Brad and Dan discuss a wide range of topics— from GOP voter fraud to Madison Cawthorn calling Zelenskyy a thug, to Don’t Say Gay Bills—through the lens of the idea that Christian nationalism is about order and violence. The takeaway: whether it’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, or democracy itself— Christian nationalists will use violence to achieve the societal order they want.
Also: Trump says to bomb Russia and say China did it.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you as always, Brad.
You too.
I know we're trudging through.
We're both behind the scenes, got some things that are difficult institutionally, I know.
I know, Dan, you got some stuff on your plate that's hard.
So in order to make you feel better, I wanted to just give you another window into kind of my Very exciting, sexy life.
You know, I just continue to want to be not just a niche academic podcaster, Dan, but like an influencer.
You know, I'm going to get one of those hats.
You know, have you ever seen the hats that the Instagram influencers wear?
Like if you made a thing, stuff white people like in 2022, like having a full brimmed hat would be like probably number six, somewhere behind IPAs and Nashville.
But anyway, we can talk about that later.
I'm gonna get emails from Nashville now.
So thanks a lot Brad.
So yeah, I mean I know some people at spring break and they're on Instagram posting pictures of like their foam party that they went to.
Others are out in the desert dropping acid, howling at the moon like a wolf or something.
I don't know.
People have these sexy lives.
Well, I do too, Dan.
Okay?
So let me tell you about it.
I am a reader of Emile Zola, his 20-work Rougam Macrore cycle of books.
So it's a 20-volume series.
It's a lot of reading.
And I recently read La Terre, translated The Earth, which is about the French peasantry in the 19th century.
And then Just because I'm a madman, I picked up Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, the great work on 1920s America, small-town America.
And I have to say, Dan, reading about the French peasantry in the 19th century and small-town America at the turn of the 20th is a wild ride.
I have never done acid in the desert.
While howling at the moon.
But that, I think, is probably pretty close.
It's been a pretty crazy couple weeks.
So, just want everyone to know what it looks like over here.
So, I don't know, Dan.
I mean, are you jealous?
I'm just excited that Denver got Russell Wilson.
That's pretty much what's been occupying my thought.
And the fact that, unlike you, I have no lofty aspirations.
I'm just a bad person.
So what I do, and this isn't even a joke, is I go, because I'm conflicted now, because Russell Wilson's awesome and amazing and whatever, but he also beat Denver in the Super Bowl a few years ago, and Seattle fans have been insufferable for a long time.
And I lived in Seattle, and I know I have Seattle people who listen to this, so I'm sorry, I'm going to pick on you.
I have spent a lot of time on Seattle fan webpages just reading Despondency over the last few days.
That's how I lift myself up.
So you can have your social conscience and you're opening your literary horizons and elevating yourself.
I just roll around in the mud like the terrible person that I am.
So yeah, much, much more in the earth, I guess, in that regard.
I do love this about you that your guilty pleasure is not like some, you know, we're not going to find out some scandal about Dan Miller.
It's just going to be that he spends a lot of time on football websites laughing at sad football fans from other teams.
So.
I actually have 31 different troll alter egos where I just go around to every other fan site and try to anger people.
The man is not on Twitter, but he is the world's biggest NFL troll.
Everyone is like, please stop.
This is so boring.
Please just talk about politics and religion.
That's why we came here.
Okay, so Dan, I want to talk about a range of things this week.
Voter fraud, voting rights, things related to Ukraine and Poland, or Poland and Putin, Poland being, you know, very close.
Things related to LGBT rights and different bills and laws that are going into effect.
And also some comments from the former president, Donald Trump, that I think we'll get to in a minute.
So in order to tile that together, I just had the opportunity to interview Sam Perry and Phil Gorski about their new book.
That interview is coming out soon.
And something really stuck out for me from that book.
It's a book called The Flag and the Cross.
It's out now.
And again, our interview is going to drop soon.
But they put it really succinctly in ways that I think will help us kind of think about today.
Page 101 they say, White Christian nationalism is a theory of order and of hierarchy.
It distinguishes insiders and outsiders, and when those two must occupy the same country, those on top and those on the bottom, people like us, white Christian citizens, are the true Americans.
Now that follows on stuff Dan, we say all the time here.
And I think it's pretty familiar to people listening.
There's also this idea of violence, right?
That white violence is the ultimate source of order.
So if we think about white Christian nationalism as a theory of order, you keep order through violence, right?
So order and violence.
If I'm a white Christian nationalist, my whole goal is for the country to be ordered the way I want it to be ordered.
I want it to feel right.
I want it to look right.
And I want the people who deserve to be on top to be on top.
I mean, this, Dan, goes to everything you do in your work, queer democracy and so on.
And if things get out of order, then violence is justified.
And especially white violence.
White Christians are allowed to be violent to fix things, right?
If you need to.
Now, by contrast, right, black or leftist violence is the ultimate source of disorder.
And so if you see protests in response to George Floyd, if you see protests that involve a broken window or something like that, then, you know, that is just, oh, the world has gone to hell and it's all over, right?
So let's just stay with this today, Dan.
You ready?
Order and violence.
White Christian nationalists want the society to be ordered the right way, to feel the right way, to look the right way, and if it's not, they will use violence.
So, let's start here.
You ready?
Let me give you a quote.
I don't want my vote, or anyone else's, to be disenfranchised.
Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rules are?
With people just moving around, anytime you move, you'll change your driver's license, but you don't call up and say, hey, by the way, I'm re-registering.
Let me give you another one.
We need to make sure that everybody's vote is cast, but we also need to make sure that no one else disenfranchises those by creating a fraud on the voting system.
Now, these quotes are from Mark Meadows, who used to be the White House Chief of Staff, part of a Washington Post article from just a couple of days ago.
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