#3: Under the Christian Nationalist Tent (or, Finding Empathy)

Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time
And that's just how I feel.
Always have and I always will.

          Phoebe Bridgers, 'Funeral'

I can just read it to you, if you’re too lazy to do it yourself:

A BIBLICAL ZERO-SUM GAME

An atmosphere of palpable tension enveloped the Sunday School hall as Mr. Johnson relayed the signal: “Draw swords!”

The other children and I, poised at the front of our seats, hoisted our Bibles into the air with a single hand, index fingers caressing the bonded leather spines. I knew the rules. No part of the gripping hand could make contact with the pages; seeking an unfair advantage or a head start would bring the contest into disrepute, and wouldn’t be tolerated. Muscles began to spasm as the anticipation built to a fever pitch. 

“Hezekiah 22:4,” Mr. Johnson called, “Charge!” A few students brought their Bibles down and began to rifle through pages – only to realize too late they’d been had: there was no ‘Hezekiah 22:4’. Well played, Mr. Johnson, well played. Those of us who weren’t fooled smiled smugly. In truth, though, there was no shame in being bamboozled by a master of his craft, operating here at the height of his powers.

At last, Mr. Johnson again called a reference. “Psalm 33:12. Charge!” Bibles rapidly descended and a waterfall of swishing paper could be heard. My pulse thundered as I pierced my Bible in its center with my thumbs and dashed madly through its leaves toward the Book of Psalms… the 33rd chapter… the 12th verse! I shot my hand into the air in a delirium of angst and sweat and felt sweet relief wash over me as Mr. Johnson called my name. 

I read aloud, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.”

Behold, the ‘Sword Drill,’ a Hunger Games of biblical grit and tenacity, from which only one could emerge victorious. No quarter was given, none was asked. After all, we needed to know our primary weapon – the ‘sword of the Spirit’, the Word of God – back to front and inside out if we wanted to fulfill our duty as Christian soldiers.

In fact, we’d often follow that Sword Drill up by singing a little Sunday school ditty about marching in the infantry, riding in the cavalry and shooting the artillery. No, we might never do any of those things, but we were in the Lord’s army.

IN TENT

Observe the portrait on the left. It probably doesn’t strike you as a warrior on the front lines of the battle for our nation’s spiritual identity and moral virtue. Middle management in the payroll department, maybe. I mean, a bow tie and a sweater vest and a bowl cut? Come on. You’d be forgiven for thinking that if this was what a soldier in the Lord’s army looked like, you didn’t love our chances.

The point is, though, we always saw it as the Lord’s army.

That’s important to understand, because the tent of today’s Christian nationalism shelters all manner of disparate souls under its broad canvas. Even some who show no actual commitment to Jesus and know next to nothing about his life and teachings. For them, ‘Christian’ is a bit like a name badge: you don’t value it, or have any real use for it personally, but you know you’re supposed to wear it.

By contrast, my community aimed to put the ‘Christian’ in ‘Christian nationalism’. Notwithstanding the theological compromises we would end up making, we came to the movement from a place of faith. Our belief in Jesus was genuine. Our studies in the Bible were diligent. Our desire to remain faithful to God was sincere. When my parents ambled to the vivid white double doors of our steepled local Baptist church in Burlington County, New Jersey, towing three kids under five, it was Jesus who drew them, not patriotic sentiment.

GLORY DAYS

It was the 80s, though, and patriotism was running hot. America was back on top, striding confidently into the world with its bravado and its culture and its armed forces and its money. The economic wheels were turning and the powerhouse of American civilization was churning. Flags were waving. Marching bands were marching. Hearts were swelling with pride.

And although its roots stretched back centuries¹, Christian nationalism was happy to ride the 80s wave². These were halcyon days. Jerry Falwell was still crisscrossing the country, glad-handing local ministers, spruiking his Moral Majority, and lobbying politicians. To good effect, too, because Republican politicians were now courting the evangelical vote. Evangelicals had acquired their heart’s desire, political influence at the highest levels of power, to accomplish our public morality agenda.

Grass-roots congregations like our little church were on board. But then, we had long bought in to the principles of Christian nationalism, to the intermingling of faith and patriotism. That’s nationalist ideology’s master stroke: convincing people of faith that God destined America for power and greatness, that God set her apart to be Christian, that God wants them to be nationalistic, that to serve America and her interests is a way to serve God.

WHAT WAS PASSED ON

That said, the cliché Christian nationalist – the obese duck hunter; the militant ‘tradwife’; the bearded hipster ‘Theobro’ bedecked in a button-down shirt and glasses; the midwestern MAGA hat wearer; the bubbly fundamentalist YouTube chick; that buffalo headdress guy – bears little resemblance to the people who raised me. My mother worked for almost 40 years as a skilled teacher, at the elementary, middle school and high school levels. A former civil engineer, my father served as vice president of a significant Philadelphia firm. They’re intelligent, highly educated, and sober minded.

Likewise Mr. Johnson, maestro of the Sword Drill, and Mrs. Johnson, who also happened to be the parents of my best friend. They were kind, some of the kindest people I’ve known. I can still visualise the exact layout of their house where I spent many happy days, ate many meals, enjoyed many conversations.

Likewise, my teachers and many other members of my community. These people nurtured, fed me, looked after me, educated me. They treated me with warmth and concern and compassion (even later, when they questioned my changing beliefs). They were never vicious or vindictive.

I try to remember that. I try to remember that when I see people carrying signs with highly-charged slogans, shouting bitter invectives, posting irrationalities on social media, or spouting rhetoric to a camera. Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t always like that. Perhaps they were once like my parents, my sisters, my friends, my neighbors, my fellow churchgoers, and my teachers. In the end, maybe they’re not so different from me.

I try to remember fear and anger can change people. Especially if we feel like we’ve lost control of the culture we once dominated. Especially when pundits and politicians and demagogues with their own axes to grind stoke and manipulate that fear and anger toward their own ends. Especially if those figures offer the power to strike against the groups that panic and enrage us. So I wonder if the people I see, the ones twisted by such fear and anger, may be as much victims of Christian nationalism as perpetrators of its sins. And that’s maybe the saddest thing I see in the movement.

I try to remember that when I see people carrying signs with highly-charged slogans, shouting bitter invectives, posting irrationalities on social media, or spouting rhetoric to a camera. Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t always like that.

Adam Lee Benner

I try to remember other things as well. Yes, my family, my pastors, my teachers and my community passed on to me a Christian faith inexorably mingled with a religious devotion to the American way, American values and the American state. Yet all this was passed on to them by the generation that preceded them — just as that generation received it from the one before.

Crucially, I try to remember they gave me more than that. My community showed me the importance of following Jesus, modelling for me much of what he lived and instructed. They placed a premium on faith in him, taught me to love the the stories of Jesus, the gospels, and to love scripture, to take the text seriously, to study and dissect it. From them, I also learned to think deeply, to reason, to analyze, to weigh up opposing viewpoints.

In short, they gave me the resources I needed to discover my path out of Christian nationalism. So I try to remember the goodness, the unselfishness, the care and the commitment I experienced and the wisdom I gained.

And for that, I will always try to express gratitude.

Until next time…

May the Spirit of God train us to do the hardest thing:
To find understanding for those who don't understand us.

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1. Dr. Stephen Backhouse writes about the Reformation roots of the Christian nationalist bent of evangelicalism.
2. The wave of patriotism, I mean, not the 1981 Afterschool Special The Wave.