drives American voters to make decisions and change in midterm elections in 2022?
Democrats are likely to be talking about former President Trump , his followers who rejected the election results, and the severe consequences of the Supreme Court overturning the federal government's protection of abortion rights; Republicans are paying attention to the sluggish economic conditions, intensified inflation, growth of border refugees, and rising crime rates in some cities, and blame them on the Democrats' lack of governance capabilities. There is no doubt that these are aggravating political divisions, igniting public anger, attracting media attention, and prompting political analysts to focus more and more on this. However, nearly two years after Trump's tragic step down and the Republican Party loses its power in Congress, Christian nationalism is quietly emerging within the party, which has long been unceasingly unforgettable political philosophy. Although it is inconsistent with historical facts and cannot be agreed with scholars of religious studies, as a hypothesis, its advocates insist that the United States is a country based on Christianity; on this land, everyone should abide by teachings that conform to their spirit; the government has the responsibility to formulate laws that conform to their spirit of teaching to restrain and regulate people's moral and social behavior.
Although Christian nationalism has lacked mainstream influence for decades and can only be active on the fringes, the growing strength of far-rights in Congress are increasingly embracing the theory and expressing worrying approval louder and more explicitly than ever before. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican Georgia who is famous for indulging in conspiracy theories and denying election results, has claimed more than once that the Republicans should actively accept Christian nationalism and use it as their core ruling platform. Other members of Congress, including Lauren Boebert of , Colorado, and Madison Cawthorn of , North Carolina, also reiterated the claim.
March 1, 2022, in Washington, DC, Rep. Lauren Boebert (left) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (right) stood with other members of Congress to listen to the State of the Union speech of U.S. President Joe Biden .
None of them is louder, clearer and more determinedly than the Pennsylvania Senator, retired Army Colonel, and current Republican Republican candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano. Born to an Italian-American family with a military background, Mastriano himself has more than thirty years of service experience in the military and did not retire until 2017. He and his family are both Mennonites protesting the evangelicals, which repeatedly emphasizes in their doctrine that " Bible " is the supreme authority of people's faith and life.
Since running for governor, he has built his core ideas on ambiguous relationship between politics and Christianity and defended many of his controversial remarks and actions, including his strong touting QAnon conspiracy theory, active participation in Trump's "stop theft" campaign to change the election results, and the delivery of a large number of violent elements among Trump's "believers" to the Capitol on January 6. All this is done on the grounds of “for the divine movement of God.” Before inciting followers to rush Congress and even crossing police roadblocks himself, Mastriano once spoke generously at the mobilization meeting that triggered the riot, "I sincerely pray that God will pour His Holy Spirit into Washington, D.C., as we have never seen it."
In 2020, he and others who deny the election results planned to harass election officials in an attempt to change the election results of Pennsylvania's Biden victory.In an online call to overturn the election, he compared this anti-democratic behavior with the heroic behavior of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93: After learning that the plane was hijacked, Bimer rushed into the cab and fought a desperate battle with the terrorists, trying to re-control the plane to stop it from attacking another building, eventually causing the plane to crash in the wilderness and kill all the people.
A typical Masteriano campaign rally usually begins with a protesting preacher sings their love for America. With songs that ignited supporters' enthusiasm, he would go to the center of the podium and recite the Bible with his supporters, and attack his Democratic opponent, the current Jewish state attorney general, Josh Shapiro, who did not love the United States and attempted to deprive the people of freedom of religious belief. He often held political performances with distinct religious symbols during his campaign. For example, at an event in April, he took a "Sword of David" engraved with the words "For God and the Country" by two proponents of QAnon's conspiracy theory. This prominent symbolic symbol attempts to compare him to the future king of Israel who defeated the giant Goliath in the Hebrew Bible.
uses the invisible God to make the shameless manipulation of Christians become Mastriano's most persuasive propaganda tool, and gradually gives him reasonableness in his crazy words and deeds. His anti-democratic flag-shaking shouts successfully attracted the attention of Trump, who was desperate for support, and helped him win the formal endorsement of the former president in the Republican primary. This became the biggest factor in his defeat of moderate Rep. Lou Barletta, who had been re-election for four times in that campaign.
On September 30, 2022, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania delivered a speech at a rally.
Masteriano often uses the word “appeal to heaven” when defending his anti-democratic beliefs. This statement originally came from the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke . He defended the violent uprising against violent rule. However, tyranny is clearly something the U.S. government has never done to white Christians. Conservative fundamentalist Christian groups actively absorbed and deliberately misrepresented the original meaning of Locke and used it to attack any political ideas or social trends they did not like. They became more radical during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, eventually leading to a group of white anti-government militia members attacking multiple state capitols in an attempt to kidnap the Michigan governor and disband the state government.
Pennsylvania is one of the regions with the greatest tension in the United States. Trump won here in 2016, but was defeated by Biden four years later. The attitudes of independent voters and middle-class people often determine the final direction of the election. Although this left him behind in the polls, Masteriano had no regrets to alleviate his radical Christian nationalism. To observers of this election, this directly demonstrates how firm and sincere his belief in Christian nationalism is. His views expressed as a Republican candidate during the Pennsylvania governor's campaign are further amplified by the media, becoming a dangerous signal of popular cognition in American political thought.
The most convincing argument against Christian nationalism is very simple: the United States has never been a country based on Christianity. This is a historical fact that historians and religious scholars fully discuss and generally recognize. The first American colonies established by British colonists did indeed originate from their yearning for the Puritan life, who vowed to be loyal to God rather than the monarch, but all this changed in the 18th century. People who fought to liberate the 13 colonies and thus established an independent country with equal rights, although they still regarded Christianity as the mainstream belief, they were increasingly aware of the harm of imposing their cognition on others.The British-born revolutionary Thomas Paine argues in Common Sense: The reason why the United States needs independence is precisely because the British monarchy has absolute and unquestionable power over the colonies, just as the Roman pope versus the Catholic monarch.
Historians represented by David Holmes believe that the attitude of early American political forces towards religion belongs to Deism . This theory was very popular in the era of enlightenment. It is believed that empirical reasoning and logical observation are the best ways to determine the existence of God without requiring transcendent revelation. Most of the founding fathers of the United States were skeptical of the influence of religion in the political field, especially Thomas Jefferson, who later served as the third president. He wrote in 1802 that “religion is a problem that exists entirely between man and God” and that the legislature should not “make any laws regarding the establishment of religion or prohibition of religious freedom.” This perception was accepted and embraced by most American people at that time, and became one of the main principles of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Another evidence that the founding fathers did not want religion to interfere in political sovereignty was reflected in Article 6 of the Constitution, which stipulates that no position is required to be held under religious belief as a condition.
Howard Chandler Christy / Signing of the Constitution
The modern Christian nationalist movement appeared in the 1950s. At that time, the expression of "a country under God" in the pledge of allegiance in American schools was written as law, the U.S. currency began to be required by the government to print the words "we believe in God", the appearance of departisan religious political rituals like the National Breakfast Prayer, and charismatic and popular evangelical preachers like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. Andrew Whitehead, a professor of religious studies at Indiana-Pudu University, believes that Christian nationalism is not a religious doctrine, but a political theology that draws on Christian narratives and symbolism in terms of race, aims to lure more white American Christians to fear and dislike groups different from their identities because they will "replace" them. In this narrative, its purpose and argumentation is similar to the unabashed “big substitution” theory of white supremacy, which argues that the increase in the non-white population in the United States constitutes genocide. The pursuit of the theory is the root of several mass shootings rife with racial hatred across the United States, including a tragedy in May when 10 black men were shot dead by a white man while shopping in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Whitehead also pointed out that white Christian leaders have a long history of boycotting the American Democratic Republic. They initially did this to fight the abolition of slavery and the end of apartheid , providing a justification for dehumanizing all groups that are not part of white people that do not exist in the Bible, and believing that maintaining racial oppression is related to maintaining America as a purely Christian nation. The rise of figures such as Paul Weyrich and Richard John Neuhaus made it more influential in the 1970s. After the Second Vatican Council, Wailich was disappointed with the growing liberal trend in the Catholic Church and began to actively participate in the right-wing policy circle in order to effectively inject his conservative religious beliefs into public policy. He used donations from the wealthy Coors family to co-found the Heritage Foundation as a policy think tank to promote economic laissez-faire and oppose government regulation. He also co-founded The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization composed of right-wing state lawmakers and private-sector lobbyists. They share model legislation in each state to promote a more Christian anti-regulatory cause.They strongly oppose environmental regulation, undocumented immigration, sexual minority rights, trade unions, gun control and reducing voting difficulties, have become the most effective weapon in the right-wing politics and are constantly creating new ways to prevent Republican-ruled states from being influenced by more progressive federal government policies.
Newhouse was originally a Lutheran pastor and later became a priest of the Catholic Church. He persistently promoted an anti-abortion stance in magazine newsletters and books, and compared the campaign to fight for the right to civil rights. His identity and influence helped to connect protest evangelicals and conservative Catholics, who, despite their differences in their confession to Christianity, shared a shared cultural cause against liberalism.他在自己的作品中坚定地表示，他正在和政治领袖们领导一场反对上世纪60年代“反主流文化”的道德斗争，这些反主流文化包括堕胎、抛弃家庭价值观、毒品和同性恋。 He later became President Bush’s confidant, serving as his informal religious adviser, and became one of the most important factors in Bush’s resolute opposition to stem cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage during his presidency.
社会学家菲利普·戈尔斯基（Philip Gorski）和塞缪尔·佩里（Samuel Perry）在《旗帜与十字架》一书中指出，基督宗教国家主义一直是某种形式的以自我为中心的个人主义的体现，同时却对拥有不同身份的人的权利毫不关心，从殖民者建立据点时对“印第安”原住民进行种族灭绝时就已初现端倪。 The tradition of white male Christians controlling supreme authority has lasted for more than 200 years in the country and was not challenged until 2009 when Obama took office. When he became president and began to implement liberal policies that were usually for the public good, some white Christians felt that their majority status and status were threatened, and thus began to use religious symbols in protests to express their pursuit of freedom, such as claiming that God was against liberal policies in protests and saying that Obama was “not a true Christian.”
With the rise of the Tea Party movement, these appeals have had amazing results. As a group of Republicans who support small-government principles and tax cuts, Tea Party members often lament the increase in state debt and government spending. Members who identify with the movement seized a Republican majority in the House in 2010, greatly weakening Obama's feasibility of passing meaningful reforms and legislation. Polls show that most members of the movement consider themselves evangelical Christians; more importantly, in one survey, 57% of respondents believed that “the United States has always been a Christian nation”—a cultural bond that unites these people and has received positive responses from wealthy conservative funders. This idea prompted them to believe that the United States represents “God’s blessing” and regards the Constitution as a god, believing it to be almost unchallenging, which led to fundamentalist right-wing jurists and legislators becoming more resistant to reform at this time.
Local time on September 9, 2015, Washington, DC, Tea Party supporters held a rally on the west front lawn of the U.S. Capitol .
The intensification of the conflict between the Tea Party movement and secular and liberal forces in society did not stem from very different economic views, but due to the ongoing tensions in the United States. To justify itself and to the dangers of its enemies, the Tea Party often associates Obama with African nationalism and with radical figures such as his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and leader of the Islamic State Louis Farackhan. Tea Party members are willing to spread such conspiracy theories in large quantities, claiming that Obama was actually born in Kenya and was not qualified to be president and was a secret Muslim.
All this reached its peak with Trump's sudden rise, and he not only became President Obama's successor, but also successfully secularized and generalized Christian nationalism into a devastating white populist movement.The information and narratives that Trump conveyed during his campaign and used during his campaign are good at evoking a religious sense of apocalyptic crisis and a never-absent battle between good and evil. He often used the word “catastrophe” to demean any liberal policy he disliked, which resonated strongly with white Christians who feared that his majority dominance would be replaced. Gorsky and Perry believe that the potential information of Trumpism and Christian statism is the same, both freedom, order and violence; in other words, whites use "just" violence to defend their freedom to establish order.
This is why Trump and right-wing politicians have been using the slogan of “law and order” to fight the appeal of racial justice after George Floyd ’s murder sparked nationwide anger protests. Christian nationalists will only use such expressions in favor of their narratives; when Trump spread the lies of election stolen, urging his supporters to rush the Capitol and more than 100 Capitol police officers were injured, they didn't care and even called the riot a "legal discourse."
Christian nationalism is likely to be the most dangerous political theory that has emerged in the United States since Nazism. As a narrative means of hierarchical order and freedom, it explicitly unites “we” and alienates “them” based on racial and religious identities, encourages white Christians to demonize any other person and distort historical facts to prove that they need to maintain their majority status both demographically and morally.政教分离从一开始就被载入宪法，并长久以来经受住了此起彼伏的挑战，直到今日仍在持续。 The challenges that have been ready in recent years have gradually moved from behind the scenes to the front, which has put the debate on the separation of church and state into a deadlock. The Supreme Court, with conservatives and originalists as the majority, is hearing multiple cases, and these judgments are likely to amplify the impact of Christianity in the social field and may even make it a mandatory requirement in public education. Although these people cannot represent the majority of the population and are often criticized by other Christian groups, if the American people are not clearly aware of their dangerous political attempts, they will gradually erode their power and have the ability to impose the strict hierarchy and the view of unity of politics and religion they advocate on anyone living in this country, putting the land in a deep regression that is difficult to turn back.What is the most direct reason why
drives American voters to make decisions and change in midterm elections in 2022?
Democrats are likely to be talking about former President Trump , his followers who rejected the election results, and the severe consequences of the Supreme Court overturning the federal government's protection of abortion rights; Republicans are paying attention to the sluggish economic conditions, intensified inflation, growth of border refugees, and rising crime rates in some cities, and blame them on the Democrats' lack of governance capabilities. There is no doubt that these are aggravating political divisions, igniting public anger, attracting media attention, and prompting political analysts to focus more and more on this. However, nearly two years after Trump's tragic step down and the Republican Party loses its power in Congress, Christian nationalism is quietly emerging within the party, which has long been unceasingly unforgettable political philosophy. Although it is inconsistent with historical facts and cannot be agreed with scholars of religious studies, as a hypothesis, its advocates insist that the United States is a country based on Christianity; on this land, everyone should abide by teachings that conform to their spirit; the government has the responsibility to formulate laws that conform to their spirit of teaching to restrain and regulate people's moral and social behavior.
Although Christian nationalism has lacked mainstream influence for decades and can only be active on the fringes, the growing strength of far-rights in Congress are increasingly embracing the theory and expressing worrying approval louder and more explicitly than ever before. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican Georgia who is famous for indulging in conspiracy theories and denying election results, has claimed more than once that the Republicans should actively accept Christian nationalism and use it as their core ruling platform. Other members of Congress, including Lauren Boebert of , Colorado, and Madison Cawthorn of , North Carolina, also reiterated the claim.
March 1, 2022, in Washington, DC, Rep. Lauren Boebert (left) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (right) stood with other members of Congress to listen to the State of the Union speech of U.S. President Joe Biden .
None of them is louder, clearer and more determinedly than the Pennsylvania Senator, retired Army Colonel, and current Republican Republican candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano. Born to an Italian-American family with a military background, Mastriano himself has more than thirty years of service experience in the military and did not retire until 2017. He and his family are both Mennonites protesting the evangelicals, which repeatedly emphasizes in their doctrine that " Bible " is the supreme authority of people's faith and life.
Since running for governor, he has built his core ideas on ambiguous relationship between politics and Christianity and defended many of his controversial remarks and actions, including his strong touting QAnon conspiracy theory, active participation in Trump's "stop theft" campaign to change the election results, and the delivery of a large number of violent elements among Trump's "believers" to the Capitol on January 6. All this is done on the grounds of “for the divine movement of God.” Before inciting followers to rush Congress and even crossing police roadblocks himself, Mastriano once spoke generously at the mobilization meeting that triggered the riot, "I sincerely pray that God will pour His Holy Spirit into Washington, D.C., as we have never seen it."
In 2020, he and others who deny the election results planned to harass election officials in an attempt to change the election results of Pennsylvania's Biden victory.In an online call to overturn the election, he compared this anti-democratic behavior with the heroic behavior of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93: After learning that the plane was hijacked, Bimer rushed into the cab and fought a desperate battle with the terrorists, trying to re-control the plane to stop it from attacking another building, eventually causing the plane to crash in the wilderness and kill all the people.
A typical Masteriano campaign rally usually begins with a protesting preacher sings their love for America. With songs that ignited supporters' enthusiasm, he would go to the center of the podium and recite the Bible with his supporters, and attack his Democratic opponent, the current Jewish state attorney general, Josh Shapiro, who did not love the United States and attempted to deprive the people of freedom of religious belief. He often held political performances with distinct religious symbols during his campaign. For example, at an event in April, he took a "Sword of David" engraved with the words "For God and the Country" by two proponents of QAnon's conspiracy theory. This prominent symbolic symbol attempts to compare him to the future king of Israel who defeated the giant Goliath in the Hebrew Bible.
uses the invisible God to make the shameless manipulation of Christians become Mastriano's most persuasive propaganda tool, and gradually gives him reasonableness in his crazy words and deeds. His anti-democratic flag-shaking shouts successfully attracted the attention of Trump, who was desperate for support, and helped him win the formal endorsement of the former president in the Republican primary. This became the biggest factor in his defeat of moderate Rep. Lou Barletta, who had been re-election for four times in that campaign.
On September 30, 2022, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania delivered a speech at a rally.
Masteriano often uses the word “appeal to heaven” when defending his anti-democratic beliefs. This statement originally came from the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke . He defended the violent uprising against violent rule. However, tyranny is clearly something the U.S. government has never done to white Christians. Conservative fundamentalist Christian groups actively absorbed and deliberately misrepresented the original meaning of Locke and used it to attack any political ideas or social trends they did not like. They became more radical during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, eventually leading to a group of white anti-government militia members attacking multiple state capitols in an attempt to kidnap the Michigan governor and disband the state government.
Pennsylvania is one of the regions with the greatest tension in the United States. Trump won here in 2016, but was defeated by Biden four years later. The attitudes of independent voters and middle-class people often determine the final direction of the election. Although this left him behind in the polls, Masteriano had no regrets to alleviate his radical Christian nationalism. To observers of this election, this directly demonstrates how firm and sincere his belief in Christian nationalism is. His views expressed as a Republican candidate during the Pennsylvania governor's campaign are further amplified by the media, becoming a dangerous signal of popular cognition in American political thought.
The most convincing argument against Christian nationalism is very simple: the United States has never been a country based on Christianity. This is a historical fact that historians and religious scholars fully discuss and generally recognize. The first American colonies established by British colonists did indeed originate from their yearning for the Puritan life, who vowed to be loyal to God rather than the monarch, but all this changed in the 18th century. People who fought to liberate the 13 colonies and thus established an independent country with equal rights, although they still regarded Christianity as the mainstream belief, they were increasingly aware of the harm of imposing their cognition on others.The British-born revolutionary Thomas Paine argues in Common Sense: The reason why the United States needs independence is precisely because the British monarchy has absolute and unquestionable power over the colonies, just as the Roman pope versus the Catholic monarch.
Historians represented by David Holmes believe that the attitude of early American political forces towards religion belongs to Deism . This theory was very popular in the era of enlightenment. It is believed that empirical reasoning and logical observation are the best ways to determine the existence of God without requiring transcendent revelation. Most of the founding fathers of the United States were skeptical of the influence of religion in the political field, especially Thomas Jefferson, who later served as the third president. He wrote in 1802 that “religion is a problem that exists entirely between man and God” and that the legislature should not “make any laws regarding the establishment of religion or prohibition of religious freedom.” This perception was accepted and embraced by most American people at that time, and became one of the main principles of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Another evidence that the founding fathers did not want religion to interfere in political sovereignty was reflected in Article 6 of the Constitution, which stipulates that no position is required to be held under religious belief as a condition.
Howard Chandler Christy / Signing of the Constitution
The modern Christian nationalist movement appeared in the 1950s. At that time, the expression of "a country under God" in the pledge of allegiance in American schools was written as law, the U.S. currency began to be required by the government to print the words "we believe in God", the appearance of departisan religious political rituals like the National Breakfast Prayer, and charismatic and popular evangelical preachers like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. Andrew Whitehead, a professor of religious studies at Indiana-Pudu University, believes that Christian nationalism is not a religious doctrine, but a political theology that draws on Christian narratives and symbolism in terms of race, aims to lure more white American Christians to fear and dislike groups different from their identities because they will "replace" them. In this narrative, its purpose and argumentation is similar to the unabashed “big substitution” theory of white supremacy, which argues that the increase in the non-white population in the United States constitutes genocide. The pursuit of the theory is the root of several mass shootings rife with racial hatred across the United States, including a tragedy in May when 10 black men were shot dead by a white man while shopping in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Whitehead also pointed out that white Christian leaders have a long history of boycotting the American Democratic Republic. They initially did this to fight the abolition of slavery and the end of apartheid , providing a justification for dehumanizing all groups that are not part of white people that do not exist in the Bible, and believing that maintaining racial oppression is related to maintaining America as a purely Christian nation. The rise of figures such as Paul Weyrich and Richard John Neuhaus made it more influential in the 1970s. After the Second Vatican Council, Wailich was disappointed with the growing liberal trend in the Catholic Church and began to actively participate in the right-wing policy circle in order to effectively inject his conservative religious beliefs into public policy. He used donations from the wealthy Coors family to co-found the Heritage Foundation as a policy think tank to promote economic laissez-faire and oppose government regulation. He also co-founded The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization composed of right-wing state lawmakers and private-sector lobbyists. They share model legislation in each state to promote a more Christian anti-regulatory cause.They strongly oppose environmental regulation, undocumented immigration, sexual minority rights, trade unions, gun control and reducing voting difficulties, have become the most effective weapon in the right-wing politics and are constantly creating new ways to prevent Republican-ruled states from being influenced by more progressive federal government policies.
Newhouse was originally a Lutheran pastor and later became a priest of the Catholic Church. He persistently promoted an anti-abortion stance in magazine newsletters and books, and compared the campaign to fight for the right to civil rights. His identity and influence helped to connect protest evangelicals and conservative Catholics, who, despite their differences in their confession to Christianity, shared a shared cultural cause against liberalism. In his work, he firmly stated that he is leading a moral struggle with political leaders against the 1960s “counter-culture” that includes abortion, abandonment of family values, drugs and homosexuality. He later became President Bush’s confidant, serving as his informal religious adviser, and became one of the most important factors in Bush’s resolute opposition to stem cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage during his presidency.
Sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry pointed out in their book "Flags and Cross" that Christian nationalism has always been the embodiment of some form of self-centered individualism, but at the same time it has no concern about the rights of people with different identities. It has begun to appear when the colonists built strongholds to genocide the indigenous peoples of " Indian " when they were building strongholds. The tradition of white male Christians controlling supreme authority has lasted for more than 200 years in the country and was not challenged until 2009 when Obama took office. When he became president and began to implement liberal policies that were usually for the public good, some white Christians felt that their majority status and status were threatened, and thus began to use religious symbols in protests to express their pursuit of freedom, such as claiming that God was against liberal policies in protests and saying that Obama was “not a true Christian.”
With the rise of the Tea Party movement, these appeals have had amazing results. As a group of Republicans who support small-government principles and tax cuts, Tea Party members often lament the increase in state debt and government spending. Members who identify with the movement seized a Republican majority in the House in 2010, greatly weakening Obama's feasibility of passing meaningful reforms and legislation. Polls show that most members of the movement consider themselves evangelical Christians; more importantly, in one survey, 57% of respondents believed that “the United States has always been a Christian nation”—a cultural bond that unites these people and has received positive responses from wealthy conservative funders. This idea prompted them to believe that the United States represents “God’s blessing” and regards the Constitution as a god, believing it to be almost unchallenging, which led to fundamentalist right-wing jurists and legislators becoming more resistant to reform at this time.
Local time on September 9, 2015, Washington, DC, Tea Party supporters held a rally on the west front lawn of the U.S. Capitol .
The intensification of the conflict between the Tea Party movement and secular and liberal forces in society did not stem from very different economic views, but due to the ongoing tensions in the United States. To justify itself and to the dangers of its enemies, the Tea Party often associates Obama with African nationalism and with radical figures such as his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and leader of the Islamic State Louis Farackhan. Tea Party members are willing to spread such conspiracy theories in large quantities, claiming that Obama was actually born in Kenya and was not qualified to be president and was a secret Muslim.
All this reached its peak with Trump's sudden rise, and he not only became President Obama's successor, but also successfully secularized and generalized Christian nationalism into a devastating white populist movement.The information and narratives that Trump conveyed during his campaign and used during his campaign are good at evoking a religious sense of apocalyptic crisis and a never-absent battle between good and evil. He often used the word “catastrophe” to demean any liberal policy he disliked, which resonated strongly with white Christians who feared that his majority dominance would be replaced. Gorsky and Perry believe that the potential information of Trumpism and Christian statism is the same, both freedom, order and violence; in other words, whites use "just" violence to defend their freedom to establish order.
This is why Trump and right-wing politicians have been using the slogan of “law and order” to fight the appeal of racial justice after George Floyd ’s murder sparked nationwide anger protests. Christian nationalists will only use such expressions in favor of their narratives; when Trump spread the lies of election stolen, urging his supporters to rush the Capitol and more than 100 Capitol police officers were injured, they didn't care and even called the riot a "legal discourse."
Christian nationalism is likely to be the most dangerous political theory that has emerged in the United States since Nazism. As a narrative means of hierarchical order and freedom, it explicitly unites “we” and alienates “them” based on racial and religious identities, encourages white Christians to demonize any other person and distort historical facts to prove that they need to maintain their majority status both demographically and morally. The separation of church and state was enshrined in the Constitution from the very beginning and has long withstood challenges and continues to this day. The challenges that have been ready in recent years have gradually moved from behind the scenes to the front, which has put the debate on the separation of church and state into a deadlock. The Supreme Court, with conservatives and originalists as the majority, is hearing multiple cases, and these judgments are likely to amplify the impact of Christianity in the social field and may even make it a mandatory requirement in public education. Although these people cannot represent the majority of the population and are often criticized by other Christian groups, if the American people are not clearly aware of their dangerous political attempts, they will gradually erode their power and have the ability to impose the strict hierarchy and the view of unity of politics and religion they advocate on anyone living in this country, putting the land in a deep regression that is difficult to turn back.
Reference:
Boorstein, Michelle. “Christian Nationalism Is Shaping A Pa. Primary - and a GOP Shift.”The Washington Post, WP Company, 8 June 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/05/16/mastriano-pennsylvania-republican-christian-nationalism/.
Chen, Shawna. “GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert's Call to Collapse Separation of Church and State Spurs Alarm.”Axios, 29 June 2022, https://www.axios.com/2022/06/29/lauren-boebert-church-state-christianity.
Edwards, Mark. “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”CNN, Cable News Network, 4 July 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/living/america-christian-nation.
Foster, David. “Neuhaus in the Culture War - Richard John Neuhaus: America Against Itself: Moral Vision and the Public Order. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Pp. Xiii, 199. $19.9.)..”The Review of Politics, vol. 56, no. 1, 1994, pp. 200–201., doi:10.1017/S0034670500049688.
Gorski, Philip S., et al.The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Graves-Fitzsimmons, Guthrie, and Maggie Sidiqqi. “Christian Nationalism Is 'Single Biggest Threat' to America's Religious Freedom.” Center for American Progress, 14 Apr. 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/christian-nationalism-is-single-biggest-threat-to-americas-religious-freedom/.
Griswold, Eliza. “A Pennsylvania Lawmaker and the Resurgence of Christian Nationalism.” The New Yorker, 9 May 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/a-pennsylvania-lawmaker-and-the-resurgence-of-christian-nationalism.
Hofstaedter, Emily. “Christian Nationalists Are Closer than You Think to Running America.” Mother Jones, 21 Oct. 2022, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/10/christian-nationalists-are-closer-than-you-think-to-running-america/.
Holmes, David L.The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Jenkins, Jack. “Republicans Mostly Mum on Calls to Make GOP 'Party of Christian Nationalism'.”The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 Aug. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/19/republicans-mostly-mum-calls-make-gop-party-christian-nationalism/.
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