CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM’S LIES

By Ruth A. Sheets

This Sunday is Pentecost, the “end” of the holiest part of the Christian calendar.  The “season” began back in February with Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, passed through Easter in April, then closes 50 days after Easter.  This year, as a United Church of Christ minister, I have been thinking a lot about Christianity during this special period.  More and more conservative Christian groups are claiming that the problems this nation is facing are due to people not living rightly.  For those people, Christian Nationalists, “rightly” means doing things the way “we conservative Christians” say they should.  Why?  My question to them, why should what you think is “right” impact me and the rest of the people in America who may not agree with your notion of “right?” 

Last week I read a book I found enlightening as well as disturbing, and quite relevant to my ponderings.  The book is one every American should read if they can.  It is The Founding Myth, Why Christian Nationalism is Unamerican by Andrew L. Seidel & Susan Jacoby.  The book’s premise, too many “religious” Americans believe this nation was founded on Christian principles when there is far more evidenced that this is not true.  Evangelical Christians (mostly white) and many Roman Catholics hold extreme conservative beliefs, particularly related to “the 10 Commandments,” sex and gender, and forcing people who don’t share their beliefs to follow them anyway.  That is simply put, unamerican, unconstitutional, undemocratic, but alas, when one is convinced of their own righteousness, everything is on the table and everyone is in their sights.

The authors bring up a point I have known since my college days, there are several (4 at least) versions of the Ten Commandments and it is a bit arbitrary which ones they decided to pick.  When did the “Ten Commandments” hit the political scene?  It happened during the 1950s And the “Red Scare,” not at our founding as the religious right would have us believe.    A paranoid legislator with too much power, Joseph McCarthy saw Communists around every corner, under every chair and bed and would even hold up blank folders claiming he had lists of Communists in our government.  To prove, I guess, that our leaders weren’t among those Communists, a whole lot of unamerican actions were taken.  “In God We Trust” was printed on our money, the words “under God” were added to the “Pledge of Allegiance,” and an opening arose for presidents to say “God bless America” at the end of speeches.  By the way for years, “god” was not in the oath of office either. 

There were some Christians among the founders, but they represented a lot of different perspectives.  Even John Adams who was pretty religious did not want any religion either established or given privilege in the nation.  George Washington rarely attended church services, seldom mentioned God in any of his writings or public addresses.  Jefferson and Franklin were at best Deists and neither considered Christianity any kind of influence in developing the Constitution (which does not mention a higher being) and begins with We the People of the United States.   

So what is going on here?  It seems to me that conservative Christians, mostly white people, are using their religion to front for their racism, misogyny, homo/transphobia, and xenophobia.  They often get very angry when someone points out that something they have said or done is racist, sexist, or the rest.  They jump into religion so they can claim, “god is against what those ‘woke’ people stand for.”  They are rarely asked what they mean by “woke.”  Interviewers don’t ask them to explain their words or actions, “if it is not racist, sexist, homo/transphobic, what is it?”  It is as though those white conservative Christians are so holy they can’t be challenged even though they are working hard to eliminate rights that are guaranteed to all Americans through our Constitution.

I think of those “worshippers” as “pseudo-Christians.  They pick from the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures those passages they are comfortable with to try to force on others and ignore such  sayings as “love your enemies and do good to those who hurt you.”  Or rather, they distort them to mean, “we should do whatever it takes to stop them because that is really what god wants.  They are really enemies of god, you know.”  In other words, they know better than their god what “He” wants (always “He” because women are just an afterthought.  They ignore the verses in Genesis that say that man and women were created equal.  So, men are supposed to be the masters of the world and women must go along with whatever nonsense, whatever violence, whatever ignorance men decide.  Male supremacy, if even thought of at all may have been the belief of the founders, but they didn’t put that into the Constitution.  At the time “men” was considered to mean “men and women,” linguistically.   

One major problem we have is the extreme deference to religion our conservative national leaders have.  The words “god, faith, and “religious freedom” are tossed about regularly.  In this case, “god” is their god and “faith” is their faith.  “Religious freedom” means freedom for them to discriminate, to dismiss, to hurt anyone they claim their religion demands they exclude and harm.  Our Supreme Court, you know, the supposed highest court in the land has too many members who think their religious beliefs supersede the rights of the American people.  No one who is in business should be able to refuse service to customers unless those people are committing a real crime against them, not just being LGBTQ or Black, or an immigrant, or whatever excuse they come up with.  The SC is OK with such discrimination if someone just says, “My faith says I shouldn’t do it.”  One’s faith should be irrelevant.  If your faith is so exclusive, you should not be in business, but that uber-religious conservative court has decided that it’s OK to discriminate as long as you blame it on god.  Hey, if a plaintiff’s god supposedly doesn’t like abortion, no problem, we’ll let the scared, misogynistic, white mostly male legislators in the pseudo-Christian states put women’s lives and ability to decide for themselves at risk “for god, of course.”

One’s religion should never be a weapon, although it often has been used that way.  If one looks beneath the religious shield the folks wielding religion are holding, there is always a real reason.  It usually is power or fear of losing power, revenge (that’s a big one), economics (enslave people to do the work you don’t want to pay people to do for you while claiming it’s god’s will).  Those leaders always carry with them a high opinion of themselves, their abilities, and their value.  They surround themselves with people (mostly sycophantic men and a few women, who will do whatever is commanded for the crumbs of religious reminders that doing it will win them a place in heaven, the ability to do harm to others in god’s name, or some other such potent bribery.  This phenomenon is not restricted to Christianity.  Other religions and political entities like Fascists, Communists, and emperors whose religion is themselves actively participate too.

These forced religious and pseudo-religious practices should never be part of a democracy, but fear is opening more and more democracies around the world to them.  In India, the current Prime Minister wants a Hindu-nationalism where Hindus can do pretty much whatever they want to Muslims and other religious and non-religious groups within the society, even allowing barbaric anti-women and marriage outside the faith laws to be passed and brutally employed to enforce male and religious supremacy.  Hungary is well on its way to creating a pseudo-religious nation where only white Hungarians with certain religious beliefs are welcome and will be treated as citizens.  China and Russia have already made their versions of Communism straightjacket the people into doing only what the men at the top say they should, even to the point of arresting comedians who say things the thin-skinned leaders don’t like. 

We the People of the United States should be able to do better.  We can stop bending over backward to accommodate the religious right whose purpose is to bring this nation to its knees so they can enforce their own brand of Christianity on a people that does not want it and know it is unconstitutional.  The question is, how can we get Americans to care enough to stand up for real religious freedom, that is freedom to worship as one pleases as long as it does not interfere with anyone else’s life without their uncoerced permission.  It is also the freedom to not have a religion or believe in god, any god.  That is what our founders actually wanted.  It’s time we live that and not the myth of our being a Christian nation.  We aren’t and were never that.