Christian nationalism is “anti-blackness on steroids” with its attacks on voter rights, education and immigration, minister and racial justice advocate Cassandra Gould said during a webinar hosted by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference.
That “unholy trinity of Christian nationalism” is spelled out in Project 2025, a white fundamentalist blueprint for dismantling democracy and restricting religious freedom after Donald Trump’s hoped-for presidential victory in November, said Gould, director of Power Building for Faith in Action.
Cassandra Gould
“Project 2025 is a living manifesto of white Christian nationalism and it targets everything and everybody that’s not white, male, wealthy and at least appears to be heterosexual,” Gould said during the July 22 conversation aimed at helping Black Christians discern the differences between Christianity and Christian nationalism.
The conference is a national network focused on faith and social justice issues.
Gould urged viewers to compare the attitude Christian nationalists have toward immigrants with the “welcome the stranger” approach commanded throughout Scripture.
“When I say ‘immigration,’ I’m not just talking about people at a particular border,” she said. “There are African immigrants in this country as well. All of the folk they believe don’t belong here are targeted by this so-called theology that really co-ops the language of Christianity. Forget the fact that the Bible talks about, ‘You were once a stranger.’ We are all strangers.”
Black Christians should be especially mindful in distinguishing between the teachings of Jesus and those of white fundamentalists who use scriptural references to mask the authoritarianism and political violence of their movement, Gould advised.
“One of the things about Black people is we are extremely Christocentric and … we are sometimes bamboozled if folks say ‘Jesus’ more than twice. We often miss what’s underlying the theological tropes that they are using. We miss the underlying racism and fascism they are perpetuating, and we are not able to interrogate it enough to realize how it is not embodying what Christ would do.”
The good news is Black Christians already have tools they need to distinguish true from false, including the life and ministry of Martin Luther King Jr. along with liberation and womanist theologies, she said.
“One theology puts a target on the back of the most vulnerable. The other theology says feed the poor, take care of the naked.”
“Just go to the book, go to what you are preaching, go to what you are teaching, go to what we have already been taught by the examples of theologians that have gone before us. Go to the work of Christ. Put it side by side with white Christian nationalism and you automatically are able to see the difference. You are able to see that one theology puts a target on the back of the most vulnerable. The other theology says feed the poor, take care of the naked.”
Christian nationalism also should be judged against Jesus’ commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself,” said Obery Hendricks, adjunct professor of religion and African American studies at Columbia University and author of Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith.
Obery Hendricks
“On the social level, on the horizontal level, to love your neighbor as yourself is not just some platitude,” he said. “It’s a commandment to want for your neighbor the same goods, the same freedom, the same liberation, the same security, the same sustenance, the same access to good things in life, the same economic mobility that you want for your family. You should want that for your neighbor as well.”
Being willing to struggle on behalf of neighbors and for the common good is authentic Christianity, Hendricks added. “That’s what love is about, and that is the antithesis of white Christian nationalism. I think for these purposes, I would call it ‘anti-Christian’ because it does not say anything about love. It doesn’t say anything about justice. It’s all about ‘just us.’ It’s about individualism.”
Another clue that Christian nationalism is not Christian is the claim that the U.S. was founded as a “Christian nation” and must return to that status, he said. “It is all governed by their skewed, idiosyncratic, just screwed-up notion of what the gospel is.”
Christian nationalism is anti-Christian because “it is never about love,” added webinar moderator Susan Smith.
“It’s only about whom and what they do not love” including LGBTQ people and immigrants, she said.
“They are opposed to women who want to assert full autonomy over their own bodies. They are against Black Lives Matter, transgender young people, common-sense gun control, labor unions, a living wage and against teaching America’s complete history.”
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