founders ranged widely: from atheism through deism and Unitarianism to Congregationalism, Baptism, and even Roman Catholicism. The Declaration and the Constitution drew on various influences, including classical liberalism (e.g., Locke) and civic republicanism (e.g., Machiavelli). More than a little of the nation’s wealth and prosperity were derived from stolen land and slave labor. These are all well-established historical facts.
is “Christian” because the vast majority of those who believe this story identify as such. It is also “Christian” insofar as it draws on particular readings of the Bible. And because it draws on the Bible, the story sounds “orthodox” and “traditional” to many mainstream Christians.
White Christian nationalism has also shaped American popular culture. Consider the “post-apocalyptic” genre of novels and movies, such as “The Road.” Or superhero comics and films, such as “Captain America.” Today, the secularized version of white Christian nationalism is almost as important as the religious one.
white Christian nationalists believe that America should be a Christian nation, or, at least, a nation ruled by Christians. And though the expectation of “whiteness” is rarely expressed explicitly, it is often clearly assumed in the sort of “Christian” that adherents of white Christian nationalism have in mind. Who counts as “white” and what counts as “Christian” has changed over time. White Christian nationalism’s enemies have also changed, from Native Americans and Catholics, to communists, Black radicals, atheists, Muslims, and socialists, each taking their turn as the main threat to
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What connects these stances to each other is a particular understanding of freedom, order, and violence with deep roots in American history.13 Freedom is understood in a libertarian way, as freedom from restrictions, especially by the government. Order is understood in a hierarchical way, with white Christian men at the top. And violence is seen as a righteous means of defending freedom and restoring order, means that are reserved to white Christian men. This understanding of freedom, order, and violence is the heart of white Christian nationalism.
The general principle is this: white men must sometimes exercise righteous violence to defend (their) freedom and maintain social (and racial) order. It is freedom for “us” and authoritarian social order for “
The goal is to forever redeem and restore a lost world corrupted by “outsiders.” That won’t happen without a fight.
Demographic change is also a key factor. As white Christians approach minority status, white Christian nationalists are starting to turn against American democracy.
Now faced with the prospect of minority status themselves, some members of the old white majority are embracing authoritarian politics as a means of protecting their “freedom.
White Christian nationalists sincerely believe that whites and Christians are the most persecuted groups in America.
The United States cannot be both a truly multiracial democracy—a people of people and a nation of nations—and a white Christian nation at the same time. This is why white Christian nationalism has become a serious threat to American democracy, perhaps the most serious threat it now faces.
First, white Christian nationalism is not “Christian patriotism.” White Christian nationalism idealizes the power of white Christian Americans. It is rooted in white supremacist assumptions and empowered by anger and fear. This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism, as the political philosopher Steven Smith explains, is first and foremost “loyalty . . . to one’s constitution or political regime.” Nationalism is loyalty to one’s tribe “but always at the expense of an outgroup, who are deemed un-American, traitors, and enemies of the people.”
Second, white Christian nationalism is not synonymous with white evangelicalism per se, even if there is considerable overlap.
There is another reason why white Christian nationalism isn’t synonymous with white evangelicalism though: it has many non-evangelical supporters, including a significant number of mainline Protestants; white Roman Catholics; and, even more, white Pentecostals.
Third and finally, white Christian nationalism is not just a problem among white American Christians. There are secular versions of white Christian nationalism that claim to defend “Western Culture” or “Judeo-Christian civilization.”
For some white Christian nationalists, the fight has become more important than the faith. This is one reason why many leaders on the Christian right were so unexcited about the prospect of a Pence presidency during Trump’s first impeachment, despite Pence’s unimpeachable evangelical credentials: Pence had the faith, but Trump had the fight, and it was the fight they really cared about. That is because their goal is power, not piety.
Ironically, the more some conservatives insist on “American exceptionalism,” the less exceptional it becomes. Now, for a brief preview of what follows.
That connection between white Christian nationalism, personal liberty, and economic prosperity does much to shape our contemporary political landscape. How did these connections between whiteness, Christianity, and allegiance to libertarian free-market ideals first emerge and develop? The history goes back a lot further than you think.
October 2020, shortly before losing his bid for re-election, then President Trump assembled a “1776 Commission” that included no professional historians, but was led by executives at the conservative Hilsdale College as well as Charlie Kirk and
The report listed “slavery” as a “challenge to America’s principles,” alongside “fascism” and “communism” and also “progressivism” and “identity politics.” Its claims met with a similarly mixed reception, also along predictable party lines.
For it was around 1690 that racism, apocalypticism, and nationalism first fused into a deep story.
could say that in 1690 we lost an alternative vision for life in the New World: one in which the natives and the colonists would live in concord or even in community; one in which the line between white and Black did not yet fully and irrevocably correspond to that between freedom and bondage; and one in which there was room, not only for non-Protestants
Within that order, race, religion, and nationalism were to be aligned—by force, if necessary. That is the spirit of 1690: the spirit of white Christian nationalism.
the Spirit of 1690, whiteness connotes “freedom” and “order,” but also “violence”: freedom in opposition to Black bondage; order against native “savagery,” and violence as the means of ensuring both.
1619, a more inclusive and egalitarian society was still possible, if not probable. It was the decisions and actions of Puritan thinkers and leaders that throttled it. What’s more, that possibility was choked off not only by the enslavement of kidnapped Africans, but also by warfare with native peoples—and their French Catholic allies. “Whiteness” was defined not only in opposition to “blackness” but also to “redness,” and not only in terms of color but also in terms of religion: Protestant vs. Catholic and Christian vs. “heathen.”
The Spirit of 1690 was to impose white control over non-white bodies, indigenous lands, and all political institutions.
As for the 1776 Commission, where it saw rupture, we see repetition. In 1776, a more inclusive and egalitarian society once again appeared possible, if only briefly. Some whites—and many non-whites—took the founding ideals of liberty and equality to their obvious and logical conclusion: abolition.5 But the price of manumission was deemed too high, and national unity was bought at the expense of racial equality. That same pattern would repeat itself for a third time with the end of Reconstruction and a fourth time after the civil rights movement. Four times the dream of racial equality was
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But the development of the deep story does not quite follow these rhythms. Its development was more often driven by America’s oft-forgotten little wars (e.g., King Philipp’s, French and Indian, Mexican-American, Spanish-American, and Cold War) and by population shifts (westward expansion, mass immigration) and changing religious demographics (Catholic, Jewish, and non-Christian immigration).
It was around 1690, following King Philipp’s War, that the deep story first crystallized in the form of white Protestant chosen-ness. By the close of the French and Indian Wars in 1763, it had taken the form of Anglo Protestantism. By the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, it had become WASP Imperialism. A century later, at the close of the Cold War, it had evolved into White Judaeo-Christian Americanism.
More recently, journalist James Sleeper has ambivalently described the Puritan refugees who fled to a New England as “America’s first Very Serious People,” people who were serious about their moral principles.6 And also serious about enforcing them (including on non-Puritans).
Few played a more prominent role in crafting this vision of New England as a New Israel than the Mathers, Cotton (1663–1728) and his father and grandfather, Increase and Richard Mather. Today, Cotton is most often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials of 1692. But he was also one of the first chroniclers of New England—and of its wars with the natives.
If heretics were the cause of God’s wrath, then the natives were his chosen instrument. As with the biblical Israelites of the Old Testament, so with his new Chosen People in their new Promised Land of New England.8
Viewed through the first lens, the Puritans’ wars with the natives were a—literal—repeat of the Israelites’ wars with the Canaanites; viewed through the second lens, they were also part of the apocalyptic battle between the forces of Christ and the Anti-Christ.
sacrifice to an angry God.9 It must be stressed that Mather’s was not the only vision. Where he preached elimination, other Puritans pursued conversion, though by that they meant conversion not just to a creed or a church but to an entire way of life. On this view, the dominant view, to be a Christian was to live like an English person (i.e., to settle in one place, to work the land, to own personal property, to practice monogamy, to wear trousers, and to accept one’s providential station in life).
It’s important to stress that killing or converting Indians were not the only possibilities entertained by the Puritans. There was also a third: coexistence. The first to theorize and practice it was Roger Williams (1603–1683). Though a Puritan, Williams quickly fell out with his brethren and was banished from Boston. He then established the Providence Colony in what is now Rhode Island. Williams developed close ties with the native tribes. He sometimes preached the gospel to his native acquaintances. But he did not attempt to change their way of life. For him, being a Christian did not
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First, he drew a sharp line between Christianity and morality: the one did not imply the other. In his observation, the morality of the natives was often superior to that of the Puritans. Second, he drew a sharp line between religious and civil authority, much sharper even than the Puritans, not because he worried about the church corrupting the state but rather the reverse. Third, because he believed that freedom of conscience was absolute, and that it implied freedom of expression.
sum, Williams believed that people of the most varied backgrounds could still form a civil society together, so long as they separated religion and morality and church and state and did not force anyone’s conscience or silence anyone’s speech. This he called “meer civility.”11 Sadly, the path of “meer civility” was the road less traveled in Williams’s day. Killing and converting would become the dominant poles of “Indian policy” in the centuries that followed.
But a thicker, tauter version of the racist thread was being spun together further south, in the colony of Virginia. Its original purpose was to bind the Black “bondsmen” and make their enslavement heritable. All too often, the master weavers were Christian clergy.
In the premodern era, most Christian theologians agreed that there were two types of people who could be justifiably enslaved: “heathens” and “captives” of war. “Indians” and “Negroes” were not the only persons in the southern colonies who fit these categories. Irish Catholics did too. England’s colonization of North America and its conquest of Ireland overlapped in time and influenced each other.
The reasons for this shift from various forms of nonracial bondage to a system of Black slavery were largely economic: the turn to labor-intensive cash crops such as tobacco and sugar; the shortage of white labor in the colonies; the constant flight of enslaved natives who knew the land better than their captors; and, finally, the flood of kidnapped Africans onto the Atlantic slave market that followed the foundation of the British Royal Africa Company and the Dutch West India Company.13
The need was soon met. Writing in 1681, the Anglican priest Morgan Godwyn listed the two most common forms of racist theology. The first was “pre-Adamism,” the belief that there had been two separate creations resulting in two separate species: pre-Adamites and Adamites. Only the latter were humans with souls. The second was Noah’s Curse: because Ham had seen Noah drunk and naked in his tent, God placed a mark on Ham’s son Canaan and condemned his offspring to perpetual servitude.14
By 1700, proslavery theologians had woven these and other stories together into what historian David Whitford calls the “Curse Matrix.” It had three elements: (1) “black skin is the result of God’s curse”; (2) so is Africans’ supposed “hypersexuality and libidinousness”; and (3) slavery was actually a boon to Africans because it exposed them to Christianity and (white) civilization.15
