The Specter of “Christian Nationalism”

A specter is haunting America—the specter of “Christian nationalism.” All the powers of the Establishment have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Democrats and “mainstream” Republicans, MSNBC and CNN, media, Progressives, and talking heads.

The only problem is: this specter cannot really be identified. It seems rather an amalgam of emanations from various penumbrae found primarily in the fevered minds of the Left, a gaseous ghost who, despite all the sound and fury of the chattering classes, signifies nothing.

Are there perhaps some Ku Klux Klan-like “Christian nationalists” under some rock somewhere? No doubt; America is a diverse and inclusive country, and within that diversity there is also room for various nuts.  

But I fear that the “Christian nationalists” who are the bogeymen of the Establishment are not those sub-rock dwellers. It’s rather you and me.

The latest fever pitch of “Christian nationalism” is Louisiana’s new law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in the state’s schools. From the bleats of critics, one would never guess those Commandments had any formative purpose on the country’s culture or law. And, of course, Oklahoma’s decision to include biblical literacy in its school curriculum is another supposed manifestation of creeping Christian nationalist theocracy.

(I’m currently translating a book in which there are lots of scriptural metaphors, allusions, and references. It’s telling to me that what is clearly understood in the Polish text has to be annotated for English readers, lest they “not get” the references.)

No, “Christian nationalism” largely means people who have decided “enough is enough,” stopped pretending that America’s culture and history are not primarily the products of a Judeo-Christian ethic and culture, and refuse to do a religious striptease to enter what Richard John Neuhaus called “the naked public square” as the price of participation in civil life. “Christian nationalism” largely means people who have decided “enough is enough,” stopped pretending that America’s culture and history are not primarily the products of a Judeo-Christian ethic and culture.Tweet This

Part of the reason for this bizarre state of affairs has been the frankly dishonest Constitutional jurisprudence that held sway with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court, since 1947, has tortured freedom of religion into freedom from religion, insisting (despite lack of textual or historical foundation) that the way to “protect” religious freedom is to pretend that religion does not exist.

If you ask for the most basic summary of the First Amendment, an honest reader would say “it protects freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.” That’s right. And the first right in that chain is “religion.”

People came to these shores for freedom to practice their religion. Nobody thought that meant only in their churches or houses, preferably with doors closed and windows shuttered lest the larger society figure out there were—gasp!—“religious people” among them! No: they came to build a “city on a hill” that couldn’t be hidden. And in case you haven’t gone to school in Oklahoma, no, John Winthrop did not make that image up. He riffed it from Matthew 5:14.

But, you say, the Constitution forbids an “establishment of religion.” What that phrase meant historically was that no particular denomination could be the declared state favorite, like the “Church of England” is the state’s ecclesiastical lapdog in the United Kingdom. But it is a big jump to go from “no privileged denomination” to “no public acknowledgement of religion per se.”

Yet the latter has been the Supreme Court’s modus operandi for seven decades, spawning a chain of First Amendment jurisprudence whose only logical bond—as many commentators have noted—is the ability of a particular case to cobble together five justices to make a majority. Happily, for the past several years, the Court has been retreating from a “freedom of religion” jurisprudence that would put religion and religious influences behind closed doors. And that’s what’s got the secular Establishment in a tizzy, reporting more sightings of “Christian nationalists” than UFOs around Roswell.

The “Christian nationalists” in that viewpoint are the folks who “cling to guns and religion” and their Bibles. They are the folks who would “turn back the clock” to “intolerant times” when we acknowledged where our culture came from. They are the folks tired of pretending they don’t exist.

So, if “Christian nationalist” means people who acknowledge that the core culture of the United States came from Rome, Greece, and Israel, then count me in. I do like acknowledging…reality.

Some may not like that. Some may want a demographic shift. All I can say is: two things. First, regardless of one’s preferences, the Judeo-Christian roots of our culture are a fact. Second, when one considers how other religious traditions have found expression in their cultural contexts, we should be honest enough to admit that the Judeo-Christian impulse that shaped our culture also supported the idea of freedom of conscience. Find that in, for example, mainstream Islam or Hindu nationalism.

So, despite the scary stories about “Christian nationalism” currently abroad, we can probably conclude two things: (1) their veracity ranks up there with ghost stories to be told around a campfire on a summer’s night; and (2) the real target is the average observant Christian (and Jew) tired of putting his faith under a bushel basket.

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