The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

by Philip S. Gorski

On his deathbed, Republican strategist Lee Atwater confessed that when openly saying the N-word started to backfire and hurt politicians, he urged Nixon to adopt the language of “states’ rights” and “forced bussing.”

Hm

the subtext of whiteness in the language of “Christian nation” and “Christian values” becomes obvious when we see how differently our Christian nationalism measures work for whites than for Black Americans.

Christian clergy sometimes participated in lynchings or even gave them their blessings. And the racial terrorists of the KKK were not just anti-Black racists. They purported to defend the supremacy of white Protestants against Catholics and Jews as well.

Social justice was derided as “un-Christian.” Conservative color-blindness was and remains today, in effect, a form of anti-antiracism, a way of deflecting demands for racial justice.

The libertarian ideas of the Tea Party movement were entangled with the ethno-traditionalist impulses of white Christian nationalism.

If self-identified evangelicals respond to Trump’s semi-secularized version of white Christian nationalism, then this is in part because the evangelical label itself has become semi-secularized as well.

The MAGA narrative is not only a secularized white Christian nationalism; it is a reactionary version.

Conservative whites fear and abhor violence in some contexts (for example, from Blacks, immigrants, or Muslims). But they applaud it in other contexts (for instance, by police, soldiers, and other “good guys with guns”). The key that explains the inconsistency, we argue, is white Christian nationalism and its racialized combination of libertarian freedom (for whites) and authoritarian control (over non-whites).

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of late Spring 2021, nearly 400 voter suppression laws had been introduced, most prominently in Texas and Georgia, both historically Republican but now heavily contested. Nearly all such laws are transparently aimed at restricting voter access through stringent ID requirements, reducing early voting, purging voter rolls, and so on. Not since the Jim Crow era has voter suppression been undertaken so openly.

Long-standing efforts to integrate America’s armed forces have been quite successful. Similar efforts to integrate local law enforcement have been somewhat spottier, but not entirely unsuccessful, particularly in the major cities. Why is this important? Because multiracial and multicultural corps of military and law enforcement offices are much less likely to support the kind of avowedly or tacitly racist and Christianist regime that Trump and his white Christian nationalist supporters dream about.

Like the original Jim Crow, it would be regionally concentrated in MAGA states. There, subordinate groups and political dissidents would be subjected to various forms of legal discrimination, public humiliation, and vigilante violence. The harshest treatment would likely be reserved for non-white, undocumented immigrants, who might be subjected to mass deportations on an unprecedented scale. In Jim Crow 2.0, Brown could become the new Black.

The MAGA regime would certainly try to use the powers of the federal government and judiciary to force the “blue states” into line. It might deny federal money to “sanctuary cities” that refused to cooperate with its policies of mass deportation, for example, or it might deny research dollars to universities that continued to mandate diversity training or teach critical race theory, the right’s latest bugaboo.

If the MAGA regime endured for two decades or more—and most authoritarian regimes do—existing trends toward self-sorting along ideological lines would likely continue or even accelerate. MAGA-minded whites might follow libertarian-leaning “tech bros” and “finance bros”

Trumpist America would not be Hitler’s Germany. But it would not be so far removed from Putin’s Russia either. And like this and other populist and kleptocratic regimes, it would be characterized by governmental incompetence accompanied by gradual economic decline. Ironically, a serious attempt to “make America great again” would probably end up making it chaotic and poor.

In deciding which way to turn, conservative white Christians might start by confronting their own history. Like any history, it is morally complex. There is plenty to be ashamed of. White Protestant theology has provided theological justifications for racism, imperialism, and exploitation. In some cases, it still does. This is not just a matter of “racial prejudice” or “personal morality.” Instead, it has to do with the deep story that shapes many Christians’ perceptions of the present in ways that they may not even be consciously aware of. Reckoning with white Christian nationalism means more than “looking into one’s heart”; it also means reckoning with your tribe’s history. It means confronting, not just your own sins, but also “the sins of the fathers.”

Building a popular front in defense of liberal democracy will also require that secular progressives confront their past as well. Secular progressivism is the offspring of liberal Protestantism.