Raskin, Tlaib, others hear report on White Christian nationalism as a threat to democracy – The Washington Post

Just to be clear, we reject White Christian nationalism in the sense that it is described in the article below.

We do believe that:

1. America is a great country – we love her and her people dearly
2. People, more so than countries, have “special” relationships with God
3. Our Founding documents are genius – but not inspired like the Scriptures
4. Anyone who personally receives Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is a Christian – ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
   1. We reject the notion that only white people are true Christians.
5. While America has a rich history of Christianity, religious freedom in our First Amendment grants believers of all faiths (or none at all) the same rights & privileges.
6. There is no, nor should there be, any state-sponsored religion.  Save that for when Jesus returns and the whole world turns to Him!
7. Therefore America is NOT a Christian nation in the sense that Christianity should be favored by the state.
8. While we love our Judeo-Christian values and sincerely believe in them we believe American values are defined by those inferred in our Founding documents (truth, equality, respect for a Creator, human rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.)
9. Government exists to secure these rights.  In fact our government is guided by six main overarching values per our Constitution:
   1. secure a more perfect Union
   2. establish Justice
   3. promote domestic tranquility
   4. provide for the common defense
   5. promote the general welfare
   6. secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity

10.  Christians submit themselves to our government and effect change within the rule of law and in accordance with and respect of the democratic norms that have worked for all parties in modern times up until 2016.

New research linking Christian nationalism with a desire to limit voting. People citing their faith as the reason they support trucker convoys that shut down the border over covid protections. And the fact that Jesus’ name appeared all over the place during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.

The report was released Feb. 9 and is a project of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). It chronicles in exhaustive detail the art, signs, flags, jewelry, spoken words and even a gallows that protesters brought Jan. 6 that cited Jesus and Christianity. It also talks about various nonprofit groups, lawmakers and clergy who worked together to adorn Jan. 6 and Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his electoral loss with theological fervor. It talks about the important role of race.

“I look at what’s happening now, the rhetoric leading up to the midterms, and am more worried, not less,” he told The Post before the Freethought event. “We have more brazen nationalism. The Republican Party saying that day was ‘legitimate discourse.’ We are going to see something like this again.”

“A lot of Americans look at that day and think: ‘A lot of crazy people acted out.’ But it was far more organized, and it wasn’t just the Trump political organization,” he said. What tied many unconnected people and groups together was a shared worldview that Christianity should be fused with civic life and that true Americans are White, culturally conservative and natural born citizens.

Seidel and other experts involved in the event said they fear Americans do not appreciate the role of White Christian nationalism in the insurrection and in current anti-democratic efforts. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature,” he said. “These folks are embedded in state legislatures, in the truck convoy spectacle. We haven’t heard the last of them.”

Christian nationalism is centuries old. The phrase, however, only took off in recent years, including among researchers seeking to understand and explain the idea that people can be sorted into distinct groups (nationalism) and that those groups are defined by, and must remain defined by, a certain expression of Christianity. People who are considered Christian nationalists do not usually see themselves or refer to themselves that way.

While concern about White Christian nationalism in America is today most commonly expressed by people on the left, it is not a partisan issue. Multiple well-known figures on the more conservative side of the aisle have sounded alarm about the danger of conflating Christianity with patriotism, or love of country.

Paul Miller, an international affairs professor at Georgetown University who writes on religion and politics, calls it “a serious problem” because it allows one group to define who is, and who is not, part of the nation. In a piece last year in Christianity Today about Christian nationalism, Miller noted the periods when Protestantism was a quasi-official religion in America, and said it violated the value of religious freedom.

Government discrimination against non-Protestants goes back to the earliest U.S. colonies in the 1600s, when Catholics were banned and Quakers were hanged. In newly independent America, only Christians could hold office, so long as they renounced the pope’s authority. In New York, Catholics were banned from public office until the early 1800s. They had civil rights in Maryland, but Jews did not. In the mid-1800s, Mormons were expelled from Missouri, and later their practice of polygamy was legally banned.

University of Oklahoma sociologist Samuel Perry, another participant in Thursday’s event, has written several books about religion and politics. New research for “The Flag and The Cross,” which comes out next month, shows a powerful correlation between people who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs and anti-democratic beliefs.

The book, co-written by Perry and Yale sociologist Philip Gorski, lays out a scale of Christian nationalism based on agreement with seven points, including “the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” and “the success of the United States is part of God’s plan.”

However, it is wrong to see this group as “ineffective or in a dying grasp,” he said. Instead, they are becoming more angry and, he believes, dangerous. The book’s research showed that the same group more powerfully believed “it’s too easy to vote” after the 2020 election compared with before.

“As this group of Americans — Whites who believe the country is for people like them — the more they feel marginalized, in a corner, and can lean into that, there is more potential for them to become more radical, more militant,” he says. The topic becomes wrapped up in partisanship, with followers saying: “If the liberals hate this Christian nationalism, it must be good.”

This content was originally published here.