Is American Christian Nationalism a Threat?

Is American Christian Nationalism an Existential Threat? Guest post by theologian Ted Peters

Ted Peters is one of America’s best-known and most influential theologians. His credentials are too numerous and impressive to list here. Look him up on Wikipedia. His blog is: www.patheos.com/blogs/publictheology. He posted an interview with me (and commentary) on his blog today (May 4, 2024).

There are American Christian Nationalism (ACN) and White American Christian Nationalism (WACN). But they are too small to become an existential threat to the entire nation. The real existential threat fueling our fears comes from the MAGA-Moscow wing of the Republican Party. What scares us is the prospect of a second presidential term for Donald Trump. Candidate Trump just told Time Magazine that if he becomes president again, he plans to deport millions of people, cut the U.S. civil service, and intervene more directly in the Justice Department’s prosecutions. Many of us fear the prospect of replacing order with chaos, democracy with tyranny, and justice with vengeance.

When we are anxious, we risk becoming resentful, vengeful, and restless. We intuitively flee from safety to self-righteousness. Feeling weak in the face of overwhelming social forces, we find some strength in claiming that we are at least right. And the threatening enemy is wrong. Especially if we call the one who is wrong great, influential and powerful. The more powerful our scapegoat, the more powerful we feel when we are right.
Objectively speaking, Trump and his army of MAGA-Moscow brown noses pose a real existential threat. Those of us who fear the future are not paranoid. Still, we must be careful not to direct our resentment at the wrong target. I suspect we progressives are shifting our fear of Trumpism to evangelicalism. A big mistake.

Why do progressives attack evangelicals?

A side issue takes place that I find as alarming as it is confusing. Christians fight Christians in the public square. Why? In my Patheos series on ‘Resentment and Compassion’, as a public theologian I have tried to clarify public discourse to get to the bottom of it. Here’s my hypothesis.
Progressive Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN) are shifting their anger about Donald Trump onto evangelicals by painting evangelicals with the colors of Christian nationalism. That is, CACNers blame white evangelicals for Christian nationalism. This is a mistake.
Is it a mistake to attack all evangelicals as ACNers?

Treating all of evangelical Christianity as ACN or even WACN is a mistake for two reasons. First, the real target of public theology should be the MAGA-Moscow wing of the Republican Party. It is a waste of precious energy to castigate Aid to the Church in Need or even WACN, let alone the millions of evangelical Christians. With all the difficulties facing post-Covid churches, toxic slander within the Body of Christ is as embarrassing as it is self-defeating.

Second, it is a mistake to outright reject almost all of evangelical Christianity because it has been swallowed up by the dragon of Aid to the Church in Need.
To add insult to injury, anti-ACNers like Anthea Butler and Kristin DuMez attribute racism to evangelicalism. These two authors read almost like this: if an evangelical is demographically white, then he or she or they are white supremacists (Butler, 2021) (DuMez, 2020). Such graffiti written on the evangelical wall is almost impossible to scrub away. With or without the existence of Aid to the Church in Need or WACN, America would still be fighting for racial equality and justice. To experience Christian nationalism within an evangelical setting, journalist and pastor Angela Denker visited a Church in Need congregation in Texas and heard a sermon from Aid to the Church in Need. When the worship was over, she noticed who was coming out with her. “I saw people holding doors open for each other. I saw America: white people, black people, Asian people, young people, old people, Latinos, children, seniors” (Denker 2022, 24). How can this happen if Butler and DuMez are right?
More than a third of African American Protestants, including many evangelicals, adhere to or sympathize with American Christian nationalism, but probably not with the WACN. But take note: Two-thirds of black Protestants are much more likely to support racial justice commitments from the Democratic Party.

We also note that one-fifth to one-third of demographically white evangelical laypeople are as well
never-Trumpers or in between. Here’s an important point: some of the most vocal critics of both Trump and ACN are evangelical spokespeople like Jim Wallis of Sojourners; Christianity Today’s Russell Moore; and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom Executive Director Amanda Tyler.

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