Is talking about Christian nationalism akin to demonizing White Christians? Some right-wing theologians and leaders would like you to think it is. But they are wrong. We provide strategies for talking about Christian nationalism without reducing all Christian political involvement as Christian nationalism. We then continue to outline why it is essential to recognize the threat of White Christian nationalism, especially as it relates to rhetoric of war, violence, and political enemies.
Our second major segment investigates how the Supreme Courts' recent decision regarding church openings during COVID sets a dangerous precedent for what counts as religious liberty and religious discrimination. Dan links this to broad themes concerning healthcare and inequalities in American society.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in religion at Skidmore College, and here with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Brad, it's good to see you.
Good to see you, Dan.
We have both, I believe, hit the February blues.
I believe many folks out there have.
I think obviously the pandemic has ratcheted up what is already the, I think for many of us, the hardest time of the year.
And so if you're listening and life is catching up to you, we're there with you.
We hope you're doing all right.
We hope you are hanging in and we hope that the next hour We'll be a cheery, light-hearted part of your day.
I do have, you know, related to this, sorry, this February theme of the blues, do people need a reason for hope ahead of time?
I saw a thing online about a zoo.
You can go online, you can name a cockroach after your ex, and they will feed it to a reptile or bird for you.
So if that's not something to pull you out of the February darkness, I don't know what is.
Dan Miller, never shying away from those pastoral instincts you once had, Dan.
Thank you for that.
All right, with that auspicious beginning to this episode, we want to talk about a couple things today.
We want to talk about Backlash to Christian nationalism becoming kind of part of our parlance.
I think, you know, we've been talking about Christian nationalism for a long time.
Of course, Perry Whitehead, Catherine Stewart, all of our guests and friends of the pod have been pioneering scholarship and journalism on this theme.
But it's now becoming mainstream to the point that there's some The folks who are saying, you're doing nothing but demonizing white Christians, and that's not fair.
So we're going to go in on that.
We're going to go in on some issues related to the idea of a new political party, perhaps, and Trumpism splintering the Republican Party.
I want to talk about the Supreme Court did something last Friday, Saturday night, Friday and Saturday, that has been covered over, but is incredibly important in my view.
I want to get to the Ravi Zacharias scandal.
Some of you will know what I'm talking about right away, some of you will not, but it is essentially a scandal about sex abuse in the church, and I want to just spend a minute or two talking about why that happens so often.
We'll finish talking about COVID and some other things and go from there.
So Dan, let's talk about Christian nationalism.
There's a piece this week from the Catholic League, and I'm going to let you take this over, about how all this talk about Christian nationalism is nothing more than the demonization of white Christians.
And they're trying to cancel you, white Christian.
They're trying to make you out to be the bad guy, and you shouldn't let them.
So Dan, you want to walk us through the article and tell us why it is misguided.
Yeah, so—and then we'll bounce back and forth and relate to some other things that we're going to be talking about today.
And for people who've listened to us, it's going to be pretty standard.
But Bill Donohue, who's the Catholic League president, wrote this little piece, and basically his argument is, That Christian nationalism is an invention of a kind of angry Christian left and other left-wing people who just don't like Christians very much.
That it's not real.
That it's just a way of, as you say, demonizing white Christians.
And he talks about, you know, it's interesting.
He says, who believes this nonsense?
He says, Americans United for Separation of Church and State believes it.
It blamed Christian nationalists for the Capitol riot of January 6th.
We blamed Christian nationalists for the Capitol riot on January 6th.
We had a good chunk of an episode about that.
Mainstream media, so-called, is now starting to look at this and, you know, Number of articles out this week from really mainstream media sources beginning to really look seriously and say we need to look at militant white Christianity in America and so forth.
So it's widespread, but you know, there's a number of things here, but there's some comments that he made that were really strange, right?
He says, for example, That you can't identify where these Christian nationalists are.
He targets Whitehead and Perry in particular, people that we've talked about a lot, that I use a lot in my work, that you use in your work.
We've cited them.
They've been on the show.
You know, and those kinds of things.
And he basically says, well, you can't find it.
And of course, the reason is because it's diffuse through a lot of American society.
That's the point.
But one of Donny's points is, well, if you can't find a headquarters, and I kid you not, this is his argument, if you can't find a headquarters, then it can't be a real thing, which is just silly.
The fancy academic term for that is called a non sequitur, right?
It doesn't mean anything.
Real quick, Dan, I would just like to add, does anyone know where the Antifa headquarters is?
Because I was looking that for a strip mall recently in Cincinnati and didn't find it.
So if anyone out there can locate for me Antifa HQ in Cincinnati or in Salt Lake or in Portland, please let me know.
That'd be great.
All right.
Sorry, Dan.
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was thinking.
He said the same thing.
He said, not about Antifa, but he said, after all, communists were reliably found hanging out at the offices of the Communist Party.
And you're like, the right has made hay for decades of talking about these diffuse threats all through society and so forth.
So again, it's just sort of selective logic.
But here are the parts that really, really sort of struck me.
Resonated with me.
People will remember we talked about the Biden inaugural, right?
And we talked about Biden denouncing white supremacy.
And we talked about some mainstream GOP figures, some commentators like Tucker Carlson and others saying, like, how dare they demonize us?
We brought up this point that, like, he didn't name you guys.
He said white supremacy.
You just look in the mirror, and if you see a white supremacist, yeah, it means you're a white supremacist.
It's the same thing for Donahue here.
So he poses this question, and this really sort of blew my mind when I read it.
And I want everybody to listen to this, okay?
He said, if someone believes that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are divinely inspired, does that make him a Christian nationalist?
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire SWADGE archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
