We Need to Worry About Christian Nationalism

By David Corn  July 29, 2022

A Trump supporter at the January 6 riot displays a Bible. John Minchillo/AP

While I was walking along a Cape Cod beach the other day, a person I didn’t know approached and asked me if I worry about Christian nationalism. The answer: Indeed, I do.

The Dobbs decision ending a woman’s constitutional right to abortion was a product of a 50-year-long crusade mounted by religious fundamentalists. Not all abortion foes are Christian extremists, but many are animated by religious doctrines and are part of a fanatical movement that yearns to Christianize the nation and impose its theological beliefs on the entire population. Look at Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion that championed a constitutional order in which states could say no to marriage equality, ban contraception, and criminalize certain sexual acts between consenting adults. These are some of  the goals of Christian nationalists who assert that the United States was founded as a Christian country and its laws should be determined by theology. They want a government that functions—and that controls personal conduct—in accordance with conservative Christian beliefs.

Christian nationalists are coming out of the closet and woodwork these days. In a recent interview, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) declared, “I say it proudly. We should be Christian nationalists.” Dinesh D’Souza, the onetime felon and Donald Trump fanboy whose recent movie claiming massive voter fraud in the 2020 election has been widely debunked, defended Christian nationalism “as good and healthy” because it gives nationalism “a gentler, more humane and more universal thrust.” Doug Mastriano, the QAnonish GOP gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania and prominent 2020 election denier, has been identified with the Christian nationalist movement.

Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, a far-right social media site, and a paid consultant for Mastriano’s campaign, recently espoused a non-humane and far-from-gentle Christian nationalism, noting that Jews and other non-Christians—such as right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro—could not be members of an authentic conservative movement. “Now the media is attacking Christian nationalism, they’re attacking Jesus Christ,” Torba said, “and that is a very bad move. We are going to take back this country for the glory of God.” After Media Matters reported on these comments, Torba reiterated his bigoted fundamentalism: “We don't want people who are atheists. We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.” He has said of Jews that “we're not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore” and that people are “done” with them. But he has thoughtfully reassured Jews and other non-Christians that under a regime predicated on Christian nationalism Jews and other non-Christians would not be deported or forced to convert. They would be “free to stay here” and live “under Christian laws.” (Thanks a lot.)

The Christian nationalist movement, as Rachel Maddow recently pointed out, tracks back seventy years to Gerald L.K. Smith, an ardent antisemitic, virulent racist, and failed politician, who organized the Christian Nationalist Crusade and the Christian Nationalist Party. He insisted Christianity was the main component of Americanism and should serve as the guiding authority for US society and its government. “Preserve America as a Christian nation,” he urged in the late 1950s, insisting there was a “highly organized campaign to substitute Jewish tradition for Christian tradition.” (Sidenote that’s not too far to the side: The Conservative Political Action Conference being held next month in Dallas will feature Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian Hungarian leader who days ago declared, in a fascist-like manner, “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.")

For much of US history, evangelicals have contended that America is a Christian nation (as opposed to a nation made up mostly of Christians). This effort largely started in the early 19th century to counteract the growing influence of secularism and religious skepticism. Numerous historians have demonstrated that the founders did not conceive of the new country as a Christian state and were generally dubious about the intersection of established religion and government. In an email to me this week, Ernie Lazar, an independent researcher of the far right, directed my attention to the Treaty of Tripoli. It was negotiated by George Washington and John Adams and ratified unanimously by the US Senate in 1796. The accord secured commercial shipping rights for American vessels in the Mediterranean Sea, protecting them from the dreaded Barbary pirates. Article 11 of the treaty is straightforward:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of [Muslims], and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

That’s clear-cut. The first two presidents of the United States and a Senate half-filled with signers of the Constitution agreed that America was not founded as a Christian nation. But Washington, Adams, and those forgotten senators (Aaron Burr!) cannot help us now. The fundamentalists are ever on the march. As I recently wrote, they strived for five decades to overturn Roe v. Wade. And Christian nationalists played a critical role in the January 6 insurrection incited by Trump. (You might recall seeing rioters waving flags bearing Christian crosses.) They are increasingly more transparent about their ambition to turn the United States into a theocracy. Remember this video clip I included in a recent issue?

Fanatics do not give up. After 50 years of concerted efforts, they succeeded in limiting the freedom and endangering the health of American women. That victory appears to have emboldened the Christian far-right, with extremists such as Greene and Torba now openly embracing a movement with a history of unrelenting antisemitism and racism. Christian nationalists are a minority of Americans and a minority of Christians, but I fear that this extremist movement can undermine the values of tolerance and freedom of thought that are crucial for the success of a demographically diverse country. With Dobbs, we have seen that a well-organized force can exploit the political system to impose minority rule on the rest of us. Christian nationalism, as with all fundamentalism, poses a threat to a pluralistic society. Perhaps it’s good that its adherents have become more open about its tyrannical goal so this anti-American movement can be directly challenged. This is a dangerous crusade, and the fact that its followers feel sufficiently confident and secure to tout their intentions in public should cause much concern. We are being warned.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

American Psychosis Tease of the Week

Regular readers of Our Land should now know about my forthcoming book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. If you don’t, please read this. Many thanks to those who have preordered the book, which will be published on September 13. It’s a history of the GOP’s  70-year-long relationship with far-right extremism, bigotry, and paranoia. (It didn’t start with Trump!) Those who do preorder the book can consider themselves influencers, for a healthy number of preorder sales will encourage booksellers to order more copies and to promote the book. That’s why publishers (and authors!) are desperate to gin up prepublication purchases these days. And Our Land subscribers can still qualify for a special offer: You can preorder a signed copy at a whopping 35 percent discount through Porchlight Books. Click HERE to take advantage of this great deal for American Psychosis.

Now for the tease. William F. Buckley, the founder of the National Review and the intellectual guru of the modern right, is often credited with bouncing the John Birch Society out of the conservative movement in the 1960s. The Birchers were a kooky band of paranoid conspiracy theorists led by a former candy manufacturer who believed Dwight Eisenhower was a commie agent. They also believed secret Reds had infiltrated every nook and cranny of US society, including the PTA. Buckley has been hailed as a responsible leader of the right for excommunicating these nutballs from respectable conservatism, yet it’s not as straightforward as that. Plotting with Sen. Barry Goldwater, the right wing’s hero, ahead of the Arizona senator’s 1964 presidential run, Buckley at first did not move to throw the Birchers to the curb. Even though the group was under fire, he tried to give them cover and keep these fanatics within the right so they could help Goldwater’s campaign. (Sound familiar?) Only later did Buckley decry the group. You can read the full details of this episode in American Psychosis.

Here's a blurb for the book from Jennifer Rubin, columnist for the Washington Post:

Whether you think the GOP's descent into depravity started with Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon or Newt Gingrich, David Corn makes the powerful case that Donald Trump didn't come out of nowhere. Corn expertly traces the antecedents of Trump and Trumpism over the decades. This is a must read if you want to understand what brought us to Trump and why the GOP remains a threat to American democracy. 

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Stranger Things. The expression “jump the shark” was coined in response to an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz literally leaped (while water-skiing) over a shark. (Henry Winkler was an accomplished water-skier, but he didn’t actually ski over a shark for this scene.) The phrase has come to refer to the moment when a TV show or other creative endeavor goes too far in pushing a plot or generating a stunt to keep the audience hooked. When a television series is renewed, it often ups the ante in the subsequent season to maintain viewer interest by raising the stakes and intensifying the risks faced by the lead characters. The challenge is to keep the show grounded while amping it up. In the final season of Ozark, financial adviser/money launderer and family man Marty Byrde ends up the substitute head of a Mexican drug cartel for a short spell. That was like Fonzie flying over the maneater. The latest season of Netflix’s megahit Stranger Things has followed a similar shark-hopping trajectory. The plot of the show—a tone-perfect homage to 1980s cinema (E.T., Goonies, etc.)—has progressed from a band of geeky adolescents saving their mid-America small town (the fictitious Hawkins, Indiana) to older and wiser high-school teens saving the entire world. But on this path, the Duffer Brothers, who created Stranger Things, have transformed the series from a conspiracy-sci-fi-thriller fueled by paranoia to a supernatural horror flick propelled by gore and ghoulishness. The other-worldly horror elements were present from the start, but on equal footing with the classic movie theme of secret government misdeeds. In this long-awaited fourth season, that balance has been jettisoned, as the show has headed toward a showdown between Eleven, the telekinetic alumnae of a clandestine government project, and a murderous (of course) super-demon from another dimension who she apparently helped create (I’m still a bit hazy on how that happened) and who wants to take over not only Hawkins but  the rest of our known universe.

In the latest season, the show’s most charming aspect—smarter-than-the-adults kids thwarting the dangers of this other dimension that threaten to destroy Hawkins—is subsumed by assorted horror tropes. And its jump-the-sharkness is evident in the transition of Jim Hopper (David Harbour). The once-schlubby, loser-ish, but appealing Hawkins police chief marked by the tragedy of the death of his child, a divorce, and alcoholism helped the teens save the day during their first adventures. In this season, he has become a Bruce Willis-like action hero who escapes from a Siberian prison camp (don’t ask) with the help of Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder). Byers, the formerly hapless main mom of the show, now heads to the Alaskan wilderness to figure out how to mount a (preposterous) operation to rescue Hopper from the commies. The show’s creators have escalated Stranger Things to a grander scale—and in so doing have lost what were its strengths: quirky characters with strong relationships to each other trying to preserve their own small world from dark and unknown forces.

The series still displays much spunk. The attention to 1980s details, its dead-on cultural references, its sprite pacing, and deft interlacing of multiple plot lines—this is all enjoyable and kind of thrilling. (That’s exactly the right Coke can! Oooh, the big hair! I remember that song!) I’ll watch the next season, which presumably will conclude with the final clash to determine the fate of the world. But I’ll be nostalgic for the good old days when the kids were in middle school and battling evil from another dimension was much simpler.

Jerry Jeff, Steve Earle. Earlier this month, I saw Steve Earle and the Dukes perform at the Birchmere, a well-known club outside of Washington, DC. Original subscribers to Our Land might recall that a year ago, I wrote about an Earle show at the same venue, in which he opened with his tune “Feel Alright,” which seemed an appropriate celebration of the end of the pandemic. That was pre-Delta and premature. Well, what the hell did we know then? This time around, Earle, the genre-bending musical polyglot who easily switches between folk, rock, country, blues, bluegrass, and Americana, began the set with five or so songs he didn’t write. It takes a lot of confidence for an accomplished songwriter, as Earle is, to sideline his own work at the start of a gig. But in addition to his major contribution to the canon of American songwriting, Earle’s long-running mission has been to honor his musical forebears. In 2009, he released Townes, an album of songs by Townes Van Zandt, the Texas songwriter’s songwriter. (As a teen, Earle ran away from his San Antonio home in search of his idol Townes.) A decade later he put out Guy, a collection of tunes by Guy Clark, who the New York Times once hailed as the “king of Texas troubadours.” Completing a trilogy honoring Texas songsmiths—whom Earle calls his “first-hand teachers”—he recently released Jerry Jeff, featuring the work of Jerry Jeff Walker. An upstate New Yorker born with the name Ronald Clyde Crosby, Walker was a rambling musician who busked about America and was part of the Greenwich Village folk world in the 1960s before settling in Austin, Texas, and joining the outlaw country music scene. He remains best known for writing the perfect song, “Mr. Bojangles,” which innumerable musicians have performed, including Bob Dylan and Sammy Davis Jr. (If you ever strummed a guitar, you probably played it at some point. I know I have.)

At the Birchmere, Earle told the audience that one reason for this new disc was to demonstrate that Walker, who died in 2020, was no one-hit wonder. With Earle and his band running through “Gypsy Songman” (essentially Walker’s theme song), “Wheel,” and other impressive Walker offerings, he more than proved his case. Earle played his own rendition of “Mr. Bojangles,” accentuating the song’s exquisite melancholy, before moving on to his own impressive oeuvre, including “Copperhead Road,” “Goodbye,” “Guitar Town,” “Galway Girl,” and many others. The Grammy-award winning Earle has released 22 studio albums in his career, creating a massive songbook on par with those Texans who inspired him. He knows so damn much about his craft and its rich history—and he is obsessive about spreading his encyclopedic knowledge. Now in his late sixties, Earle is a hero in the folk music tradition, producing his own fine work and keeping the songs of his progenitors alive and present. He’s on tour through this month. Catch him if you can.

Joni Mitchell. If you haven’t already heard, Joni Mitchell this past weekend played the Newport Folk Festival, her first public performance since her 2015 brain aneurysm and her first full-length public set in 22 years. After the aneurysm, Mitchell had to relearn how to walk, play guitar, and sing. Thus, it was quite a triumph for her to return to the stage—sitting on a throne surrounded by renowned musicians (Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd, Marcus Mumford, and others)—and work her way through her classics, gaining confidence with each number. Her delivery of “Both Sides Now” pegged the needle on the Poignancy Meter. Oh, that water coming from my eye? Must be allergies.

MoxieCam™

“Moxie, who’s that?”

“You know. It’s Benedict, my summer friend.”

“Well, together you two look—”

“If you’re going to make that Salt-N-Pepa joke again, please don’t.

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

July 23, 2022: Trump’s trap for the GOP; American Psychosis update and tease; Dumbass Comment of the Week (John Cornyn); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.  

July 19, 2022: Announcing the forthcoming release of American Psychosis; Breitbart gets something right; The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and The Player (three decades later!); Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology; and more.

July 16, 2022: Does Steve Bannon buy his own BS?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Catherine Glenn Foster, Lauren Boebert, and Dave Yost); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 12, 2022: It’s about sex; Iran-contra flashback: the day reality died; a dangerous state Supreme Court decision; and more.

July 9, 2022: Why did the Atlantic enable Mitt Romney’s dangerous both-sidesism?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Marjorie Taylor Greene, again); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 2, 2022: Mark Meadows: one helluva liar; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ali Alexander); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

June 28, 2022: The lessons from the right’s 50-year-long crusade to limit the freedom of women; the end of Ozark; and more.

June 25, 2022: Hooray for the Trump Republicans who saved the nation—or not?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Clarence Thomas); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

June 21, 2022: Is Trump’s GOP getting even crazier?; George Carlin and the American Dream; Alexei Navalny’s nightmare; and more.

June 18, 2022: Is Elon Musk more dangerous than Peter Thiel?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Lauren Boebert, again); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.