https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/12/us/white-christian-nationalism-du-mez-cec/index.html

Interesting interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Christian nationalism. Du Mez is a historian and the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”

80% of Evangelical Christians voted for the incoming Administration, “Nearly two-thirds of White evangelical Protestants in the US described themselves as sympathizers or adherents to Christian nationalism in a February 2023 survey.

“Scholars have called White Christian nationalism an “Imposter Christianity” whose adherents use religious language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in a quest to create a White Christian America.

If this movement gets everything it wants, what will this country look like?

There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to — and then the rest of Americans. If you’re a person of no faith or a Muslim or anybody deemed not a true Christian, you will have a place, but you will not have a voice. The laws will be rewritten across the board. Rights as we understand them will cease to exist and instead, we’ll have the framework of biblical law.

The idea will be that true freedom comes from following God’s laws. So freedom will be redefined. You are free to follow the laws that we set out for you as a woman, or someone who is same-sex attracted. True freedom comes from submitting to God’s law, and we will help you do that, and it will ultimately be good for you. In our education system, our American history will be made up. It will be ideological.

They want to erase the teaching of actual history to prop up a mythical understanding of what this country was founded to be to justify their radical transformation of the country. There will be no abortion rights, and there will be limited, if any, access to contraception. There will be harsh anti-immigration laws with exceptions for people who subscribe to this Christian nationalist vision or who are seen to fit within it, religiously, politically and perhaps ethnically.

There are potential mitigating factors: infighting or incompetence within Christian nationalist and MAGA circles, the role of the courts, resistance within government agencies and at the local and state levels. And of course, the extent to which various aspects of the Christian nationalist agenda align with Trump’s own priorities and with those of members of his inner circle, like Elon Musk.”

What would we do without mind viruses?

GOOD! The more American religious can infight, divide themselves and act so uncivil, the more Americans want nothing to do with religion. There is hope!

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What would we do without mind viruses?


Thrive?

Long after I left religion, I maintained a tolerance for Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths (I've never had an issue with the other major world religions.) Unfortunately the Christian Nationalist movement has soured me on Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths. I now see those faiths as being oppressors of women.

As a teacher, I've also had problems with the CN agenda when it comes to the public schools, which under the Constitution must be religion-neutral.

It's a shame because the more liberal/tolerant churches have often treated women well, but I tend to lump them all together now.

I mostly view Christians as well intentioned but naïve victims.

I can't go near a Christian church without getting a whiff of hypocrisy, abuse, magical thinking, mysogny, or fraud now. Once they try to push their interpretation of correct values onto others and laws, I'm done with them. Pushing Jesus into everything is the opposite of allowing people to make their own choices, and usually a sign of intolerance. Honestly, Mormons are not near the worst of them.

I see good Christians (and other religions) and good atheists everywhere. I'm convinced good people would be good with or without their religion. I think empathy tendencies are somewhat hardwired, but cultural pressure can override it.

When reading this article, one has to keep in mind that the (now) state of Massachusetts was founded by people who were fleeing "religious persecution," because they demanded that everybody else get on board with their religious views. What we're seeing now is the return of Puritanism in a big way centuries later with a healthy dose of southern Baptist and Assemblies of God thinking to boot.

The other thing I'm reminded of when reading this story was of a historical episode recounted by Professor David Chalmers in his book, "Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan." The story was that Klan fever grew so high during the 1920s that some non-southern states, including Indiana, elected governors who were part of that organization. In the case of Indiana, the whole thing fell apart when a former mistress (and employee) ratted out the KKK governor for his sexual behavior and the local press got wind of it. If local journalism can be saved (a big question nowadays), stories about the exploits of these people could ultimately bring about their downfall.

One more thing. Not all states and state governments are on board with this agenda. Particularly in the northeast and west coast of this country, there is growing opposition to the forces of Christian nationalism. Unfortunately, this opposition does have the potential to completely tear the U.S. apart as was done in the Civil War of 1861-1865--but ultimately that may be the only way to save us from our own religious hucksters!

blindguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> One more thing. Not all states and state
> governments are on board with this agenda.
> Particularly in the northeast and west coast of
> this country, there is growing opposition to the
> forces of Christian nationalism. Unfortunately,
> this opposition does have the potential to
> completely tear the U.S. apart as was done in the
> Civil War of 1861-1865--but ultimately that may be
> the only way to save us from our own religious
> hucksters!


That's what I'm afraid of.


Read "If This Goes On" if you haven't. Way before "The Handmaid's Tale."


I, for one, will never obey the dictates of a "christian" nationalist authoritarian dictatorship.

The Constitution forbids religious tests or any kind of state religion...at present.

That doesn't seem to stop religious wackos who are hell-bent on enforcing what they call "God's Law."

The whole premise of the upcoming stuff when the Presidential office changes, is the fact that there are going to be enhanced penalties to law, and that things will never be the same. We, as a nation will turn into a bunch of rivaling people.

'God's Law?' Which God would that be? Jehovah, Elohim, Christ, Allah? Which one?

Ozzy

Can't wait for them to bring back burning Witches.

My Mormon father didn't care for democracy. He said theocracy is the highest form of government. I said there are many operating theocracies, which one would you like to discuss? He said that those aren't true theocracies--only Jesus could lead a true theocracy.

So you can see that, despite his college education, he was stunted in his thinking. He had no idea he was using the "no true Scotsman' fallacy. The poor devil.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My Mormon father didn't care for democracy. He
> said theocracy is the highest form of government.
> I said there are many operating theocracies, which
> one would you like to discuss? He said that those
> aren't true theocracies--only Jesus could lead a
> true theocracy.
>
> So you can see that, despite his college
> education, he was stunted in his thinking. He had
> no idea he was using the "no true Scotsman'
> fallacy. The poor devil.

---------------------
---------------------

Remember that Joe had the Council of 50 and was crowned KING of the earth.

He didn't hold back, did he?

Please note that they consider Mormons to be in the "Other" category.

I'll bring the popcorn.

Exactly, I wonder how that will play out in Gillead.

Glad I don't live there...

Why would Mormons want a seat on this train?

Envy?

The quest for "respect?"

Power?

Influence?

The desire to "dance with the big boys" like the Slow Horses?


All of the above?

#############


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/19/katherine-stewart-money-lies-god-book-christian-nationlism


Stewart – whose previous two books, The Good News Club and The Power Worshippers, focused on the impact of the Christian right and religious nationalism in the US – spent years traveling to an array of rightwing conferences, from Christian nationalist events to ”Make America great again” fests and sober thinktank talks, and found many similarities. The eclectic groups may not seem to have much in common, but their aim is the same: bringing an end to democracy in the US as we know it. Their method of achieving that is the same too.


The result is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which sees Stewart explore the “antidemocratic movement” – an unholy mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US.

“Money is a huge part of the story, meaning that huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system. Second, lies, or conscious disinformation, is a huge feature of this movement. And third God, because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism,” Stewart said.

Have they no idea what they are doing? If they want a king, have at it, on a remote island.

Living in an artificial, ersatz, monochrome world to me is very, very depressing.


"White" everything (which is an artificial American phenomenon which doesn't really exist and is a made-up construct. Almost every aspect of American culture is an amalgam of cultures from all over the world). American society has never been 100% "white," nor 100% "christian" for that matter



No moral or ideological dilemmas, just rigid rules that require obedience, no thought



Insane, slavish, obsequious obedience to a leader or ideology, (no matter if you know it's fake or not) to demonstrate you belong to a group or "tribe"


Sounds to me like Russia.


###############


Russians Don't Smile

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Oi1yjjuubME



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2025 03:23PM by anybody.

The US Constitution does not allow a theocracy. It does allow the freedom to be religious or not religious. We are not a democracy because in a democracy the majority rules and usually becomes a tyranny against the minority. We are a republic to protect the minority.

Live in a city and state that best suits your lifestyle. That’s my advice. If you are a transgender who likes to smoke weed, Utah might not be for you. If you are a traditional Ned Flanders Christian, the Castro District in San Francisco might not be to your liking.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> The US Constitution does not allow a theocracy.


Then why are so many people trying to ignore that fact and turn the USA into a theocracy?

I think you worry too much. There's all this paranoia about a right wing religious takeover. I've heard about this for decades. Frank Zappa used to talk about his concern over it.

I've seen the country move in just the opposite direction.

All I see is a bunch of religious carnival barkers making lot's of noise trying to sell their snake oil. They have been around longer than the US has existed.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think you worry too much. There's all this
> paranoia about a right wing religious takeover.
> I've heard about this for decades. Frank Zappa
> used to talk about his concern over it.

It's not paranoia.

Here's why.

Back in high school, I was on a school trip visit to another school in the South. It was football season, and many vendors had set up shop on the stadium grounds. To my great shock, the local KKK had an information booth. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and that such a thing would be tolerated or condoned on the threshold of the 21st Century. I got one of the leaflets. I still have it.


All of the nonsense in that pamphlet and other c@@p from so-called fundamentalist "christian" groups like The Order or The Covenant used to be universally condemned by *all* the mainline churches. Today, it's a different story. What used to be fringe fundamentalism is now mainstream. These people are deadly serious.


I wish it were just a joke. It isn't.



############


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-nationalism/

Our November+December issue investigates the Christian nationalist movement that aspires to take over government at all levels, from school boards and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court.

***

"One August evening, I drove through the cornfields and dairy farms of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to attend a government-­themed prayer night at Ephrata Community Church. The sprawling house of worship looks like an office park and houses a cafe and an indoor playground in addition to a large sanctuary. This event, however, was in a converted barn across the parking lot called Gateway House of Prayer. For the last 15 years, it has been open 24 hours a day for the faithful to worship when the main church is closed, with parishioners keeping watch in shifts.

***

"One prayer leader encouraged attendees to join a pair of “prophets” who were taking daily Communion for 90 days at exactly 4:14 p.m. Why so precise? The answer can be found in two Old Testament verses: Esther 4:14, which says Christians are called to speak up in the face of persecution, and Nehemiah 4:14, which “is about fighting,” the prayer leader said, “on behalf of our sons, our daughters, our families.”

"The devotees she mentioned were leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic evangelical Christian movement led by a loose network of self-appointed­ prophets and apostles, who claim that God speaks directly to them, often in dreams. They believe that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States. In the vanguard of an ascendant Christian nationalist movement, they are seeking an explicitly Christian command of public schools, social policy, and all levels of the government, including the courts. Some scholars claim NAR is the fastest-growing spiritual movement in the United States. Evangelical writer C. Peter Wagner described it as the most significant shake-up in Protestantism since the Reformation. Its laser focus on starting a spiritual war to Christianize America has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call NAR “the greatest threat to US democracy that you have never heard of.”

I'm guessing, Rubicon, that you don't worry about it because you aren't impacted by it, or you don't give a shit to notice.

In case you haven't noticed, many have lost reproductive rights BECAUSE of the religious right Christians.

Many OB/GYNs have left my state and women cannot get the care they want, let alone make choices for themselves.

Charter schools (mostly religious) are gutting public education BECAUSE of the religious right.

The librarians I know are having to walk on eggshells BECAUSE of the religious right.

People have said that they want to destroy the Constitution. People have actually said that. I am not going into political games, because people have not done their research anyway.

Christian Nationalists are to be feared. Unless we turn this back somehow (you can destroy the people, not the ideology - because more people will convert.) in order to avoid a civil war.

I mean, what's funny, it reminds me of the wars in the Bible as well as the BoM. People seem to go to war, to 'defeat' the other side, when what they want to do is destroy everything the side stands for.

I venture to say that every single Christian person would need to die, in order to snuff out the ideology, and then it would need to happen again, because there are sure people that will hide their beliefs, and restart the way, until all the free-thinkers are gone.

The Christian Nationalists want a King. Not a President. They are getting sick of 'waiting' for Christ, when they will take it upon themselves to create the scenario.

> The US Constitution does not allow a theocracy. It
> does allow the freedom to be religious or not
> religious.

The US Constitution also demands that there be no religious test for office. Yet from the foundation of the country until the early 1960s eight states prohibited atheists from holding office.

The constitution additionally dictates that the federal government may not regulate commerce within a single state as opposed to interstate commerce. But that limitation was gutted a century ago.

The US Constitution additionally says that Congress must declare all wars. Yet most participants on this board were not alive the last time that happened, in 1941.

Constitutions are mere words. They have zero meaning if they are not reinforced by political will. The day Americans stop caring about a particular constitutional right or restriction, that right or restriction ceases to exist.

What day is it again?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2025 07:16PM by Lot's Wife.

I agree with this, but hate to admit that I don't want to see the destruction of this country because religious zealots want to take over the country. It's like they were radicalized somehow.

I was radicalized somehow. I don't know how,but I was radicalized to believe in certain concepts. Sometimes, radicalization is a personal change. Not someone teaching, but what you believe changes.

Someone had to of started it. Find them, and they will laugh at you. They will also say: "Don't you read the Bible? This is prophesied in Revelations."

My personal observance, is that the Mark of the Beast is really Christian Nationalists themselves. They have a hard time admitting it. The Text in the BoM is interesting, because it talks about the Gadianton Robbers.

The Gadianton robbers were a secret criminal organization in ancient America, according to the Book of Mormon. They were known for their use of murder and plunder to destabilize society and overthrow the government.

I read it for an overview. My ex and I believed that it was a timeline of being before Christ came. And what would happen after he left.

It's just interesting. And! Before anyone wonders if I am going back, ummmmmmm. no. 20 years is a lot of separation and I like my life right now, after those 20 years.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2025 12:03PM by lousyleper.

People can't just up and move every 4 years. It takes decades to grow a business and become established with homes, schools, investments, neighbors and associates. Tax laws change from state to state, and people plan their estates over time according to where they live.

One reason the lifestyle is changing where I live is because people are moving here at a faster rate than ever for the reason you gave. That makes things even more polarized. People didn't used to be as intolerant as they seem to be lately, IMO.

>Live in a city and state that best suits your lifestyle


Why should I have move just because religious fundies want to impose their way of life on me?

In a secular society, there is no state religion.


If you want that, go to Iran or Afghanistan with the Taliban.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2025 09:02PM by anybody.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
What do I propose?

It's too late. We're already headed into the singularity. There's no going back. We will be assimilated. Resitance is futile.

I just find it ironic that 10 yrs ago, Musk was running around warning all of us about the impending Robot Apocalypse that he said would happen in the next 5yrs, should have happened 5 yrs ago, according to him. He called it our greatest existential threat.

https://www.vox.com/.../elon-musk-artificial-intelligence...

Which Ray Kurzwell (Google's AI Guru) has been warning us about since 2005, when he published "The Singularity Is Near, When Humans merge with AI" But nobody listened to him back then, they just kept on barrelling forward headlong ushering in the Singularity,

So Musk figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And developed the world's best robot, Optimus.

By this time in 2027 Tesla will have built 1 million Optimus Robots, which are more intelligent, dexterous, faster, smarter, stronger and more cooperative, than humans.

He says he will deploy them to resolve conflicts and build beter, more dexterous, faster, stronger robots.

Hopefully it will turn into an age of abundance and innovation and enlightenment for us all.

And hopefully the Borg will treat us as well as we treat our best friends.

I attend a large evangelical church which suits my expression of faith. Obviously I do not know every attendee nor their views on every topic. Some might well fit the thinking described here. That said, for me, if it was not for what I read in threads such as this I would hear nothing about Christian nationalism.

Sure you've heard about them. They are the people who want to strip women of their reproductive rights, even to the point of endangering their lives (with notable examples in both Texas and Idaho.) They are the people who keep trying to insert Christianity into the public schools. They are the ones who insist that America is a "Christian country." They are often anti-science, because it conflicts with the Bible, which they read literally.

They want everyone in the U.S. to live by *their* religious rules. That's the bottom line.

YMMV.

You are missing the point I am making. Which is, while small at best, my experience does not match what I read here.

IMO the word, "evangelical" can cover a broad group of people. Perhaps the people at your church do not wish to control others in the way that I have described, and do not meet the definition of Christian Nationalists.

Kentish, We get where you are coming from, but...

There are a few Evangelical pastors that have not gone along with the current white "christian" nationalist movement. Perhaps your church has been fortunate.


Approximately 2/3 of self-professed white christians in America self-identify as white "christian" nationalists.


Have you *never* heard anyone at church proclaim that the USA is a "christian" nation, or that "God's law" supersedes civil law, "women are vessels" or "there are only two genders" or that "abortion is murder" or go on and on about how God gave America to whites a'la Genesis 1:26 to rule over and that Jesus Christ either inspired, dictated, or "gave" the US Constitution to the Founding Fathers (Both Mormons and Evangelicals share this fantasy).


That's just for starters.



###########

PBS News Hour:
What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgC7YQAtGOw

Christian Nationalism is an American brand of magical thinking that probably doesn't translate to the UK.

Their version of the founding of America has God on their side. The idea of Christian Nationalism being baked into America needs not be supported by actual facts. The important thing is that it feels true to you.

Christian Nationalists would have a much different view of colonial insurrectionists than someone in the UK.

I can hardly blame the movement for growing. It's a reactionary response to the decline of the American empire. They want the myth of America's specialness to be true. They want John Wayne's America.

They cheer the new boss's grand theatrics. He is a magnificent performer, telling them what they want to hear. And of course they swallow it whole, no matter how implausible. Ihey are a match made in heaven.