Strategies for Combating Christian Nationalism w/ Amanda Tyler
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Brad speaks with Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee and organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism. They discuss Amanda's new book, 'How to End Christian Nationalism,' and explore effective strategies for fighting Christian nationalism, focusing on local involvement and long-term commitment. Amanda shares her journey, the importance of separating church and state, and the damaging impacts of Christian nationalism on democracy and faith. The conversation also covers how to advocate for religious freedom and the critical role of public schools.
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These are the kinds of emotions that can take over in these kinds of situations.
But instead of reacting, I've maintained for weeks that we need to strategize.
Find ways to organize.
Find ways to move ahead.
Today I speak with Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee and the leader of the initiative Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
Amanda's written a new book called How to End Christian Nationalism, in which she lays out strategies for moving forward in an era of uncertainty, for moving forward in an era of seemingly ascendant Christian nationalism.
There's no silver bullet.
There's no easy answer.
But I do think a beginning comes in two steps.
One is an emphasis on the local.
Amanda talks about getting involved in local organizations and institutions.
The other is seeing this as a long-term fight, something that will outlast us all and something we have to fight for for the rest of our lives.
Democracy is certainly in peril, and it is something that we must practice and reinvigorate if it's going to survive.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Amanda.
I hope it gives you ways forward and a little bit of hope as we move in to the next few weeks.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
Straight White American Jesus Welcome, Amanda Tyler.
Great to see you.
Thanks for joining me, and just absolutely wonderful to see you.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Last time I saw you was in San Diego, like the day after Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, and we were all on the same panel, me, you, and Matt Taylor.
And I don't think I'll ever forget sitting at lunch that day and just the complete, like, That's right.
Doesn't that seem like years ago, not just a few months ago, given where we are now?
It's crazy.
And I guess that's how life goes.
We're here to talk about your great new book, How to End Christian Nationalism.
And you are, of course, the leader of the Baptist Joint Committee, and you all have been doing wonderful work with Christians Against Christian Nationalism for years now.
We've talked about it a lot on our show and had chances to interact over that.
I want to talk more about that and why you, as a Christian leader, believe fighting Christian nationalism is so important for democracy and for the Christian church.
But let's start with your story.
Where did this begin for you?
I think this goes back a long way in terms of your upbringing and your early career, but how did the early years of your life and ministry and career shape your fight now?
Yeah.
Well, when I think about my life, I think about really two tracks that have been parallel since I was a little kid.
One is just the importance of my faith and my practice of my faith through Christian communities, and specifically for most of my life, Baptist Christian communities, that that was something that was just Integral to my family and my growing up.
And in my tradition, we practice believers' baptism.
And so I first made my public confession of faith and was baptized, dunked, you know, fully immersed as a seven-year-old in my Baptist church.
And just the ways that that was just so important to me personally from, again, a very, very young age.
But then also, and this is kind of the piece that makes me, I think, a little bit of an outlier, is just how long I have been interested in politics, law, and government.
I mean, as a really little kid, I was fascinated by elections.
I was asking my My parents and their friends, who they were voting for for city council.
I was just very into the way that our government and law works.
And I set my sights on a career in law and government when I was in elementary school.
And so having these two pieces, the government side and the religion side for me, was just ever-present.
But also present for me was this commitment to the separation of church and state, this idea, and part of that is from my own Baptist upbringing, but an idea that one can be both a faithful Christian and a patriotic and involved American citizen, but those two things don't have to collide or come together or be part of this one and the same identity.
In some ways, when I read your biography, I'm jealous because I feel like you've really identified the things that you wanted to pursue so early.
You've had a lot of various roles and experiences in DC itself, in school and in work and in the various capacities you've had around the district.
It's really amazing to have that so young and to pursue it throughout your life.
But regardless of the kind of linear narrative that we have of your career and your interest, something seems to have changed in 2016 like it did for a lot of us.
And so how did 2016 change things for you?
Yeah, well, for me, I mean, personally and professionally, I changed career paths in 2016. I had been working for a member of Congress for the last eight years and felt a calling to Start leading the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty or BJC, this education and advocacy group that I have been affiliated with at different points in my life and different roles.
But the executive director had announced his retirement and I was called to be the executive director.
And that was in September of 2016. I did not actually take my new position until January of 2017. And we know what happened in between those two dates.
At that point, I think a very improbable or unexpected election of Donald Trump in 2016 That completely changed the landscape in Washington, including the landscape of religious freedom work.
And we quickly saw that everything that had been normalized was no longer to be expected in a Trump administration.
And that started really his first week of his first administration with putting forth the first Muslim travel ban.
And what impact that had on religious freedom and pursuing this Christian nationalist agenda and narrative.
And also the normalization of violence that we saw that started with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that summer and continued the next year with the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh.
This increasingly violent manifestation of Christian nationalist sentiment through the hands and the actions of white supremacists really upped for me and for the people that I worked with the urgency and the need to call out Christian nationalism as the single biggest threat to religious freedom for all people.
Would you mind just really quickly, and I think a lot of folks listening know this already, but when a lot of people around the country, especially those who are not Christian, hear the word Baptist, they picture a Southern Baptist.
They picture somebody like Jerry Falwell or Robert Jeffress.
They picture somebody who is talking about fire and brimstone, somebody who's Speaking in ways that are often unkind about the LGBTQ community, and even those that would say, yeah, we want there to be a collapse of the separation of church and state.
Baptist Joint Committee is none of those things.
Would you just give us the one-minute version of what that is so everyone listening can have a really good understanding as we move forward here?
Yeah, so I think first, just an understanding of Baptist as a religious movement that has many different expressions.
The Southern Baptist Convention being the largest, not only Protestant denomination, but the largest denomination of Baptists, gets almost all the airtime when it comes to what it means to be a Baptist.
But it does not represent the totality of the Baptist movement and I would say even represents a strong departure from most of the history of the Baptist movement.
Baptists started 400 years ago and a through line across all different kinds of lines of difference and context Has been a commitment to what's called soul liberty, this idea, theological idea, that each person must have the necessary freedom in order to have an authentic relationship with God and an authentic faith that has to be freely chosen.
And the only way to fully protect that freedom of conscience, that idea of soul liberty, Is to have an institutional separation of church and state.
That without that separation of church and state, the power of the state interferes with individual conscience.
And that is true not only for Baptists, not only for other kinds of Christians, but for people from all faith traditions and for people who don't claim a faith tradition.
That our ability to say yes to God is only worthwhile if we also have an ability to say no to God.
And so that freedom of choice is key to faith and is key to the Baptist movement.
And so it is that strain of Baptist identity that is represented in the work of the Baptist Joint Committee, which has been around for 88 years as a presence for education and advocacy around religious freedom for all people.
That leads to my next question, which is something that comes from page 26 of your book, where you say, Christian nationalism is a gross distortion of the Christian faith that I and so many others hold dear.
I've said many times on this show that as a scholar of religion, somebody who's studying these things, I always believe Christian nationalists when they tell me they're Christian because they're carrying the Bible, they're carrying a cross, they're using symbols and verbiage that comes from the Christian tradition.
However, I've also said I completely understand why any Christian person, including a Christian leader like yourself, would want to characterize Christian nationalists as not adhering to the Christian tradition in ways that are faithful or accurate or, in fact, in step with the teachings of Christ would want to characterize Christian nationalists as not adhering to the Christian tradition in ways that
So coming from your particular Baptist perspective and everything you just outlined in regard to soul liberty, why is Christian nationalism such a departure from the very foundations of Christian faith?
Yeah, well, I really appreciate your framing there.
And it's one that I agree with.
I'll say right off the top.
I do not question other people's religious identity or whether or not they claim a Christian label.
I think that is one way of impinging on someone else's religious freedom.
We get the choice to claim our own religious identity.
And to interpret the scriptures in the way that we feel led to interpret.
That, however, does not limit my ability or other people's ability to call out hypocrisy where we see it, or to call out where we see the way someone is living out their faith as being at odds with how we view an authentic Christian witness.
And an authentic Christian witness to me comes down to a single word, and that's love.
If I had to sum up the entire Christian theology into one word, that's the word that it would be.
And that's because I believe through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, God shows love for each one of us.
And that Jesus taught us that we love God by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
That is, as Jesus taught, how we sum up all of the law and the commandments.
And that is a tall order, the way that Jesus lived his life, always on the side of those who had been marginalized or oppressed by state power, telling us that in order to be first, we had to be last, turning all of the assumptions of worldly power on their turning all of the assumptions of worldly power on their head.
Jesus really came, I believe, to show us that the way that the world orders priorities is not the way that God orders priorities.
And so that way of being and that way of thinking is completely at odds with this ideology of Christian nationalism, which is all about power.
It's all about using Jesus and really a straight white American Jesus as its mascot for the work that it's about, right?
Which is about holding on to power, creating us versus them, insider versus outsider hierarchies that leave some people amassing a lot of power and wealth and prestige in a society at the expense of other people.
To me, that way of ordering society is absolutely at odds with the way that Jesus lived his life and the way that God wants us to lead ours.
It's hard to see how loving one's neighbor as yourself could be dangerous.
I'm sure there are ways and I'm sure somebody's going to email me and tell me how there are ways.
But for the most part, I think loving one's neighbor as yourself feels like a direction or a spiritual rule that leads to hospitality or empathy.
In your book, you talk, and this correlates with things we talk about a lot on this show, that Christian nationalism is not based on loving one's neighbor as oneself, and in fact that Christian nationalism is dangerous.
Before we get to the ways that you think one can really engage in various strategies and various disciplines in order to help end Christian nationalism, I'm wondering if you would just outline for us How Christian nationalism is dangerous, whether it's in physical violence, rhetorical violence, any other form of violence.
Yeah.
So I have a whole chapter in the book about denouncing violence, and that is because of the increasingly violent nature of Christian nationalism in the American context in particular.
And again, there are other examples of religious nationalism around the world that are informed by and also are informing the particular American brand of Christian nationalism.
But we see it in the ways that the ideology was used to drive some of the mass murders that were committed by white supremacists in places like Mother Emanuel AME Church, Tree of Life Synagogue.
Top supermarket, the Walmart in El Paso, you know, the list goes on and on where we've seen Americans killed just going about their daily lives because some person thought they didn't deserve to be here based on their religious identity, their racial or ethnic identity.
You know, really keying into this idea of who really qualifies as a full American.
And so those are some of, I think, the most horrifying examples of violent Christian nationalism that I can think of from our recent past.
Of course, we've also saw the violence that was perpetrated on January 6, 2021, that resulted in the loss of life at the U.S. Capitol, but also that threatened then and continues to serve, I believe, as an existential threat to American democracy itself.
The ways that this ideology fueled with the violence of rampant gun use and threats using guns and other weapons, how that has led to really trying to cut away the idea of free and fair elections.
At the way that we, you know, really the entire system of elections that we have that are the underpinnings of our democracy.
And so I think it's dangerous to American democracy and that we are seeing An armed push towards an authoritarian theocracy, not just on the national level, but on the state and local level too, that we've seen this kind of particular brand of Christian nationalism.
And then, you know, just in a more everyday way, Christian nationalism is violent to the idea, the foundational idea of religious freedom in this country.
That one's belonging in American society should never depend on what one believes or how one worships or whether one's religious or not.
But yet, Christian nationalism attacks that very idea by saying that some people belong here more than others, that there is a particular interpretation of the Bible that must be legislated into law and policy in ways that are harming the health and wellbeing and safety of people.
Whether it be through attacks on reproductive freedom, but also attacks on LGBTQ plus Americans, and attacks on people who are not Christian in our society.
I know that there are people listening who have friends and family members who might say something like this.
I'm a Christian.
What's the big deal if our government's a little bit more Christian?
If What's the big deal if my values are more infused with our policies and laws and our governments and the way that we explain who we are and what we are in this country?
I don't think most people listening hold those views but I know they have family members who do.
What is one way they can talk to them about how not only is that dangerous for everyone you just mentioned, those who are not Christian, those who are in need of reproductive health care, those who are marginalized by way of their gender or sexual identities, those who are immigrants or people of color.
But there's even a danger, and we've talked about it on the show, for the person who thinks that Christian nationalism will help them or that it'll be good for them as a Christian.
Any perspective on that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, I would first say to a person who's raising this as a Christian, that Christian nationalism does real violence to Christianity itself.
And that's because when the government appropriates any religion, including our own religion as its own, it is going to be using it as an instrument of power and it is no longer an instrument of religion.
The Christian Gospels, Jesus taught, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
And even in that teaching, Jesus is implicitly saying, God is not Caesar and Caesar is not God.
And when we have our religion appropriated by government, we are merging and confusing those forms of religious and political authority that I believe is really idolatrous.
So it really violates some of our central understandings of how we practice our religion for government to be appropriating it at all.
Not to mention that Christianity is such a diverse religion, so many different expressions of Christianity.
And when the government is appropriating Christianity, It is picking and choosing even among Christian sects.
And so it does lead to the persecution and the othering of whoever is not in favor by the particular brand of Christianity that is being endorsed and furthered.
It also to that kind of basic theological idea that I was talking about earlier, if the government is forcing faith on people, it's no longer freely chosen.
And therefore, I don't think an authentic form of faith.
And we can look both to our history, but also around the world today to studies that show that in countries that have established religion, the practice of that religion actually declines.
That religion of the majority, majority religion is more practiced in countries that don't have an established religion.
And so I think in some places, the push to have more Christian nationalism And through our laws and particularly this push to have it in public schools, for instance, it's a bit of a desperate grab at self-preservation.
It's an idea that, you know, I see Christianity waning in the culture at large.
I see fewer and fewer people go to church.
We'll just legislate some of these ideas and that way people will still get the Christian teachings, even if they're not in churches.
And my warning to that is that approach is definitely going to be counterproductive to the overall goal, if we have it, of spreading the gospel.
The best way for us to propagate the religion is actually to make sure that government keeps its hands off of the religion.
So in addition to our concern for our neighbors, if we're concerned about our own faith, those are all reasons I think Christians should reject Christian nationalism.
I'm always amazed that Christian nationals are obsessed with Hungary as this great paragon of a Christian nation, and yet the percentages of Hungarians who are participating in church is actually lower than in the United States.
And so it makes you wonder, do you really want people to go to church or do you really just want power?
It seems like maybe it's the second one.
All right.
So if you're a Christian, you should be worried about Christian nationalism because it is so damaging to Christianity itself.
But you also argue that one of the things that's needed to end a Christian nationalism are for Christians to see fighting Christian nationalism as a spiritual imperative.
So There's also people listening who are going to have family members that are like, yeah, you're right.
Amanda's right.
We don't need a government-sanctioned Christianity, but this doesn't hurt me and I'm staying out of it.
What would you say to that person in regard to this being a spiritual imperative where Christians really have a kind of family duty to go get their cousins and their aunts who are out there propagating Christian nationalism?
Well, I think for one, because Christian nationalism uses the symbols and the language of Christianity, to a casual observer, it really looks like the same thing.
And so I think that Christians, in an attempt to live out our faith in a more authentic way, really need to explain to other people how Christian nationalism is a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus.
We need to normalize speaking out against Christian nationalism.
And that's because, and this is where I really see it as a spiritual imperative, because Christian nationalism is driving so much inequity and discrimination and harm and violence for our neighbors, as I've discussed previously.
So if we really are serious about following Jesus's command to love God through showing love for neighbor, Pushing back and trying to end Christian nationalism, I believe, is a core piece of loving our neighbor.
Sitting back and doing nothing, especially in a society in which we hold a privileged majority position amounts to complicity at this point.
And therefore, inaction, I believe, is no longer an option, but something that we need to be actively discipling, to use a word that's very common in Christian language, to disciple ourselves away from Christian nationalism and towards a more I think,
authentic walk with Jesus, but also to be discipling others in our Christian communities, in our family and friend groups, for them to also understand how Christian nationalism is not the way of Jesus, and that if we want to follow the way of Jesus, we have to reject Christian nationalism publicly.
It's, yeah, and it's just so great to hear you say that every time because I think there's a lot of folks who, I've met a lot of Christians who say, well, I don't believe that and I don't do it that way.
I'm part of a progressive church.
I'm part of a liberal church.
I'm part of a different kind of church.
So those people over there are lost.
But there's a second part to that, which is, well, they're lost, but they're also part of your family and your tradition.
There's maybe a responsibility here to see if there's not a way to show them that the path they've gone down is hurtful and idolatrous and so much else.
One of the things you emphasize in another chapter of the book is the local dimensions of ending Christian nationalism, that one of the best ways to think about ending Christian nationalism is to start on the local level.
Would you help us understand why that's such a focus in the book and what it means to engage on a local level to fight Christian nationalism?
Sure.
So I think there's a tendency in a lot of our politics, and we're having this conversation before the November 5th election, you know, but we certainly see an emphasis on national politics, on national election, and that is important.
But the reality is that most of the decisions that are made that are impacting our lives are done on the local and state level.
And that's becoming even increasingly the case with a U.S. Supreme Court that has returned our country in many ways to the days of states' rights again, where our rights as Americans are by and large being decided, depending on our geography, which state we live in.
And then also when we think about the power of city and town councils and school boards, so many local decisions, so many decisions are being made very locally.
But also, Christian nationalism is a problem in every community in this country.
There are certainly areas of the country that have a more concentration of the ideology of Christian nationalism, areas of the country where Christian nationalism has taken over state legislatures or other governmental bodies in ways that are not the same in other places.
But it is present everywhere.
And it manifests differently in different communities.
And part of ending Christian nationalism is going to be about working together on the local level, first to identify how is Christian nationalism causing harm in our community?
But then importantly, how do we fashion interventions and responses to that?
And that is best done in community, in the local level, in the communities being not limited to Christians but being multi-faith and multi-ethnic, multi-racial coalitions that are really modeling what pluralistic democracy looks like.
I mean, we talk about, I believe many of us are talking about that what's at stake for the United States right now is will we succeed in this grand experiment we have of actually being a pluralistic democracy.
The democracy itself is actually quite young when you think about how there are entire groups of people who have just recently gained both citizenship rights and those rights are at stake, are really, are being threatened All
the time.
Of the American population.
I think that, and I'm speaking here particularly to white Americans and to white Christians, I think we have been very complacent, thinking that the structure of American democracy will be enough to just keep this experiment alive.
And I think the last few years have shown us that without the active engagement of all of us, In really standing up for and protecting democracy, that this experiment may very well fail.
And so now is the time, I think, for us to be actively involved and pushing back against Christian nationalism and forming an alternative kind of society, one that works for all people regardless of Of religion, creed, race, ethnicity, national origin, language, all of those things, those are all of the, that's what we're about in this greater project.
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I want to thank Amanda Tyler for taking the time to talk to us during what is an overwhelming busy time.
And I want to just ask Amanda where are the places people can link up with you, the different bookstops you're doing, talks you're giving, places you'll be, and other things we should know.
Yeah, thanks so much.
It's been great.
So I would suggest people go to endchristiannationalism.com where they can learn more about the book.
And I do have the book tour stops on there in the next month.
I'll be in Oklahoma City, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Richmond, and we'll have more stops being added in the future.
You can also follow us on all social media channels at endchristiannationalism.com.
BJC is at BJC on the Hill, and I'm on X at Amanda Tyler BJC. And would love to stay in touch and just really grateful for the conversation, Brad.
Thank you.
And as always, friends, go by the book, How to End Christian Nationalism by Amanda Tyler.
And it could not be more timely and more important.
Thanks for listening.
We'll be back later this week with It's in the Code and the Weekly Roundup.
