Monday, January 27, 2025

Review: The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism

The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism by Paul D. Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a bit refreshing to listen in on this internal debate among modern Christians about the Trump & MAGA specifically and fascistic Christian nationalism generally. I mean that it is good to know, some Christian thinkers are disseminating second-thoughts on that whole trend. Millers sees nationalism as Conflating "nation" (which is ephemeral, cultural, ill-defined) with "state", which is formally and legally defined as well as enforced. Apparently a lot that resonates with me is here distilled from Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. See a detailed review of that book here.

A summary of the arguments:


Whitehead and Perry found evidence of illiberal views associated with Christian nationalism in the polling data. They found that Christian nationalists are more likely to believe immigrants increase crime (they don’t) and undermine American culture. They tend to believe that it is important to have been born in the United States and to have American ancestry to be accounted fully American, rejecting naturalized citizens and recent immigrants as coequal citizens. They are the most likely to admit they would feel uncomfortable if their daughter married an African American, to believe that the police treat Blacks and Whites equally, and to blame police shootings of African Americans on the victim rather than the police. They are most likely to perceive Muslims and atheists as a threat. The strongest supporters of Christian nationalism support prayer in schools and the display of religious symbols in public life and believe that being a Christian is important to being truly American. None of these beliefs have any logical connection to Christianity or to Christian republicanism, and many of them are directly opposed to it.

... the movement has some troubling attitudes toward race and identity. ...Whitehead and Perry conclude the worst:
Christian nationalism gives divine sanction to ethnocentrism and nativism. Recall that prominent Ambassadors rationalized stronger borders on the grounds that God himself uses walls to protect and preserve his people . . . it is likely that biblical justifications are simply masking ethno-racial understandings of “us” and “them.” In effect, Christian nationalism lets them neutralize disputed assumptions about American identity and who belongs by cloaking their views in religious symbolism.

...Christian nationalism has provided the unifying myths, traditions, narratives, and value systems that have historically been deployed to preserve the interests of those who wish to halt or turn back changes occurring within American society...

Christian nationalism idealizes a mythic society in which real Americans—White, native- born, mostly Protestants—maintain control over access to society’s social, cultural, and political institutions, and “others” remain in their proper place. It therefore seeks strong boundaries to separate “us” from “them,” preserving privilege for its rightful recipients while equating racial and religious outsiders with criminality, violence, and inferiority.

...Christian nationalism is, therefore, ultimately about privilege. It co-opts Christian language and iconography in order to cloak particular political or social ends in moral and religious symbolism.


[I read the unabridged audiobook published by christianaudio.com narrated by [author:Mike Lenz|17900958].]


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