In his recent article at Religion Dispatches, historian Thomas Lecaque writes: In the wake of every mass shooting in this country, we have a brief moment where we talk about the guns used and the need for gun control. And then rapidly, the gun lobby, conservative politicians, Second Amendment absolutists, and the rest find every conceivable other possible thing to focus on, starting with “thoughts and prayers” and moving on to hardening school buildings. The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where the shooter used an AR-15-style weapon he’d purchased from the gun company Daniel Defense, has followed the same pattern—but with a recognition that the love of the AR-15 style weapon isn’t just about “freedom” or Second Amendment absolutism. It’s also about Christian Nationalism.
https://religiondispatches.org/christian-nationalists-and-the-holy-gun-crusade/
He speaks with Brad about this moment in our nation's history and what it means.
Thomas Lecaque is an associate professor of history at Grand View University. Twitter: @tlecaque.
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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 at UCSB.
And today I have an amazing guest, somebody who is not only a wonderful historian, but just does Twitter in a way that we should all aspire to, like should give classes, should run.
I would pay, you know, hundreds of dollars for a Twitter seminar just to learn how to do it.
Like the person who's with me, and that is Dr. Thomas Lecoq.
So Thomas, thanks for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me.
We're here today to talk about a recent piece that you have at Religion Dispatches called Christian Nationalists and the Holy Gun Crusade, and it really does zero in on One kind of facet of the obsession with guns in this country that is illuminating, even in a time when it's hard to feel like you can be surprised or shocked or terrified even more than perhaps one already is,
Let me just tell folks about you, though, you are an associate professor of history at Grandview University, which is in Iowa, a writer, somebody who's written for the Washington Post, the Bulwark, Religion Dispatches, and a medieval historian and actually historian of the or specialist in the Crusades, which I think will kind of come in handy.
for just analyzing contemporary America in the years to come, but also in our discussion today.
So, excited to talk.
Let's just jump into your piece.
I kind of saw the tweets, I feel like, in real time, and so I think I know the origin story to this superhero epic, but what inspired you to write this piece about, you know, Christian nationalism and what you call the Holy Gun Crusade?
So I'm just going to start by saying that no crusade historian ever wants to feel relevant.
There is never a moment where a crusade historian is like, this feels familiar to me and then feels good about themselves.
Like, oh good!
No!
Why?
Why are we here?
Why again?
So I have been writing pieces on Fringe religious movements, far-right fringe religious movements for three years now almost, which is wild to think of.
And a number of them, the kind of real link is that I work where kind of religious violence and apocalypsism intersect.
And so that's QAnon, unfortunately, that's Rod of Iron Ministries in Pennsylvania, which I had just written about.
And while I was working on a piece about Doug Mastriano, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, and his particular brand of Christian nationalism, his intersection with Rod of Iron Ministries, which believes the AR-15 is literally the Rod of Iron mentioned in the Book of Revelations.
An idea that, much more disturbingly, is not limited to them.
They're just the most, I'd say, vocal but also sensational emblem, right?
It's the picture of them in the fuchsia gowns with the bullet crowns, parading with the AR-15.
It makes a really striking image and we're like, what is this thing?
That's really weird.
So while I was writing this piece for the Bulwark, I wanted to make sure that people knew, like, this is the most egregious of the apocalyptic gun churches, and the fact that I can just say something like, apocalyptic gun church, and not just mean that there's this one group, is the worst thing on earth.
No one is happy here.
I was looking at other, like, small examples, and then published the piece, and it was great, and I was very happy with it, and just kept ruminating on one of the kind of throwaway examples, just how egregious the throwaway example was, of this gun made by a company called Spikes Tactical.
That is called the Crusader.
And again, as a Crusade historian, the moment you name something a Crusader, It is very clear what you mean because I am in fact aware of all of the pop culture connotations, right?
This is not a warm and fuzzy image.
This isn't that, well, you missed the real history and you didn't know how bad they were.
No, pop culture is like, let's take these people and let's make them worse.
You don't come out of Kingdom of Heaven and think the Templars are really just upstanding dudes who want to sit down and have a discourse.
You come out of it like, oh, they want to murder everyone who doesn't agree with them.
And I like to think a normal, rational, healthy person is like, and that's bad.
And some people are like, I'm going to name my gun store after them.
And I think these are the two very different reactions.
So the Crusader gun takes this and leans into it and then just like pole vaults over the line and is somewhere deep on the side of like so far past distasteful it's scary.
So sometimes you're on Twitter and you just...
Comment on the fact that the world is in fact a bad place.
Twitter has been described to me as the comment section of a YouTube video without the video.
I like that one.
I think that if Instagram is about lying about your life to other people, Twitter is about stabbing strangers in the back in an alleyway.
It's not a nice place, and so usually the things that you word vomit out either go from like, here's a picture of my pet, to here is the worst thing I've ever learned in my life.
I didn't think this would hit the worst thing I've ever learned in my life, and I was wrong.
Apparently I have become a bit too jaded about the things I know, and it... I think I can describe it as having gone viral at this point.
Um, I can't catch up with my mentions anymore and that's okay.
I don't need to catch up with my mentions.
I've surrendered.
Um, but it went like, you know, there's like academic viral and you're like, 2,000 people like this.
I am a celebrity.
I am an actual rock star in this moment.
Yeah.
Um, I think we're somewhere over 90,000 at this point, which is like actually viral.
And another one is somewhere creeping up to 70,000 of me pointing out to someone's like, you don't understand the history of the Crusades.
I am literally a historian of the Crusades.
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