“As one observer noted, the January 6 protesters seemed a motley crew: 'country club Republicans, well-dressed social conservatives, and white Evangelicals in Jesus caps…shoulder to shoulder with QAnon cultists, Second Amendment cosplay commandos, and doughy, hardcore white nationalists.' One group erected a giant cross, another a wooden gallows. Someone waved a 'Jesus Saves' banner, while another sported a 'Camp Auschwitz' hoodie.
“But the closer you look, the murkier things become. Christians waved Trump flags. The 'Proud Boys' kneeled and prayed. One man, decked out as a cosplay crusader, clutched a large leather Bible to his chest with skeleton gloves. What looked like apples and oranges turned out to be a fruit cocktail: white Christian nationalism.
“White Christian nationalism (WCN) is, first of all, a story about America. It says: America was founded as a Christian nation, by (white) Christians; and its laws and institutions are based on “Biblical” (that is, Protestant) Christianity.
“This much is certain, though: America is divinely favored. Whence its enormous wealth and power. In exchange for these blessings, America has been given a mission: to spread religion, freedom, and civilization – by force, if necessary. But that mission is endangered by the growing presence of non-whites, non-Christians, and non-Americans on American soil. White Christians must therefore 'take back the country,' their country.”
(Philip Gorski. “White Christian Nationalism: The Deep Story Behind the Capitol Insurrection.” Berkley Center For Religion, Peace and World Affairs. January 22, 2021.)
WCN – White Christian Nationalism – is a political vision. Violence and racial purity are central to that vision. As Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead have shown, white Christian nationalists tend to favor a strong military and capital punishment and oppose gun control. WCN is thus strongly correlated with opposition to interracial marriage, non-white immigration, and affirmative action.
To understand how American Christianity became so entangled with racism and violence, we first have to trace it back to its scriptural roots.
“The New England Puritans saw themselves as the heirs of the biblical Israelites. They imagined themselves as a “chosen people,” and they came to see the 'new world' as their 'promised land.' And as their relationship with the natives shifted from curiosity to hostility, they began to see the Indians as 'Canaanites,' who had to be conquered.
“The second story is an end times story. Most Christian theologians read Revelation in allegorical terms, as a depiction of the moral struggles within the believer’s heart. But some interpreted the text more literally, as a description of bloody struggles to come. That is how many Puritan radicals read it, and they exported those ideas to New England.
“But how did Protestantism and Englishness get entangled with whiteness? To answer that question, we need to shift our focus to Virginia. There, and elsewhere, the most common justification for the enslavement of kidnapped Indians and Africans was that they were 'heathens.'
“But this argument broke down in the late-seventeenth century as some enslaved persons converted to Christianity and some white Christians sought to evangelize them. The problem was initially resolved by shifting the legal basis of slavery from religion to color: 'Blacks' could be slaves; 'whites' could not. It was then more fully resolved by creating a new theological basis for slavery. Perhaps the most influential was the 'Curse of Ham.' Blacks were the descendants of Noah’s son, Ham, the argument went, and their color and enslavement were a result of the curse that Noah had called down on head.
“It would be another century before WCN became American. Until the American Revolution, most colonists still considered themselves English. It was only after the Revolution that they began to think of themselves as 'American.' Until that time, the term 'Americans' was more often used to refer to the native peoples. So, one way that (white) Americans set themselves apart from their British 'cousin' was by claiming to resemble (native) Americans.
“The American (man) was a little more savage, a little more violent than his English forebears. He was, in a sense, the true heir of the Indian who was (supposedly) disappearing, and the true inhabitant of the 'frontier.' The white American had a trace of the red American in him …
“The 'frontiersman' becomes an 'Indian fighter' and then a 'cowboy.' The scene shifts from Appalachia to Kentucky to Wyoming.”
(Philip Gorski. “White Christian Nationalism: The Deep Story Behind the Capitol Insurrection.” Berkley Center For Religion, Peace and World Affairs. January 22, 2021.)
Philip Gorski is professor of sociology and religious studies at Yale University. He is co-director (with Julia Adams) of Yale’s Center for Comparative Research, and co-runs the Religion and Politics Colloquium at the Yale MacMillan Center. He is the author of American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present and The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe.
Please access Gorski's entire article here:
WCN Fervor – Hatred In Motion
The preceding history lesson helps explain the current fervor for Trumpism and White Christian Nationalism. Hate has entered a new dimension in the United States. What once seemed to be a progression of the nation's historical development can now be analyzed and understood as a growing political basis for White fragility, anger, and even violent hatred.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracked 733 organized hate groups in the United States in 2021. These groups operate through fear, and, as you can see, they religiously spread the doctrine of White nationalism. All of these hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.
The SPLC notes that overall, the movement’s energy has shifted into more mainstream spaces in the aftermath of Jan. 6. Ideas once confined to the organized white power movement are now openly discussed within the broader political right, disintegrating the boundary between them. The white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy, which claims that white people are being systematically replaced across the Western world by “multiculturalists” and Jews, is now cited as a reality by some elected officials and cable news pundits, for example.
(“White Nationalist.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/white-nationalist. Southern Poverty Law Center. 2022.)
Why Do People Hate?
The reasons for hate run deep. We need to recognize hatred and understand how all of us have tendencies to exhibit the behavior. Here are some of the reasons psychologists cite for hatred:
Fear of “The Other”
The In-Group, Out Group Theory contends that when threatened by perceived outsiders, we instinctively turn toward their in-group – those with whom we identify—as a survival mechanism. We then develop aggression for the out-group – the group that has been deemed as being different, dangerous, and a threat to the in-group.
Fear of Ourselves
The things we hate about others are the things that we fear within ourselves. We think about the targeted group or person as a movie screen onto which we project unwanted parts of the self. The idea is, “I'm not terrible; you are.”
This phenomenon is known as projection, a term coined by Freud to describe our tendency to reject what we don’t like about ourselves. Psychologist Brad Reedy further describes projection as the need to be good, which causes us to project "badness" outward and attack it.
Lack of Self-compassion
The antidote to hate is compassion – for others as well as for ourselves. Self-compassion means that we accept the whole self. It is only when we learn to hold ourselves with compassion that we may be able to demonstrate it toward others.”
It fills a void
Psychologist Bernard Golden, author of Overcoming Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work, believes that when hate involves participation in a group, it may help foster a sense of connection and camaraderie that fills a void in one’s identity. He describes hatred of individuals or groups as a way of distracting oneself from the more challenging and anxiety-provoking task of creating one’s own identity.
Societal and Cultural Factors
The answer to why we hate, according to Silvia Dutchevici, LCSW, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Center, lies not only in our psychological makeup or family history, but also in our cultural and political history.
“We live in a war culture that promotes violence, in which competition is a way of life,” she says. “We fear connecting because it requires us to reveal something about ourselves. We are taught to hate the enemy – meaning anyone different than us – which leaves little room for vulnerability and an exploration of hate through empathetic discourse and understanding. In our current society, one is more ready to fight than to resolve conflict. Peace is seldom the option.”
(Allison Abrams, LCSW-R. “The Psychology of Hate.” Psychology Today. March 9, 2017.)
The Hatred We See Lately
Hate of a whole race of people; hate of a whole set of people of certain sexual orientations or gender identities – this hatred is common today and much relates to White Christian Nationalism. They may call it something else, but don't confuse love with aggressive, conservative, social abhorrence.
How many times have you heard that we must bring God back into our schools and other institutions? These pleas reek with both insecurity and projection – “I,” the Christian, am right, and “you,” the sinner, is at fault. How do these Christian folks propose to solve the problems in this ungodly nation? And, could it be they actually fear themselves? Fear their own lack of action or commitment? Fear their own seemingly inescapable minority? Consider that hatred says everything about the hater, and nothing about the hated.
Thus, hateful judgmental reactions to specific events generate distrust, anger, humiliation, and even revenge. The leap to generalization occurs, and an ideology marches on.
Sarah Jones writes …
“Traces of it are detectable in a racist massacre in Buffalo; in Tucker Carlson’s monologues; in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public comments. Find it again in the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric, which poorly disguises demographic anxiety, or in the right’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which shows it embracing God and guns with ever greater conviction.
“This ideology has a name, argue sociologists Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Philip S. Gorski of Yale University. Perry and Gorski call it 'white Christian nationalism,' and in their view, it represents a pressing threat to democracy.”
(Sarah Jones. “White Christian Nationalism ‘Is a Fundamental Threat to Democracy.'” Intelligencer. June 04, 2022.)
White Christians believe they are the real Americans. Yet, they share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles. These beliefs reflect a desire to restore and give privilege to the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe. In their new book, The Flag and the Cross, Perry and Gorski write that “these beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place.”
Conclusion
The division and hatred I see now is unparalleled in my lifetime. I lived through civil rights, terrible political assassinations, the Vietnam era, and Watergate – when time and again, hatred reared its ugly head. Yet, during the last 7-10 years, I have seen an almost constant stream of hateful rhetoric, activity, and destruction. To me, much of the hatred has been emboldened by dissatisfied, fearful White Christian Nationals determined to “Make America Great Again.” I really thought we had learned more from our past mistakes and had taken giant strides toward equality and justice for all.
But now, I am doubtful of the real progress we have made. Please understand that I do not want to throw Christianity out with the dirty bathwater of religious extremism. In general, I think Christians are faithful, loving people who hate prejudice. Yet, those who openly align with racist movements – people whose ultimate goal is white supremacy – seek an America in which they make decisions for everyone else.
Are Christian Nationalists and the Religious Right just two different terms to describe the same movement?
Scholar Andrew L. Whitehead, who, along with Samuel L. Perry, wrote the recent book Taking Back America for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, notes the overlap between the two terms but sees important differences, too.
“I think what we are identifying is the cultural framework that is broadly accepted by those who identify as part of the Religious Right,” Whitehead said. “Using data from 2007, 65% of those who say the ‘Religious Right’ describes their religious identity ‘very well’ are ambassadors of Christian nationalism, meaning those Americans who most strongly embrace Christian nationalism.”
Added Whitehead, “I see the Religious Right as more of a social movement made up of networks of religious leaders, politicians, congregations and organizations. Christian nationalism is the political theology that this social movement largely embraces in order to baptize their political ends with the support of the transcendent.”
(Rob Boston. “White Christian Nationalists: Who Are They? What Do They Want? Why Should You Care?” Americans United. March 26, 2021.)
I would say those who want to “take back their country” through hatred like the so-called “Christian” insurrectionists on January 6 are not only White Christian Nationalists but also hypocritical traitors. You must read and understand the history of their development and perhaps you, too, will agree.
“Onward, Christian soldiers” to what “war”?
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