Increasing ties between Christianity, right-wing nationalism

Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

I think we see it certainly surfacing more.

President Trump was very clear that he wanted to privilege conservative white Christians. He wanted to protect Christianity and a particular type of Christianity. And he very much used this rhetoric of us vs. them. He was not the president of all Americans. He was the president of his base, and he was going to promote them and privilege their ideas.

And so, with that rhetoric, I think it became normalized and we started to hear that more in Christian spaces as well, more of a boldness to say that we have a right here.

And, also, this goes hand in hand with the idea of embattlement, the idea of threat. And that was something that President Trump really excelled at, giving the sense that his followers, his base, that they were the ones who are under attack, and, therefore, they needed to be militant, they needed to strike out first, a kind of preemptive strike.

And you see that among many Christian nationalists as well. Even though they are in the majority and even though they have a lot of cultural and political power, they will continue to insist that they are actually the ones who are embattled and, therefore, what choice do they have but to be ruthless and to seize power?

Share: