Voices – The Dangers of -isms
The founding documents of our country, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, mention “God” once and “creator” once – both in the Declaration of Independence. “Religion” is mentioned once in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Constitution itself is mute on these subjects. Certainly no where in these documents is Christ mentioned. Yet there are Christians who support the idea of so-called Christian Nationalism, arguing that our country was established by Christians for Christians, and therefore should be run by Christians using the Bible as the ultimate authority for the laws, rules, and behaviors of its citizens, a singular national moral compass for all. As a Christian, this idea absolutely terrifies me.
“-isms” give me pause. Take a word and add ism to it and you have a way of thinking, a belief system, a dogma, and a ruthlessly effective means of division. I like to greet ism’s with a dose of skepticism (a healthy -ism) and caution. We have seen the results of authoritarianism all over this planet in small and large countries alike run by small-minded, powerful, evil men. We suffered a world war started by fascism in Germany and nationalism in Japan. We have seen the repression of whole peoples by communism in the USSR, China, and elsewhere. Stalin had some 20 million of his own citizens killed simply because their ideas were perceived as a threat to his ideas. During the so-called Great Leap Forward in China, Maoism resulted in extreme famine, starving millions to death. It was rampant, corrupt, and unregulated capitalism that led to the Great Depression in 1929 and the Great Recession in 2008. Capitalism combined with racism has stripped indiginous peoples of their lands, their natural resources, and their lives, not just here in America, but all over the planet. It was this same capitalism, racism, and Eurocentrism that led to the evils of slavery, followed by 100 years of Jim Crow “legal” discrimination in the South. For every ism there is most often a polar opposite ism. For example, liberalism versus conservatism, capitalism versus communism, atheism versus theism. The list is endless, and these dualities inevitably lead to friction between the adherents of either cause, too often with those in the middle ground caught in the crossfire. Friction heats. Fires start. No common ground. Intolerance. Hate. Xenophobia. Conflict. War. Death and destruction. This is the violent history of humanity, a humanity that too often refuses to learn from the past. Today, there is a renewed interest in nationalism all over this world. There is war in Ukraine fueled by Russian nationalism. There is saber-rattling in China over Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere. I fear that the abrasive side of nationalism is primed to ignite an uncontrolled wildfire.
Nationalism, in its milder form of patriotism, innocently evokes a feeling of pride in one’s home country, a desire to display the national flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the national anthem, volunteer to serve in the military, run for office. Nice. Nothing wrong with cheering for your home team, helping it out. However, nationalism, when fully unleashed, can be a powerful tool for the unscrupulous to gain and wield power. We see this in every election cycle, with some politicians more adept at it than others. They speak to their base, their fellow -ismites, about the existential threat that their polar opposite ism presents to “our way of life.” Hilter was the master of this technique. Germany was broken after WW1 – physically, emotionally, economically, spiritually – in every way a country could be broken. Hitler’s rhetoric struck a welcoming chord at that unique time, uniting a whole country behind national Arianism, and against Judaism, migrants (the Roma), and the LGBTQ+ people. There may be few Hitlers in the world, but history is replete with examples of nationalistic fervor frothing over into conflict; if not war, genocide, uncountable dead, massive destruction and misery. Isms tend to assume that their adherents’ particular way of thinking is the right way, or the best way, or perhaps the only way. There isn’t room in your ism for your neighbor’s ism. Their ism is wrong or misguided or immoral or idiotic or dangerous or destructive, and it must be stopped, sometimes at all costs, to preserve your ism. Enter Christian Nationalism.
Christian Nationalism is nothing new. The first example would be the Roman Empire under Constantine. Later on, Christian nationalism would lead to the Crusades. Convert or die. Sadly, the story of Christian nationalism is long and inglorious, led historically by the Catholic church. I do not believe that there is a strict definition of Christian nationalism that is shared by all, but there are common ideas and themes shared between adherents. The Bible should be the final arbiter in questions of law and legal interpretation. Rights for LGBTQ+ people should be rolled back, including the right to marry. Civil rights, or at least the legal mechanisms that protect them, should be rolled back perhaps to pre-Civil Rights Act days. Protections for non-Christians such as Jews and Muslims should be re-examined. Immigration should end or at least be severely limited. Abortions should be banned in all territories of the United State. Access to non-approved literature should be severely restricted in schools. All sex education should be done in the home, if at all. Voting should be made more “secure,” read “difficult,” thereby limiting voting access to people of color and the economically disadvantaged, or what some see as “others.” Many adherents support the use of violence to carry out their plans, as we saw on January 6th. The vast majority of Christian Nationalists are white people, often angry white people who are wary of Black Lives Matter, leery of people who don’t look like them, and are a people who don’t want to discuss the real history and long-term costs of slavery and Jim Crow to the Black community, or to earnestly examine what white America did to the indigenous peoples of this continent, the academic area of study now called critical race theory.
If my goal as a Christian is to attract others to Christ, since I am neither a preacher nor a prominent writer, my most powerful tool is to live a life that is an example to non-Christians, a life that may attract others to ask me about my life, about my beliefs. This is not always easy to do. It means that I must push myself to love everyone, even those who may seem so unlovable, to pre-judge no one, for I don’t know their story, and to never ignore or disrespect their story. Every human has a story and that story is their all-important one. I may not understand it or approve of it or like it or want to be part of it, but if I ignore it or disrespect it then why would they want to talk to me…about anything. This is living Christianity as I see it. Christ loved a tax collector and a prostitute just as He loved an innocent child. He gave them equal respect. He listened to their stories with love in His heart. He did not attempt to marginalize anyone other than the established religious leaders, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the religious nationalists of their day. Hmm. Makes you think… ancient nationalism disapproved of by Christ. Christian nationalism, being an ism, by definition, cannot allow competing isms into their fold, and there are many, many other isms in this country. We know some of them as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christian offshoots such as Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, Atheists, Agnostics, the LGBTQ+ people, and a whole host of other religions, beliefs, lifestyles, cultures, and colors. I do find it interesting that many, but certainly not all, of the practitioners of most non-Christian faiths have two things in common, darker skin and an accent. This leads me down a difficult path. Do I believe that Christian Nationalism is a euphemism for White Nationalism? I do, mostly. There are certainly many, many fine Christian Nationalists who are not white supremacists, but I would argue that nearly 100% of white supremacists are Christian Nationalists. If you find yourself making the same political arguments that are made by white supremacists, that should give you pause, but Christian Nationalists do it all the time.
For this country to work we must live up to our founding documents, but with a very slight edit. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all *people* are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The First Amendment banned state religion, which should be the end of this Christian nationalism nonsense. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth, at least on paper, made Black Americans equal to white Americans on a federal level. The Nineteenth gave women the right to vote, finally giving women a voice in policy and politics – again, at least on paper. But we are really far from equal. We shouldn’t be, but we are. Some have louder voices than others. In this country white males continue to the have the loudest voice, to the detriment of us all, I believe. People of color, indigenous people, women, people who identify with a gender different from their sex assignment at birth, those of minority religions, the poor, the mentally ill, children, urban and rural communities, and so many others have such small voices compared to white males, especially when they often belong to more than one of these groups. It should not be that way but it always has been in our country. It’s changing, slowly, but Christian nationalists are pushing back hard, in some locales harder than others. I, personally, am becoming more aware of these truths, more aware of the inequities of history, more willing to explore those inequities, and very open to really listen to others’ voices. I seem to be moving toward being what has become such a divisive word but shouldn’t be, woke. It’s simple slang in its origin, for no longer being asleep. It means being willing to be aware of and willing to engage in… And I believe I have awoken.
So here I sit, a Christian white male, an upper middle-class Christian white male, a Christian white male with few if any psychological scars from a childhood of love and abundance. What am I to do? What indeed. If I am to decry Christian Nationalism specifically, or most isms generally, what am I to do? After much consideration, I’ve decided what I should do. I should listen. Or at least try to listen. It’s a learned skill for me, a very hard skill to do all of the time. But wait, I have things to say. I’m a white male, after all. I have a voice – the loudest voice. I’m supposed to talk! This is my birth right. No, shh, I must listen first, then listen more, and talk less. I shall try. But where to start? I started with biographies. I have listened to hundreds of biographies, many by or about the historically voiceless. There are the Black lives that didn’t matter in the slaver South or Jim Crow era, that still matter too little to this day. There are the first generation Japanese immigrants sent to concentration camps during WW2 due to fear and xenophobia, while their sons fought with exceptional valor in Europe and the Pacific for the very government that imprisoned their parents and sisters. There are the indigenous peoples of the Americas who suffered genocide and displacement at the hands of my predecessors. There are the women who were ignored, sexualized, brutalized, marginalized, trafficked; the body of the American experiment last given a voice in government, the right to vote (officially at least). There are the Arab-Americans who were viewed after 9/11 with contempt and derision being associated by their faith with fanatical terrorists who were in fact Islamic Nationalists (This would be the equivalent of someone thinking that I, a Christian, must be somehow equivalent to a Christian white supremacist who participated in the January 6th insurrection because we both are “Christian”. Preposterous). Beyond the biographies are the real people I see every day in my practice and at the market and in restaurants, all walks of life, all with varying voices. I’m listening to them, learning from them, again, awakening. I’m finding depth to my empathy that I hadn’t even known I had lacked.
That empathy has unexpectedly wrapped itself around another group of people that are currently at the crosshairs of a culture-war being waged by Christian Nationalism, LGBTQ+ people. My thinking on this has most definitely evolved over time through getting to know, admire, and even feel love for wonderful people who identify themselves in this group. Like God, we are a triune creature, a more-or-less equal blending of mind, body, and spirit. The spirit is that link to God and the beyond, that which continues beyond this life. It is neither male nor female, black nor white nor brown. The body, in contrast, is flesh and blood, RNA and DNA, genes that determine birth sex. It is our link to our parents, the outcome of a random mixing of egg and sperm. It is important to consider that our genetics are not a choice. Then there is the mind. The mind is us. It is who we are. How we think. The choices we make. How we feel, about ourselves, about others. Who we love. This culture war seems to center around the idea that our gender identity must match our birth sex. In other words, our DNA supersedes our mind/heart in how we should feel about ourselves and those around us. Put another way, within this group of peoples, according to many Christians in general and Christian Nationalists more specifically, how you truly feel about yourself and those you love is simply wrong, or worse, a sin. The reason? Perhaps interpretation. Let me explain – at one time The Bible was interpreted by the Catholic Church such that the Earth was the center of the universe, resulting in the near excommunication (and actual house arrest) of Galileo for his heretical observations that the Earth actually revolved around the sun. A few hundred years later a new interpretation is made and Galileo is an OK guy within the church, albeit a dead OK guy by this time. In the 1600’s one Reverend Ussher interpreted the genealogies of the Old Testament concluding that the universe is 6,000 to 10,000 years old. This dovetailed nicely with some interpretations of Genesis I in which the word day is deemed to refer to a 24 hour period. These interpretations still stick today within much of the American Evangelical church and nearly all Christian nationalists, while the majority of historical Christian scholars have concluded that the genealogies cannot be used as a chronometer of history and that the word day (Yom in ancient Hebrew), is best interpreted as a long but finite period of time, thereby allowing the universe to be as old as it is observed to be, 13.8 billion years. Interpretation. Interpretation is at the heart of the differences between the Catholic and Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches, between one denomination of the Protestant church and another, and between a whole variety of Christian sects. Mental health experts argue that the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and even suicide is far greater among individuals who identify as something other than their sex assigned at birth, but are unable to publicly express their gender for whatever reason, than those who have been able to show their true inner selves to the world. I would much rather my child be happy and “out” than be depressed or suicidal because he/she felt forcibly confined and closeted. To my fellow Christians I say, perhaps it is time for a new interpretation.
There may be among my readers, my patients, my friends, and my family alike, people who do in fact identify as Christian nationalists. If you’ve made it to the end of this piece of writing out of curiosity or perhaps respect, then I thank you. Nothing I’ve written has been intended to be an attack on the character of any individual, but a critique on a movement as a whole. When I strive to love everyone, the effort includes, by its nature, the very same Christian nationalists who I repeatedly might alienate with my words above. More likely, I would hazard a guess that there are a fair number of Christians who will read this, who might have no firm stance on the group whose adherents refer to themselves as Christian nationalists. You may have friends or family whose minds you’re more likely to change than I ever could through a piece of writing. For you, I’d be remiss not to look at two New Testament verses which come to mind as I ponder the state of modern Christianity and how minds might be swayed toward compassion. Out of Matthew 7, the verse which has colloquially become known as “judge not lest ye be judged,” and out of John 8, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Regardless of how the Bible is interpreted, these verses come plainly from the mouth of Christ himself, the very man Christians are meant to emulate. When viewed side by side, they make something very clear to me. It is not my place to judge the morals of others, much less attack them or hold them to be beneath me due to whatever judgment I’ve landed on. The Christian nationalist movement’s emphasis on prescribing their own morals within instruments of law therefore runs directly contrary to the very teachings of Christ. The movement judges others, and it casts stones, be they verbal or legal in nature. It is incumbent on Christians to only impress one thing on one’s neighbor, and that thing is love. It is through love that I will continue to learn to listen to those I don’t know or don’t agree with. It is only through listening to others’ truths that we can find out why we don’t agree, for we all are the result of our nature and experiences, but I believe there is good to be found in all. The more I listen, the more true that seems, and the truer it seems, the more grace is to be found in this gift of life.
As I continue to learn about the other voices of the world I must work on listening intently to them, understanding them, accepting them, encouraging them, practicing daily kindness to them, praising them, acknowledging them, and to best that my broken self can, loving them. These are Christ-like traits that we must all work on and work with and work through to make each other know that we are special, that we are worthy of loving and of being loved, that we all have a voice and we should use it not only for ourselves, but also for those others around us who are still working on theirs. We must do this, as always, with love in our heart. This is my prayer.
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