Simply holding conservative religious or political views does not make a person a Christian nationalist, Amanda Tyler told a group of Texas religion journalists April 7.
Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, was a panelist at the one-day symposium on religion and journalism held at Southern Methodist University and sponsored by the Texas Tribune and Religion News Service.
Asked to define the key phrase bandied about all day, she said: “We define Christian nationalism as a political ideology and a cultural framework that tries to merge American and Christian identities into one, or put another way, Christian nationalism suggests that to be a real American or in the context of our conversation here today, a real Texan, that one must be a Christian and not just any kind of Christian, but usually a Christian who holds fundamentalist religious beliefs that are often in line with conservative political priorities.
“Now hear me well, she added, “just to hold fundamentalist religious beliefs or just to hold conservative political priorities does not necessarily mean one is embracing Christian nationalism. But to believe that to be a real American one has to agree … on their religious beliefs and on their conservative political priorities, that is a definition of Christian nationalism.”
“To believe that to be a real American one has to agree … on their religious beliefs and on their conservative political priorities, that is a definition of Christian nationalism.”
Christian nationalism cannot be understood in the U.S. context “without acknowledging and understanding the overlap with white supremacy and racial subjugation,” she added.
The terms “Christian nationalism” and “white Christian nationalism” often are used interchangeably, she acknowledged. “Christian nationalism both creates and perpetuates a sense of cultural belonging that’s limited to the very narrow group of people who held full rights of citizenship at the beginning of the country. That’s white Protestant Christian men who owned property. Christian nationalism suggests that still today those are the people who are most deserving of full citizenship rights and full belonging in the U.S. context.”
The existence of Christian nationalism is not new, even though the name of it and the study of it are relatively new, she said.
“Christian nationalism dates back to the time of Constantine. … It dates back before the founding to the Doctrine of Discovery and in the U.S. context as well. We have so many examples of white Christian nationalism from the past. I think most starkly the KKK being an example of Christian nationalism with the toxic mix of violence of Christianity, of white supremacy all rolled into one.”
Most importantly, she said, “Christian nationalism is also not reflective of Christianity, the religion. It is a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus, Jesus who is always on the side of the marginalized and the oppressed. Christian nationalism, on the other hand, is all about power, about amassing power, holding onto power at all costs. And so it uses a white Jesus as a mascot for power, but it actually doesn’t reflect the teachings of Jesus.”
Christian nationalism is different from patriotism, Tyler said. “Patriotism being a love of country that can be expressed in a number of different ways, including loving our country enough to tell the truth about it and its history. Christian nationalism being about an allegiance to country and to power that requires allegiance over everything else, including religious convictions.”
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