Progressives Unprepared for Threat of Christian Nationalism
Reason is a blunt weapon against Genuine Belief in God's Righteous Plan
(This post is an expanded version of a 13 tweet thread posted on October 9th, 2022, which you can read here.)
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While this is not the first time this year I have addressed progressive responses to Theocratic Fascism, the public conversation seems to have intensified over the past few weeks. While I’ve been trying to avoid the social media spaces where I was likely to encounter Christian Nationalist (CN) attitudes, I was on Twitter before bed last night, and, not surprisingly, it took me to a dark place. I realized two things:
An explicitly theocratically fascist Christian Nationalism (CN) is likely to become the dominant political perspective in North America over the course of the next year or two.
The political left, to whom I refer broadly as Progressives, are entirely unprepared to counter the coming threat.
Here is a tweet thread from William Wolfe, who’s Twitter bio suggests that he is a former Trump administrator currently pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Southwest Baptist Seminary, which is the flagship educational institution for the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also a writer for the Standing for Freedom Center, who’s tagline is “Life, Liberty, & Truth are under attack in an increasingly secular age. We exist to advance & defend the unchanging principles of freedom for the next generation.”
Many other experts are capable of explaining the first of my two realizations - for an accessible introduction to fascism, be sure to read Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works.
But, having lived ‘a past life’ as a conservative Christian, holding to a type of CN without even knowing it, I can tell you that progressives have a very shallow understanding of Genuine Belief in God’s Righteous Plan, the glue that holds the CNist together.
To be sure, progressives who grew up in non-religious environments have a better grasp of critical thinking and the scientific method than those who grew up in religious environments, baking in to their subconscious epistemology a level of skepticism that just doesn't exist in the minds of genuine believers. That skepticism is great - most of the time. Unfortunately this natural skepticism acts as an epistemological shield, also in the subconscious, preventing them from understanding that when a CNist says, “God (θ) says his laws should be the nation's laws,” he is implicitly stating that he holds θ's 'thoughts' in far higher regard than any human idea/thought, including the scientific method. That means, for example, that progressive arguments in favour of Transgender rights that are based on scientific advances are held with extreme suspicion, not just because of what they say about Transgender people, but also because the scientific method represents a human idea or perspective over which God has total control - that is to say, says the CNist, that Transgender people have never existed because God’s definition of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ has never allowed for it. And no amount of “studies, social science and history,” as Wolfe notes above, can change God’s definitions.
Progressives, me included, often turn to reason to try and have discussions about the consequences of CN. But, as I’ve explained, CNists, in contrast with scientific skepticism, hold reason with suspicion. Instead supernaturally revealed knowledge takes precedence, and, importantly, acts as both command to act in God's name, and a post-hoc justification of whatever action is taken, no matter how extreme. This can be seen this in the evolution of post-Roe anti-abortionists who are calling for extended jailtime for women who choose to have an abortion, which they euphemistically term ‘equal justice.’ After all, θ must punish evil-doers:
The penalties for people who steal don’t completely get rid of theft, but they do deter many would-be thieves. One of the few things on which pro-choice and pro-life people agree is that abortion is often a difficult decision. While some commit murder [sic] without ever even considering keeping their baby, it’s a close call for most. That call would no longer be a close one if homicide charges were added to one side of the scale. [emphasis added]1
Progressives who try to push back using evidence-based reasoning find themselves running into variations of, "But God said it, I believe it, He commands it, I do it, That settles it." This leads to exasperation on the part of progressives, who end up making some kind of public gaffe, which only reinforces CNist belief about the so-called degeneration of society, making them far more likely to react violently.
Notice, progressives, that I've said nothing yet about yt supremacy (WS) or patriarchal misogyny (PM).
It's my belief that focusing on those evils of CN - and evils they are - miss the forest for the trees. This is where Wolfe’s tweets can be instructive - note that his three tweets assert that <White> Christian Nationalism doesn’t exist (emph added). The second tweet asserts that “"Christian nationalism" is a real thing worth having a serious conversation about, defining rightly, & embracing in appropriate & biblical ways.” Wolfe is, I would suggest, telling on himself - indeed, he sees a role for CN in the life of the American Christian in, tellingly, ‘biblical ways.’ But I would suggest that Wolfe genuinely believes that CN is not about race or gender, per se, but about the rules and regulations that God dictates, rules that (it turns out) are baked in the twin ovens of yt supremacy and patriarchal misogyny, whether Wolfe and his ilk know this or not.
Importantly, however, it's not about the WS or the PM, per se. Nor is it about access to the power itself, no matter how intoxicating that aspect turns out to be. These are all incidental. It's about the genuine belief that these ideas (ideas that, I and others argue, entail both yt supremacy and the patriarchy) are given to them by God to implement at the Nation-State level. In short, it’s about the Christian Nationalist’s Genuine Belief in God’s Righteous Plan (GB-GRP).
In a comment on my Facebook wall, a friend pushed back a bit against this argument about yt supremacy and patriarchal misogyny:
I resonate with a lot of what you posted, having grown up in one camp and now find myself very firmly in the other. One thought keeps coming to the forefront for me:
I actually think it is very much about yt supremacy and misogyny, as they were formative influences. I agree that current Christians are more unaware and adopt those influences unconsciously, but I think it is critical to note that they ARE formative (and often held explicitly).
I think this is important because one way of moving forward is to address those formative influences for future generations. Yes, we need to resist it in all it's forms, but I think an emphasis on formational influences is too often overlooked. After all, think about places where resistance to domination is rooted in young people (usually women) fighting for proper education.
While I agree that WS and PM are formational influences in CN, I think that GB-GRP is epistemologically prior to those influences. That is to say that WS and PM are entailed by a CNist interpretation of GB-GRP; as I noted above, GB-GRP is baked in the twin ovens of WS and PM in a way that simply cannot be separated.2 My intention here is not to dismiss them as somehow irrelevant - they're not. That said, while it is important to address those formational influences, progressives do themselves no favours by treating them as a cause or reason for CNist beliefs, instead of what they are - integral components of a particular interpretation of GB-GRP.
My argument, then, is that a GB-GRP is prior to beliefs in WS and PM; if the CNist repented of their GB-GRP, they would also be forced to repudiate WS and PM. That does not and should not take away from recognition of the dangerous and corrosive effects of WS and PM, not just for the CNist, but also and especially for the victims of those influences. I'm am therefore not arguing that WS and PM are not real, nor am I arguing that their effects are not deeply felt. I am simply arguing that they are entailed by GB-GRP, and that progressives, as a whole, are woefully unprepared to deal with people whose zeal is derived from GB-GRP.
Science won't convince the CNist that Transgender people exist and have human rights, since 'θ's reality' and 'θ's commands,' which they believe indicates that Transgender people can't exist, will always epistemologically supercede, in the mind of the CNist, whatever reasons secular progressives may come up with.
I want to tackle where we go from here in a future post - I have some controversial thoughts about getting in front of Christian Nationalism, but whatever progressives are doing right now just isn't working, and will only become increasingly impotent as Christian Nationalists take power. Progressives need to provide answers; that starts with understanding the all-important role of genuine belief in promoting Christian Nationalist action.
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A rather shocking, if revealing lecture on how and why so-called ‘abolitionists’ feel comfortable being explicit about their desire to charge women with homicide:
I'd likely argue the same for anti-Semitism, but that's a different discussion.