US Christian Nationalism, Devout Non-White Christians & Patriotism

American Christian nationalism, one would assume, would embrace all Christians but it has not for the last five hundred years. American Christian nationalism has always been White Christian nationalism. How can not be when for hundreds of years non-whites, particularly Blacks, were not even considered fully human? Citizenship and Christianity of Blacks were always in doubt. 

With Blacks suffering the wrath of the American state until the late 1970s, a hundred years after the Civil War and 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, it is unsurprising that their relationship with the American state is different from White American's. The benevolence of the American state and reverence for American exceptionalism and militarism were contested ideas in the Black community. And Blacks found it difficult to accept that America has always been a "shining city on the hill" and the American military has always been a force of righteousness and freedom.  

See below how Senator Warnock of Georgia, who is the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005, was criticized for his Christian beliefs and the social gospel, that do not conform to Christian nationalism and American exceptionalism. The Ebenezer Baptist Church has a long history of progressivism and the social gospel movement. Here Martin Luther King, Jr. and his father preached for more than 40 years. These are excerpts from What the Attacks on Raphael Warnock’s Faith Reveal about Christian Nationalism by Quardricos Driskell in Religion and Politics:

Ugly symbolism and dangerous rhetoric were on display during the Georgia Senate races as well. The campaign of Republican Senator David Perdue, Ossoff’s opponent, ran an attack ad that enlarged the Jewish candidate’s nose in what Ossoff said was the “oldest, most obvious, least original anti-Semitic trope in history.” Warnock’s opponent, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, repeatedly attacked the pastor as radical because of his faith and social justice sermons. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) released an attack ad against Warnock featuring excerpts of black theologians and famed preachers: the late Rev. Dr. James Cone, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, and the Rev. Calvin O. Butts, ending with its editorial proclamation: “You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps.” What was and is lacking in Republicans’ understanding of Warnock’s preaching is any sense of its historical imperatives and, particularly, any depth of understanding of the Black church and its preaching tradition, the social gospel movement, and Black liberation theology.

For too long, the Republican Party has claimed to be the party of the faithful, namely through its identification with the Religious Right. For decades, they have claimed the mantle of “Moral Majority.” Paul Weyrich, the late political activist and co-founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote in the 1970s, “The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition. When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Today, these Christians—mainly white evangelicals with a swath of Catholics and other Protestants—make up the backbone of support for Trump.

The GOP does not have a monopoly on religious voters or Christian values, though. They have tied their politics to a corrupted brand of white Christianity—as seen at the Capitol riot and the rally before it. Among the symbols there, perhaps none were so numerous as those of Christianity, including crosses, images of Jesus, and signs with biblical verses. The meld of the GOP and Trump and Christian nationalism seemed complete. When the mob violently stormed into the Senate chamber, one insurrectionist could be seen carrying the “Christian flag.” Outside, some protesters unfurled a massive banner. It read: “Jesus 2020.”... 

These Trump supporters seem to say that it is not right to malign their Christianity or beliefs in this way, just as it was not right to ask any questions of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s conservative Catholic faith during her confirmation hearings. Yet, somehow it was fair game to attack Warnock for his faith, beliefs, and sermons without any theological context or understanding. How fascinating it is to see whose beliefs and interpretations are publicly dissected and criticized.

During Warnock’s campaign, a video of him preaching that “nobody can serve God and the military” turned into a rallying cry for some Republicans, who accused him of being anti-military. Loeffler, his opponent, said that Warnock “insulted our active service military members. He insulted our veterans. He insulted their families.” Meanwhile, other Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton, demanded that Warnock drop out of the race. And yet, Scripture says “no man can serve two masters”—the biblical verse that Warnock was invoking to mean that a devotion to God must come first. This lack of understanding about the Black preaching tradition is willful and not a product of simple unawareness. It is necessary to protect a white evangelical worldview.

Source:  What the Attacks on Raphael Warnock’s Faith Reveal about Christian Nationalism  

The Black tradition of the social gospel equipped civil rights leaders with much of their movement’s intellectual underpinning. Essentially, to attack Warnock as “radical” is to attack, square-on, the legacy of King. Like Warnock, he believed that racism, sexism, militarism, poverty, and classism were deeply ingrained iniquities that long have threatened America’s democratic ideals. Whenever religious figures speak in the prophetic tradition that critiques American imperialism and exceptionalism, they are vilified as anti-American. These tropes are compounded and used more frequently against those situated in the Black church and African American preaching tradition. In 1967, King’s “Beyond Vietnam” address at Riverside Church crucially condemned America for its lack of empathy and financial resources for the poor and racially oppressed while calling for the end of America’s proliferation of the military-industrial complex. As pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist—where King, his father, and maternal grandfather were pastors—Warnock’s preaching proclaims the belief that Christianity is spiritual and political and grounded in justice for the oppressed. The attacks against Warnock are not only jabs at the Black prophetic preaching tradition but also digs at Black American Christian communities on the whole, who through the practiced preaching of biblical texts, like that of the Exodus story, insistently call America to be its better self.

Religious beliefs emerge from a much broader and more complex political-ideological context than our holy books, alone, can provide. For instance, the idea of climate crisis denial is often inextricably linked to belief in unfettered capitalism, justified by a kind of “prosperity theology,” the belief that material gain is a reward from God for personal virtue. No one should be surprised at the intersection of faith and public policy. Many presidents and politicians have used the symbols of Christianity to appeal to the American people. The famed sociologist Robert Bellah coined the term “civil religion,” the belief that semi-religious national symbols—often derived from the Abrahamic faiths—are used to unite the country during difficult times.

What happens to our civil religion now? Where there is hope, it will come from boundary-breaking leaders like Ossoff and Warnock, who herald a new day in Congress. These newly elected senators support issues like voting rights, inclusiveness, and access to healthcare, as well as taking care of people regardless of their background—a nod to the biblical value of opening hands to those in need.

The Republican Party’s current fusion with Christian nationalism is dangerous. The idea that America was founded as a Christian, mostly white nation—and that an authentic American must be Christian—erodes the very sanctity of any unifying “civil religion.” This reality was egregiously illustrated on January 6 by Trump’s incitement of violence from his Christian supporters on the National Mall. It was ignobly seen in his use of the Bible and a church as pretexts to forcibly remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square last June. Warnock’s sermons, like King’s sermonic critiques of America, are not distortions of the Bible like these events. Rather, they are prophetic commentaries on the power structure that supports the idea of Christian nationalism. And they are needed more than ever, from the pulpits of Georgia to the congressional chambers of Washington.

Jonathan Walton, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity, explains in his Washington Post article that criticism of Warnock, and earlier of Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Obama's minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago, is based on "ignorance about the progressive Black church tradition." Their sermons may appear unpatriotic but in fact, they are deeply patriotic.

Preachers such as Warnock may strike the comfortable as offensive, but their critiques aren’t unpatriotic screeds. Rather, they proclaim a deep love for, and thus a deep disappointment in, a country that too often fails to affirm the self-evident truth in our nation’s creed, that all people are created equal and endowed by God “with certain unalienable Rights.”

The mischaracterization isn’t new. Wright, President Barack Obama’s former pastor, was pilloried during the 2008 presidential election for his 2003 sermon, “Confusing God and government” despite decades as a respected clergyman and having served honorably in the Marine Corps. Wright was accused of preaching “anti-white and anti-American rhetoric” for saying “God damn America” in a sermon that addressed a list of this nation’s sins, including Native American genocide, slavery and unjust wars. Go back a bit further in history and Martin Luther King Jr. — himself once a pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — was accused of being “the most notorious liar in the country” by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

The attacks misconstrue African American progressive and prophetic religious protest. Informed by the evangelical strand of the social gospel, this tradition places an overwhelming moral emphasis on society’s most vulnerable and oppressed. It demands that Christians bear witness and ameliorate the suffering of others, as set forth in the parable in Matthew 25 where Jesus likens our treatment of God with how we treat those without food and shelter, or those who are sick and imprisoned: “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says of those who enter God’s kingdom, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Indeed, in his December debate with Loeffler, Warnock said: “I’m a Matthew 25 Christian.”

Bearing witness in this way involves uncomfortable truth-telling directed toward those in power. In 2008 at the National Press Club, Wright explained that his aim was to hold his government accountable, not to tear it down: “God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns some things … God damns some practices and there’s no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic.” Similarly, in his 1967 address, “Beyond Vietnam,” King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He didn’t mean America could do no right. But it is necessary to acknowledge where America is wrong toward ultimately transforming “the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

Such a spiritual orientation demands moral courage and candor from clergy. Some call it speaking truth to power and others call it parrhesia — candid, fearless speech that challenges the status quo. Historians and literary scholars alike refer to this rhetorical tradition in America as a jeremiad, based on the laments of the biblical Hebrew prophet Jeremiah against unjust practices in ancient Israel, for it’s the Hebrew prophets who provide the moral vocabulary and vivid imagery for preachers such as Warnock who are a part of this tradition.

The Bible is replete with the scathing indictments of those who wept over oppression. Recall Jeremiah: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor” (Jeremiah 22:13); and Amos, decrying those who “trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed” (Amos 2:7). The biblical prophets enunciated their divine call to be voices of the voiceless and defenders of the defenseless. They did not try to soothe or assuage listeners with euphemistic phrases. Their rhetoric was often blunt, unyielding and contentious.

This is the beauty and burden of this tradition. Those informed by it — including abolitionists David Walker and Sojourner Truth, and contemporary voices such as the Rev. Otis Moss III of Chicago and the Rev. Leslie D. Callahan of Philadelphia — hold that clergy cannot convey faithfully the spirit of God’s concern for the most vulnerable without being honest about the ways our society, including public policy, is complicit in their suffering. To answer God’s call is not merely to comfort the afflicted. It is also to afflict the comfortable. To not do so would be derelict of Christian duty for those who embrace this progressive and prophetic spiritual stance.

That some may find this form of Christian witness troubling makes sense, considering that many preachers in America specialize in positive affirmations and promises of personal and national prosperity. It can be easier to find comfort in the conciliatory tones and feel-good phrases that can be found in their churches on Sunday mornings. Some see those who appease and affirm the cultural markers of power as more hopeful than clergy who channel the seeming doom and gloom of the jeremiad. But in the prophetic tradition, hope comes from our ability to confront the worst of ourselves as a nation, progressing toward our better selves, not from sentimentality or naive optimism.

When Warnock inveighs against politicians who “pick the pockets of the poor” to “line the pockets of the ultrarich,” that doesn’t make him anti-capitalist. He’s making the charge that certain policies and policymakers willfully ignore the concerns of the most defenseless among us and insisting that our nation can do better. Saying “nobody can serve God and the military” at the same time isn’t a shot at the faith of our troops. It’s a reminder to the faithful of the teaching in Zechariah 4:6 that true victory, according to God, comes “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit” — that ultimate hope is grounded in love and justice, not weapons of warfare.

These appeals to love and justice have animated progressive Christians to fight to protect rights and expand opportunities for the socially marginalized. This has been true during every epoch of this nation: Abolishing slavery, women securing the vote, defending labor rights and dismantling segregation are just a few examples. In this tradition, clergy must call out the folly of power, industrial efficiency or wealth predicated on the unjust treatment of any segment of society. Whether the ill is human trafficking or the warehousing of the vulnerable by lucrative privatized prisons, “dishonest money dwindles away” (Proverbs 13:11).

It shouldn’t surprise that Black churches, born as institutional responses to Black oppression, have produced some of this nation’s most powerful voices, who have helped emancipate American democracy. At an 1852 Independence Day commemoration, Frederick Douglass addressed the gathering and asked: “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” He answered his own question by saying that to the enslaved, “your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.” That Douglass gave speeches throughout the United States and Europe castigating what he called slaveholding Christianity made him a target for White indignation and claims of anti-Americanism. Yet today he is universally lauded as a patriot.

It may be convenient for Warnock’s adversaries to attack him for lacking an uncritical embrace of American exceptionalism and unqualified veneration of her customs. It may be useful to try to tarnish a pretty clear political asset in the South: being a minister. But when Warnock’s opponents claim he’s un-American, they’re not just presenting an uninformed view of his preaching, they’re negating the true gift of Warnock’s tradition: loving America enough to be honest about its flaws while calling for America to aspire to its highest, most noble ideals.

White and non-white evangelicals: do their politics differ?

Evangelicals are usually spoken as a group that supports political and social conservatism. They are identified as a religious group that votes as a block and as it is close to 20-30% of the population, its views become very important during the US elections. However, while almost all evangelicals are socially conservative, research shows that, politically, evangelicals have diverse opinions and positions. Then, why it seems that evangelicals vote as a block for the Republican Party. There are three reasons:

• About two-thirds of the evangelicals are non-Hispanic white;
• White non-Hispanic Americans, including white non-Hispanic evangelicals, are more likely to vote than African-Americans or Hispanics;
• Many conservatives, who are not evangelicals according to most religious/doctrinal definitions, identify themselves as evangelicals.  

Add these three factors and it would be easier to see why more than 80% evangelicals regularly vote for the Republican Party even when the party leadership has regularly supported racist and anti-immigrant policies. President Trump's nomination, election, and continued popularity among evangelicals show that the political choices of evangelical voters (who are mostly white) are informed as much by race as they are by religion. 

A previous blog post discusses in detail the debate over how to define an evangelical and whether self-identification (which is the way most political polls identify evangelicals) is the right way to identify evangelicals, so we will not explore these issues here (for those who want to read about it: Who are evangelical Christians?). 

Here are two articles that explain the link of evangelism, race and voting behavior. 

The FiveThirtyEight article How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? contends that race and President Trump are dividing evangelicals or exacerbating their differences:

 America’s community of self-described evangelicals, about a fourth of the population, is increasingly divided between a more conservative, Trump-aligned bloc deeply worried about losing the so-called culture wars; and a bloc that is more liberal on issues like immigration, conscious of the need to appeal to nonwhite Christians and wary of the president. The split in evangelical Christianity isn’t new, but it appears to be widening under Trump. 

Two factors appear to be driving this divide. First, the number of white evangelicals is in decline in America at the same time that the evangelical population is becoming more racially diverse. According to 2016 data from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 64 percent of evangelicals are non-Hispanic white, compared to about 68 percent in 2006... 

And these nonwhite evangelicals see politics differently than white evangelicals. While the largest plurality of white evangelicals identify as Republicans, most black evangelicals are Democrats. A plurality of evangelical Latinos, in contrast, identify as political independents — and they’re less supportive of the Democratic Party than Latinos overall — but they are still more likely to consider themselves Democrats than Republicans.

Source: How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? 

The second factor driving this divide among evangelicals is Trump himself. His governing style is, in effect, forcing evangelical leaders to choose between embracing the white evangelicals who overwhelmingly support the president or distancing themselves from the president — and even politics generally — as part of an appeal to their diversifying congregations.

The Religion & Politics essay We Are All Evangelicals Now blames a "sense of “racial embattlement," the belief that one's group faces more discrimination than any other group in the US, for the voting pattern of evangelicals, who are mostly white. The author, Janelle Wong, argues that evangelicals are not outliers and their views are close to those of white Americans as white Americans also feel being discriminated against. The only difference is intensity, "Evangelicals embody U.S. racial attitudes on steroids." Wong concludes the essay by focusing on narratives of white persecution: 

The bottom line is that the racial divides and racial anxieties we see in evangelical America are not so different from the views of white Americans more generally. I speculate that these attitudes are more extreme than those of other white Americans because their fears of demographic change are even more exaggerated than other whites. A narrative of religious persecution runs deep in white evangelical theological circles. Believers expect to be attacked for their religious commitments. Hence, their defenses may be easily raised by “the War on Christmas.” Narratives of persecution have primed them to expect a broad cultural assault, despite the fact that white Christians face the least religious persecution of any religious group in the United States. These fears of religious persecution, unfounded or not, interact in an especially potent way with fears of racial embattlement to produce the political conservatism detailed above. That being said, the racial patterns we observe among evangelicals are more intense, but consistent with the racial patterns that define the country as a whole. In this respect, we all share something very deep with evangelicals.

Is White nationalism Christian or religious?

Three articles debating whether white nationalism is Christian? Murali Balaji's articles support the contention while John W. Morehead's article negates it.

Source: The way of improvement

Behind New Zealand Terror Attack Is a Problem Bigger Than Islamophobia

Mar 18, 2019, 3:21pm Murali Balaji

Even as advocates point to growing Islamophobia as the cause of the attack, the larger issue seems to be white Christian nationalism.

As a white terrorist from Australia emptied clips of his M16 into the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in New Zealand, killing 49 innocent worshippers, his manifesto revealed the depths and scope to which Christian nationalism has entrenched itself into white majority countries.  

Even as advocates point to growing Islamophobia as the cause of the attack, the larger issue seems to be a reactionary—and almost theological—white Christian nationalism that has taken hold over the past decade. And it can’t just be whitewashed away with the “economic displacement” trope.

Indeed, white Christian terrorists like Anders Breivik in Norway, Dylann Roof in South Carolina, and now Brenton Tarrant, are self-styled (and self-described) soldiers in a fight against greater threats: secularism and pluralism.

While white Christian nationalism has its roots in the United States during Reconstruction, it grew in the 1960s as the evangelical movement attracted new congregants fearful of racial and gender equality activism. Over time, these congregants conflated their racial resentment with religiosity, and viewed the idea of a secular country—and a pluralistic one—as tantamount to their extinction.

This Christian nationalism found its way to other parts of the globe, and weren’t necessarily tied to evangelical movements. The resentment-bred, reactionary politics of the National Front in France and far-right movements across Europe were tied to insecurities about what it meant to be a citizen of a particular country. Breivik weaponized that sentiment in 2011 with his terror attack, and Roof cited similar sentiments after slaughtering congregants of an African American Church in 2015.

We are distracted by incidents of mass murder and terror, and assume white Christian nationalism is a series of one-offs, rather than an increasingly pandemic problem across white majority nations in demographic transition. It’s growing in our own backyards, too, and not just because of Trumpism and social media.

To blame Trump, Facebook posts, and rambling manifestos for carnage overlooks our failure to confront the grievances fueling white Christian nationalism. Assuming secular values and pluralism will win out in the end does nothing to prevent the ideological violence of Christian nationalism from spreading. Just as Wahhabism spread as a grievance-based movement against ostensibly secular Pan-Arab dictatorships in the 1960s before morphing into a powerful global threat, white Christian nationalism is a tinderbox.

We have to have the tools to snuff the fire before it lights.

White Christian Nationalism May Not Be Religious, But It Is Christian

Mar 21, 2019, 4:26pm Murali Balaji

White Christian nationalism’s foot soldiers don’t necessarily connect their racial resentment with their devotion to the Bible, yet they're often trying to retake what they presume to be lost: white and Christian dominance. 

After my recent post on the terror attack in New Zealand, several Christians reached out to Religion Dispatches and directly to me asking why I conflated white terrorism with Christian nationalism.

They eloquently noted that the shooter (whose name I shall not use) did not use Christian theology, but espoused anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views that seemed disconnected from religion. But in making that argument, they might be missing a larger point: white Christian nationalism isn’t religious (or even grounded in religious scripture), but its adherents nearly always frame their grievances in terms of endangered white Christian societies.

Following Charlottesville, I wrote that white nationalism does have theological roots, with evangelicals like Bob Jones standing firmly in the way of civil rights. In modern iterations, white nationalism and Christian fundamentalism have converged with folks like Tony Perkins, Steve King (who is at it again), and David Duke.

But for the most part, white Christian nationalism’s foot soldiers don’t necessarily connect their racial resentment with their devotion to the Bible. Many aren’t religious, and in fact that’s generally beside the point. Instead, their resentment towards Others (generally non-white and non-Christian populations) is built up over time, largely through online portals that function as echo chambers for the blend of history, conspiracy theory, and racism that produces and sustains white Christian nationalism.

And we should note that it’s really a resentment movement that wears religion like a hood ornament or team colors. In such a definition, these nationalists are trying to retake what they presume to be lost: white and Christian dominance. 

In a larger context, none of the nationalist and exclusivist movements—Jewish nationalism in Israel; Islamism in parts of Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia; Hindu nationalism in parts of India; Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand—that have grown in recent years are grounded in theology. They’re all connected by a shared sense of grievance and an imagined community based on assumed shared ideals.

The New Zealand terrorist might not have been religious per se, but he was 100 percent devoted to the divine providence of white (Christian) nationhood.

Misdiagnosing Nationalism as ‘Christian’ Exacerbates the Challenges of Islamophobia: A Response to Murali Balaji

Mar 29, 2019, 12:59pm John W. Morehead

Christian nationalism and White nationalism have some common concerns, but they shouldn’t be conflated in their differing narratives and responses to Muslims and other immigrants.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on two Muslim mosques in New Zealand by Brenton Tarrant, many are looking to address the motivations and influences underlying the violence. In two RD posts, one from March 18 and another from March 22, Murali Balaji argues that the attacks were rooted in white Christian nationalism. But is Balaji defining Christian nationalism correctly, and is it the best way to characterize Tarrant’s ideological narrative? I will argue below that the answer is “no” to both questions.

To the question of defining Christian nationalism, there is a helpful body of academic research in political science and the social sciences relevant to this. The lead researchers in one study argue that “the conservative strain [of American civil religion] views America as holding a unique covenant with God, which requires it to be protected from outsiders and those who would do it harm. We refer to these ideas more generally as Christian nationalism.” Contrary to Balaji’s assertions in his second essay, Christian nationalism is religious, and it incorporates theological elements. This results in perceptions of “divinely anointed” Christian ingroup members vs. “theologically condemned” outgroup members like Muslims. This fusion of religious and national identities is noteworthy among white American evangelicals, where being Christian is very important to being truly American. This was the Christian nationalism that was a significant factor for white evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016.

By contrast there are other forms of nationalism. The type associated with white supremacy, sometimes called white nationalism, is concerned with ethnocentrism and the superiority of the white race. Both white nationalism and Christian nationalism have shared concerns about “cultural displacement,” and involve prejudice toward immigrant populations, sometimes seen as “invaders,” manifested in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitudes. But these two forms of nationalism, even with some shared fears, are not the same thing. So Balaji does not define Christian nationalism correctly and conflates it with other forms of nationalism.

To the second question, what type of nationalism did Tarrant espouse? Before his attacks, Tarrant posted a 74-page document on the internet. According to J.M. Berger, an expert in online extremism, Tarrant’s manifesto is “clearly a statement of ideology,” described as white nationalist, and the author “is a white supremacist, and anti-immigration and anti-Muslim.” There is no indication in Berger’s analysis that Tarrant included statements that would characterize his ideology as a form of Christian nationalism.

If Christian nationalism is not the proper way to understand Tarrant’s nationalism, but instead a form of white supremacist nationalism is more accurate, where did the major anti-immigrant influences come from? According to Sasha Polakow-Suransky and Sarah Wildman at Foreign Policy, Tarrant draws upon the work of Renaud Camus, a French anti-immigration writer. They note that while Tarrant was in France at a mall watching immigrant “invaders,” the idea came to him to use violence against nonwhites. Polakow-Suransky and Wildman quote from Tarrant’s manifesto illustrating the emotional impact this had on the soon-to-be mass murderer: “I found my emotions swinging between fuming rage and suffocating despair at the indignity of France, the pessimism of the french [sic] people, the loss of culture and identity and the farce of the political solutions offered.”

It would seem that Balaji has identified the wrong type of nationalism in connection with the New Zealand terrorism. White nationalism provided the ideological narrative, not Christian nationalism.

In the interests of full disclosure, I identify as a Christian. But my disagreement and critique of Balaji’s thesis should not be interpreted as a failure to accept criticism of those in my religious tradition. For the last four years I have been pursuing a grant from the Louisville Institute that has brought social psychology into conversation with American evangelical theologies of opposition to religious others, particularly Muslims. Among the contributing factors, our research indicates that Christian nationalism is a significant predictor of negative attitudes toward Muslims. I accept this, and advocate strategies to counter this narrative so as to foster more positive forms of multifaith interaction.

Christians have behaved badly, and pursued violence toward others, in the name of their religion. That’s beyond dispute. But whether Christian nationalism was the ideological narrative underlying New Zealand’s attacks, that’s another question. And it’s one that I think Balaji misidentified. If we misdiagnose the challenges we face we will create inappropriate strategies to counter them, and possibly foster even more tensions between Christians and Muslims.

***

Murali Balaji responds:

Following my first and second pieces in Religion Dispatches, several evangelical leaders have offered thoughtful critiques of my position that the New Zealand terrorist (whom I will not name) is a white Christian nationalist.

John Morehead writes in his response that I mislabeled anti-immigrant white nationalism as “Christian nationalism,” asserting that “White nationalism provided the ideological narrative, not Christian nationalism.”

I respectfully disagree.

For starters, I emphasized that a white Christian nationalist doesn’t necessarily have to be “religious” in the traditional sense. I would argue that Donald Trump and Mike Pence are both white Christian nationalists, though the former hardly has any attachment to the actual theology of Christianity.

In this regard, white Christian nationalists draw upon and reference a pure white Christian ideal—one that arguably never existed anywhere. If we reference Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, the white Christian ideal becomes an affinity that helps to build a collective identity.

The terrorist’s manifesto also makes reference to Pope Urban II and the First Crusade, implying that he fancied himself part of a holy war against Muslims and other invaders. While Morehead’s argument seeks to clearly distinguish between white nationalism and Christian nationalism, the terrorist’s own words seem to undercut this attempt.

“We are coming for Constantinople and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city,” the terrorist wrote in his manifesto. That’s not subtle in its call for Christian supremacy and destruction of Islam.

I sympathize with Morehead’s position, but the terrorist seems to make both implicit and explicit references to a dream that many white Christian nationalists share: a return to white Christian dominance over its non-white, non-Christian others.

Trump, Merry Christmas and White Christian Nationalism

Here are few articles on President Trump's focus on Christmas and "war on Christmas."

Independent informed the readers about Trump's ending the "war on Christmas":

For those who felt they needed the President's permission, Donald Trump has declared: "We can say Merry Christmas again."

Mr Trump repeatedly vowed during his campaign to end the so-called “war on Christmas", a commonly held belief among many of the President’s Christian supporters.
His comment came during a speech celebrating the passage of the tax reform bill.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have felt that saying the more neutral and inclusive “happy holidays” to mark celebrations of Hannukah, Eid, or other holidays taking place around the same time, has undermined the Christian majority in the country.
The "war" extends to some feeling as if political correctness is a forced and unnecessary social practice as well. 

Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University told CNN that Mr Trump “is no one's idea as an evangelical Christian, but he is very much using the same rhetoric as the war on Christmas...And it fits very much into his worldview that the people he's representing have been left behind by this liberal society".

Mr Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Americans would say “Merry Christmas in every store” during his presidency, implying that the phrase had gone out of use. (read the article Donald Trump announces 'we can say Merry Christmas again')

The CNN informed its readers that almost one in three adult Americans are bothered by at least some degree by the declining emphasis on religion in the way Americans celebrate Christmas:

Did President Donald Trump live up to his promise to end the "war on Christmas"? Depends on who you ask.
While some would quibble with the very idea that a war on the holiday exists, recent polling does suggest that the Christian nature of Christmas is less culturally prevalent than in the past.

A Pew Research Center survey, published last week, found that most US adults believe the religious aspects of the holiday are emphasized less now than they used to be. But overall, just 31% of adults said "they are bothered at least 'some' by the declining emphasis on religion in the way the U.S. commemorates Christmas."
Meanwhile, the "remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning," according to the Pew poll.

Throughout his presidential campaign -- and during his first year in office -- Trump emphasized he would "make Christmas great again" by ending the "war on Christmas," a concept that is the revival of a quintessential conservative culture war.
"If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store," he promised supporters in 2015, among the many times he made such a yuletide pledge.
Fast-forward to October 2017 -- two months ahead of the annual holiday -- and Trump repeated such rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit. "Guess what?" the President told those gathered. "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

His Christmas rhetoric -- and interest in making speeches in front of Christmas trees -- has inspired everything from "Saturday Night Live" sketches to merchandise (there is an official "Make Christmas Merry" hat sold on the Trump campaign website, and dozens of Trump-inspired Christmas-themed sweaters on websites such as Etsy and Amazon).
The Pew survey suggests that while most Americans still celebrate Christmas, the way they think about and commemorate the holiday appears to be moving in a more secular direction.
About 55% of US adults "say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion." That's slightly down 4 percentage points from 2013, when 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural.

A vast majority of Americans — including 56% of Republicans — say the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate is "made up" and not a "real issue," according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. (Read the article In his 1st year in office, did Trump end the 'war on Christmas'?)

Newsweek article reminds the readers that Nazis also used Christmas to promote a divisive nationalism, albeit Trump does not promote genocide or violence against minorities like Nazis:

Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, one expert says.  

“Because Americans have enjoyed a relatively stable political system, Christmas in the U.S. has been relatively immune to the overt politicization of the holiday,” Joe Perry told Newsweek. He is the author of the book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, which examines the way Nazis used Christmas to spread fascism.

“But not completely immune. The far right’s engagement in the ‘war on Christmas’ explicitly posits that there is one single true or correct Christmas. The holiday’s true nature is somehow under threat from outsiders and liberals who act as forces of degradation, multiculturalism and secularization,” Perry continued.

In this context, Trump has been using the so-called war on Christmas to wage a culture war that pits multicultural liberals against Christian conservatives. He began doing this long before Christmas. Meanwhile, some members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his reclaiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans. The ultimate goal was to draw a clear line between those who belonged and those who should be excluded and not benefit from the joys of Christmas.

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated genocide. But Trump’s talk about Christmas coexists with re-emerging white identity politics, Randy Blazak, a sociology professor who studies white nationalism, told Newsweek.

“Committed white nationalists love Trump’s bring back Christmas campaign almost as much as evangelicals,” he said. “His followers see this as gospel and a rebuking of multiculturalism and political correctness, and the growing influence of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-WASPs.”

President Donald Trump signs a proclamation in front of a Christmas tree, as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him

Source: How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism

Perry said that Trump hasn’t gone nearly as far as the Nazis in promoting his vision of the holidays, and he sees major flaws in describing Trump as a Nazi-like figure. But there are some clear parallels.

“Trump and the Nazis share aspects of race baiting and perhaps broader aspects of extreme conservatism—many political ideologies do,” Perry said.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how far Trump himself is willing to go to use the holiday to promote anti-Muslim or anti-minority visions of America, or if he even really understands what he is doing with his ‘merry Christmas’ tirades.” (Read the article How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism)

Religious nationalism in the US is foundational and one should be wary of Trump's rise

Jack Jenkins's Historians of Christian nationalism are alarmed by its appearance in American pulpits

A lesson on the dangers to the United States article in Think Progress is informative and warns Americans about what can happen. Christian nationalism is nothing new to the US and countries, like Germany between world wars, have some similarities with the present day US, although there are certainly many differences as well. Following are few excerpts of the article:

Christian nationalism isn’t just common in America. It’s foundational.

At least that’s the argument Aeon editor and former Harvard Society fellow Sam Haselby makes in his book The Origins of American Religious Nationalism, in which he insists American Christian nationalism is an inescapable part our national political discourse. He points to some of the earliest revolutionaries as proof: A band of (apparently laughably bad) poets calling themselves Connecticut Wits were among the first to protest for American independence, calling for a society that was “hierarchical, theological, and anti-racist” in nature.

“[Christian nationalism is] an old debate, as old as the United States itself,” Haselby wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

Granted, the Connecticut Wit social framework didn’t win out against its eventual rival, the so-called Jeffersonian or Virginia model of American identity, which Haselby describes as ultimately “evangelical, egalitarian, and racist.” But like the savior they worship, religious nationalism would not die. As the United States evolved, Haselby says two Protestant Christian ideological frameworks — which he calls “national evangelicalism” and “frontier revivalism” — began to vie for power. Their intellectual dimensions are complex, but the result of their feud was the creation of a shared political rhetoric Haselby describes as religious nationalism, primary articulated through the lens of Protestant Christianity.

The scholar differentiates his definition of Christian nationalism from more contemporary iterations by pointing to three defining (but broad) characteristics.
“Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the ‘political religion of the nation,'”

The first is the almost sacred status Americans often bestow upon the Founding Fathers and the nation’s founding documents. In 1838, for instance, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the “political religion of the nation,” which he argued should be “breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe…taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges…let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls.”

Haselby says this reverence for historical figures is unusual when compared to other industrialized states in Europe, where “founders” in the American sense are an alien concept.

“There is no counterpart in, say, Britain,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “The figure that comes closest to that is probably Winston Churchill.”
The second feature of American religious nationalism, Haselby says, is the fact that leaders of U.S. social movements often invoke what he calls the “Jeremiad” narrative, or the idea that their political cause is in keeping with the spirit of America’s founding. The third facet is the most obvious: The undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or “God talk” in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.

“There’s a lot of liberals and progressive people who theologize,” he said. “When it comes to nationality, Americans are people of the word. They’re textual exegetes, whether they’re liberal or conservative.”

It’s easy to find evidence of these tendencies—sometimes described as our country’s “civil religion”—in modern American political disputes. Fervent debates over what is “constitutional” have defined Trump’s young presidency, with advocates on all sides invoking founding documents in ways that can resemble a theological discussion. Trump supporters and “resistance” activists alike insist their movement carried the torch of liberty lit by the Founders. And appeals to the Almighty were present at both the RNC and the DNC this year, with the latter arguably more overtly religious than the former.

Moment of prayer after Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court

Source: The US President official twitter account

Robert Ericksen, a historian and professor at Pacific Lutheran University, has written about Christians active participation in Adolf Hitler’s rise in his book Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a product of Christian nationalism and Professor  Ericksen wants to learn from that era.

Direct conflations between Nazi Germany and U.S. politics are prone to gross hyperbole, and Erickson was quick to list a number of differences between the modern political moment and the rise of the Third Reich. 1930s Germany, for instance, was still reeling from a humiliating defeat during World War I while also enduring the Great Depression—neither of which are directly applicable to the United States in 2017. And while Trump-supporting Nazi sympathizers have made news in recent days, virtually none have any major institutional faith affiliation.

But Ericksen argues the past is meant to inform the present, which is likely why he was one of the first scholars to point to broad parallels between Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and those that backed the infamous German dictator.

In a Huffington Post op-ed published in September of 2016, Ericksen observed that evangelicals were already falling in line behind the businessman despite his questionable ethics during the campaign—and observed similarities between their fervor and that of 1930s German Christians. Like modern American Christians, these Germans emerged out of a deeply Christian Europe, where religious nationalism was embedded in many cultures. Although obviously distinct from Haselby’s understanding of faith-fueled political discourse, fusions of faith and politics permeated German society in ways not altogether dissimilar from American “civil religion.”

“To be loyal to God and country was a very powerful emotion and a common slogan,” Ericksen said.
“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,”

There are also eerily familiar cultural factors that accelerated Hitler’s rise—including appeals to what modern observers might describe as “family values.” The infusion of women into the workplace during and after World War I altered traditional perceptions of gender roles, for instance, and the forced imposition of democracy on Germany as a byproduct of losing the war didn’t sit well with many citizens.
“All of these things were perceived by the Christian community as a moral breakdown,” he said. “Democracy we believed to have encouraged that moral breakdown, because democracy believed in political equality.”

What’s more, the relatively few residents who were able to celebrate aspects of the “roaring 20s”—dance halls, the emergence of the movie industry, and a “more open sense to people having a moral right to express themselves”—suddenly became targets.
“They were perceived as not accepting Christian values and standards,” Ericksen explained. “They were aggressively blamed for pornography and prostitution.”
The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.
“There were a lot of comparisons to [famous theologian] Martin Luther, who was, up until then, probably the biggest German hero,” he said. “He saved Germany or created Protestantism by his response to the Bible and God’s word, and now Hitler had come along to save Germany in this time of need in a different way—but still according to God’s will.”

Ericksen pointed out that Christians did this even as Hitler exhibited behavior to contrary—much as Christian nationalists have publicly ignored Trump’s attacks on the press, democratic institutions, and other evangelical faith leaders. And even if Trump ultimately has little in common with Hitler, Ericksen noted that Trump has more dangerous weapons in his arsenal—weapons Christian nationalists such as Robert Jeffress has proclaimed God gave him the authority to use.
“In the end, Trump could be more dangerous than Hitler, because Trump has the nuclear option,” he said.

Robes, hoods and burning crosses of KKK: Artifacts of white supremacy and religious nationalism

Was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) inspired by religious nationalism? A study of the KKK artifacts certainly seems to answer 'yes' to this question.

An artifact (or artefact in British English) is an artificial/manmade product as opposed to a natural product. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle first made this distinction. Since artefacts are made, they have a maker and a purpose. Researchers learn about a society by analyzing its cultural artifacts as they reveal not only the intentions of their makers but also provide information about the specific functions they used to perform in that society.

Kelly J. Baker in her amazing article The Artifacts of White Supremacy enlightens the readers about the purpose/meaning of the things associated with the extremist, white supremacist American organization KKK. Religion or more specifically Protestant religion formed a very significant part of the how the KKK understood itself and the purpose of burning crosses, robes and hoods was directly linked with their understanding of God, nation and the Protestant religion. For instance, Ms Baker informs that the revival of the KKK in 1915 started because of a vision that was thought to be divinely-inspired:

The second Ku Klux Klan (1915-1930) began with a dream. William J. Simmons, an ex-Methodist minister, fraternal organizer, and founder and eventual Imperial Wizard of the Klan’s Invisible Empire, claimed that his recreation of the Klan began with a vision on a summer night in Alabama. As he looked out a window, Simmons saw “something mysterious and strange in the sky”: horses “galloping across the horizon” with riders dressed in white robes. Then, “a rough outline of the United States appeared as the background.” Simmons watched as each “big problem” in “American life” shifted across the celestial map, and he “fell to his knees and offered a prayer to God.” He prayed to “solve the mystery of the apparitions he had seen in the sky” and vowed to build “a great patriotic fraternal order” as “a memorial to the heroes of our nation.”

These heroes were the members of the first Klan that flourished between 1865 and 1870. Simmons believed the earlier Klansmen fought for the vanquished (white, Protestant) nation, helped restore the divinely-ordained racial order and saved the nation from the iniquitous and malicious Reconstruction forced on the South by the North. 

His religious visions and adoration of those first Klansmen, as well as the theatrical release and popularity of Birth of a Nation (1915), led Simmons to create the second Klan, a fraternity dedicated not only to white supremacy and social order but also nationalism and religious faith. On November 25, 1915, Simmons and 16 men climbed atop Stone Mountain, Georgia and lit a large wooden cross on fire. At midnight on that Thanksgiving night, these men pledged allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, American ideals, and “the tenets of the Christian religion.”.....

It’s noteworthy that Simmons’ vision included figures in robes and that the order started with a fiery cross. These are the most recognizable objects of the Klan past and present. His retelling of that vision and recreation of the order points toward an often-overlooked part of the history of the 1920s Klan: the reliance on artifacts in the order’s daily operations, meetings, naturalizations, marches, picnics, and other public events. These artifacts communicated the order’s ideals—Christianity, white supremacy, and patriotism—as well as their vision of America as a nation created and maintained solely for white Protestants.

Artifacts of the KKK

The artifacts of the KKK, like artifacts of other historical organizations, have remained the same but their meaning has changed over the years. Furthermore, the meaning of the artifacts for the KKK was  quite different than what was perceived by others:

Yet, the meaning of an object is never settled, and often the story the Klan wanted objects to tell was not the one that everyone else heard. Robes, fiery crosses, and the American flag ended up telling competing narratives about the Klan’s idealized vision of white Protestant America and their promotion of intolerance and racism. The Klan couldn’t control how other people interpreted their actions or their objects, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

In the following section, excerpts from the article are reproduced to highlight the meaning of the different KKK artifacts. It is clear that the meaning of all these different artefacts was/is religiously-inspired.

White Robes

The infamous white uniforms were, and continue to be, the most distinctive feature of the Klan. The Reconstruction Klan created the distinctive outfit: long, white robes decorated with various occult symbols and tall hoods with aprons, or masks.7 The uniforms evoked the ghosts of the Confederate dead, and Klansmen employed them to terrify African Americans and sympathetic white people. The 1920s Klan adopted the uniform from the Reconstruction Klan, but also changed it to mimic the Klansmen in Birth of a Nation.  

Imperial Wizard Simmons admitted that his initial purpose in adopting robes “was to keep in grateful remembrance the intrepid men who preserved Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the South during . . . Reconstruction.” However, the uniform’s importance grew and its meaning changed....No longer a ghoulish disguise, the robes became a sacred object....

According to an Exalted Cyclops (a Klan leader) from Texas, Klansmen wore “this white robe to signify the desire to put on that white robe which is the righteousness of Christ, in that Empire Invisible, that lies out beyond the vale of death.” Putting on their uniforms, then, commemorated the life and death of Jesus. 

But more than that, to wear the robes was to wear Christ’s example on one’s body, to embody it. Each robed Klansman wasn’t supposed to appear terrifying, frightening, or dangerous, but Christ-like. The theology of the robes tried to counter the violent legacy of the robes’ use in the Reconstruction Klan’s terrorism. Klansmen imagined themselves as Christian Knights, who supposedly were beyond the violent legacy of the artifact.

Hoods

The mask concealed the members’ faces, wiped away the last traces of the individual, and allowed each Klansman to become part of the larger Klan community. While the mask protected the identities of members, the Klan also claimed that it symbolized the Klan’s dedication to selflessness. In the minds of the order’s leadership, each individual Klansman sacrificed a sense of self to become an active and valued member of the order.

The motto of the Klan—“not for self, but others”—was realized in the indistinguishable multitude. The Klan claimed that if the uniform terrified, it was only because the robes and mask conjured images of Christianity, Americanism, and white supremacy. The enemies of nation, particularly the Klan’s vision of the nation, would have rightly felt terror upon glimpsing the hooded Klansmen because of what they stood for. The uniforms did represent exclusion, after all. Unsurprisingly, the order favored its own interpretation of the Klansman’s uniform as an artifact of Christian brotherhood and selfless service rather than outsiders’ claims about terror and intimidation.

Source: White supremacist says KKK group recruiting around Ohio

American Flag

In the Klan’s story, the flag became a powerful artifact created by a people’s love of their nation. The American flag, particularly, was an emblem of not only patriotic devotion but also the freedom and liberty of Americans granted by the founders. It was the physical symbol of the peculiar history and destiny of Americans, particularly white Americans....
For the Reverend W.C. Wright, a Klan minister, the flag was “purchased by the blood and suffering of American heroes,” which was the “price paid for American liberties.”...

The Kourier, a Klan national newspaper, demonstrated how faith was also a key component of the flag. The red stripes manifested patriotic devotion, even if this required “the shedding of blood.” The monthly noted, “We love Jesus because He shed his blood for us, and we love the Flag because it represents the blood shed for our freedom.” The stars in the field of blue came to represent “Him [God] Who is back of the stars in Heaven above.” The Kourier continued, “We may not all understand God alike, but we do believe there is a God, and we must admit that the bases of America’s Laws are the great moral laws of God. When any man turns his back on God [,] he turns his back on the Flag.”

For the Klan, belief in God was essential to citizenship. Yet, the Kourier wasn’t promoting a universal God that would be inclusive of citizens of all faiths, but rather understood Christianity as essential to Americanism. The monthly continued, “Pure Americanism can only be secured by confidence in the fact that the Cross of Jesus Christ is the wisest and strongest force in existence.” For the editorial staff of the Kourier, American nationalism couldn’t exist without Christianity. Under the Star-Spangled Banner, Americans might claim unity, but the Klan’s unity was narrowly limited to those people they thought qualified as truly American—only white Protestants.

KKK in Washington DC in 1925

Source: A Turbulent Decade The Twenties

The Cross (on flag and robes)

A deep red patch on the chest interrupts its [robes'] whiteness. Inside the patch resides a cross with a teardrop shape in its center. The cross symbolized the order’s commitment to Christianity while the teardrop symbolized the blood Jesus shed to redeem humanity... 

The cross, which also appeared on Klan uniforms, echoed the order’s Protestantism and the magnitude of Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice. Interestingly, most Protestants viewed the cross as a potent symbol of “Romanism” until the middle of the nineteenth century, and Protestant churches avoided the object as a symbol of their faith.21 Despite the cross’s ambivalent history, the Klan claimed it was “the symbol of heaven’s richest gift and earth’s greatest tragedy.”....

The wooden artifact became a memorial of Christ’s debt, clearly attached to the Klansman’s version of Jesus. An Iowa Klansman wrote a poem about the fiery cross, claiming its light revealed that God controlled the universe. Its flames guaranteed that God would “redeem and regenerate the world.” For this particular Klansman, the cross promised that a “good” Klan would triumph over any “evil”: immigration, alcohol, threats to the public school, attacks on Protestantism, Catholicism, Bolshevism, and Judaism to name several. The Klan emerged as a force of good that would triumph in an increasingly unsafe world.

The Fiery (Burning) Cross

Imperial Wizard Simmons added the fiery cross to 1920s Klan’s rituals, but it was Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman (1905) that introduced the idea of the burning crosses as a part of Reconstruction Klan’s mythology. In the novel, the burning cross was a tool for Klansmen to communicate with each other, an attempt to connect the order to the Scottish clans of lore and larger history of Anglo-Saxons. The 1920s Klan adopted the artifact for ritual and as a warning....

For the Klan, the fire signified that Christ was “the light of the world” that vanquished darkness and evil. It was a beacon of truth given for Klansmen alone. An Exalted Cyclops [a Klan leader from Texas] reflected:  ‘Who can look upon this sublime symbol, or sit in its sacred, holy light without being inspired with a holy desire and determination to be better man? By this sign we conquer.’ The Klan leader believed the fiery cross helped Klansmen become better men and confirmed that they were Knights ready to conquer forces that opposed their nation.

To conquer, or re-conquer, the nation for Protestantism, white supremacy, and “100% Americanism” was a clear aim of the Klan. Perhaps Christ’s light did emanate from the burning cross, but lifting up the fiery cross as a central symbol of the Klan was also an attempt to “rally the forces of Christianity” to take back the nation. Conquering required purging the “hordes of the anti-Christ” and the “enemies” of Americanism from America.26 The cross served as beacon and warning. For Klansmen, its glow provided comfort, but for those “enemies,” the fire terrified.

Source: The Artifacts of White Supremacy 

Colin Kaepernick and Tim Tebow: Two faces of American Christianity & Nationalism

Michael Frost, a popular speaker, and writer from Sydney has written a very interesting article titled Colin Kaepernick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Christians on their knees. He compares two American football quarterbacks. Both are devout and make a public display of their religion. However, they are most famous for kneeling on the ground. Describing Tim Tebow, Michael writes:

Tebow was home-schooled by his Christian parents, and spent his summers in the Philippines, helping with his father's orphanage and missionary work.

During his college football career, the Heisman Trophy winner frequently wore references to Bible verses on his eye black, including the ubiquitous John 3:16 during the 2009 BCS Championship Game.

He has been outspoken about his pro-life stance, and his commitment to abstinence from sex before marriage. He is a prominent member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an organization that insists that leaders sign a Statement of Sexual Purity, stating that sex outside marriage is unacceptable to God. He has preached in churches, prisons, schools, youth groups and a welter of evangelical conferences.

And he is well known for his signature move — dropping to one knee on the field, his head bowed in prayer, his arm resting on his bent knee — known throughout the world as Tebowing.

Then, Michael writes about Colin Kaepernick:

Kaepernick, until recently the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, was born to a 19-year-old, single, white woman. His black father had left the picture before Colin was born. His mother was destitute and gave him up for adoption. He was raised by the Kaepernicks, a white couple from Milwaukee. 

His body is festooned with religious tattoos, including depictions of scrolls, a cross, praying hands, angels defeating demons, terms like "To God be the Glory," "Heaven Sent," "God will guide me," Psalm 18:39 and Psalm 27:3.

And Kaepernick's faith isn't just about making him feel happy. It's turned him into an activist and philanthropist. During the offseason Kaepernick launched a GoFundMe page to fly food and water into suffering Somalia. It surpassed its $2 million goal in just four days. In March, the plane loaded with essential supplies landed in Mogadishu.

He had already pledged to donate $1 million, along with the proceeds of his jersey sales from the 2016 season, to charitable work. This year, Meals on Wheels announced it had received $50,000 from Kaepernick...

But we all know why Colin Kaepernick is most famous.

Beginning in 2016, he refused to stand to attention during the playing of the American national anthem. Kaepernick decided to either remain seated or kneel during renditions of the Star Spangled Banner in support of Black Lives Matter and to protest police violence against black people.

While Tim is loved by religious Americans, few have a negative opinion about his kneeling. Colin, however, is hated by many and recently President Trump decided to show what he thinks of Colin's kneeling (See Donald Trump versus the NFL, explained). Why Tim is loved by many, while Colin is hated by many? Colin was voted as the most hated player in the NFL.

Michael has presented this as a division of Christianity or battle between two types of Christianity:

It seems to me that Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick represent the two very different forms that American Christianity has come to.
And not just in the United States. In many parts of the world, it feels as though the church is separating into two versions, one that values personal piety, gentleness, respect for cultural mores, and an emphasis on moral issues like abortion and homosexuality, and another that values social justice, community development, racial reconciliation, and political activism.
One version is kneeling in private prayer. The other is kneeling in public protest. One is concerned with private sins like abortion. The other is concerned with public sins like racial discrimination.
One preaches a gospel of personal salvation. The other preaches a gospel of political and social transformation...One is listening to Eric Metaxas and Franklin Graham. The other is listening to William Barber and John Perkins.

Source: Tim Tebow Prefers Colin Kaepernick Would Protest 'The Right Way'

For me, it also tells one about two visions of America. What kind of nation Americans want? One vision is inclusive and wants to include all Americans irrespective of their color or religion. It is ready to accept current racial discrimination and talk about the horrible past. The other vision either denies current and past injustices or simply do not want to talk about them. One vision harks back to white nationalism and good old days when people of color knew their place. The other harks back to the ideals on which America was founded, the ideals written in the declaration of independence. 

As Michael argues both these visions of nations have an element of religion in them. Both these visions take their inspiration from the Bible. However, most of the Americans who claim to be religious appear to support only one of those visions. The religious nationalism that Trump supports or many Republicans support is also based on one of those visions. 

It's not conservatism,religion or racism, only regular, common nationalism?

Mark Movsesian makes an interesting argument about events happening in 2016. He argues that local politics were important but what we saw is the rise of nationalistic anti-global movement (See The New Nationalism).

One can easily perceive nationalism’s role in the politics of 2016. Repeatedly, the side advocating a recovery of sovereignty from supranational bodies and a limit on immigration prevailed. In the Brexit campaign, the “Leave” supporters argued that Britain must take back control from EU bureaucrats and assert authority over its borders. Here, Trump famously called for withdrawal from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and for renegotiation of other free-trade agreements, including NAFTA; for a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants; and for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Conservatism, racism and religion were contributing factors but cannot explain the movement:

To be sure, traditional conservatism played a role in these developments—but only an indirect one. Although the Right, broadly defined, achieved victories in the United States and Europe, what we think of as “movement conservatism” did not. In Britain, the leaders of the Conservatives opposed Brexit; in America, many conservatives opposed Trump. In France, the Republican Party has worked hard to distance itself from the National Front, which it views as an embarrassment. In Italy, the Five Star Movement declares itself non-aligned and draws votes from both the Left and the Right. 

Nor did Christian conservatism triumph in 2016. True, the majority of British Christians wanted their country out of the European Union and the majority of American Christians voted for Trump (the members of some denominations by wide margins). But both the Brexit campaign and the American election downplayed religious themes. Trump did not make Christian values a centerpiece of his agenda. Many Christians who supported him did so from a fear of what a Hillary Clinton administration would mean for their religious freedom rather than a belief that Trump shared their values. In France, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen strongly supports secularism. For an express appeal to Catholic values, one must turn instead to the Republican Party’s candidate, François Fillon. 

In short, although traditional conservatism has been on the winning side in recent political contests, it has been a junior partner in a larger project: the revival of nationalism.

Movsesian argues that this rise of nationalism does not necessarily mean that liberalism has been rejected. It is the liberalism tied with globalism that is rejected by many

The resurgence of nationalism upsets the conventional wisdom, which for some time has predicted the eclipse of the nation-state and the triumph of global, free market liberalism. Even Francis Fukuyama, who originated the idea of “the End of History” in 1989, has begun to reconsider. (Access to his article in the Financial Times is best from this link.) Why was the conventional wisdom wrong? Many observers argue that the financial rewards of global liberalism have been poorly distributed, with benefits going to a small number of elites within each country. Global liberalism may look great to cosmopolitans in New York and Los Angeles, who enjoy cheaper goods and services and higher returns on their investments, but to many in Middle America, who have lost well-paying factory jobs, and whose communities have been decimated by unemployment and other social ills, the advantages are harder to discern.

The lagging fortunes of what used to be called the working class are only part of the story, though, and not the most important part. As Fukuyama acknowledges, many well-educated Americans with reasonable professional prospects, who could expect to benefit from global liberalism, also supported Trump. For these Americans, too, the new world order of multiculturalism and ever-freer trade seemed lacking.

Does that mean these Americans reject liberalism itself? Maybe. Political scientist Yashca Mounk points to some worrying trends. But not necessarily—they may just want a liberalism tied to a coherent national community. Liberalism is not simply an abstract set of propositions; it is a tradition embedded in a particular political culture. Ultimately, it depends on a shared identity beyond markets and human rights, on a cultural and social unity that transcends cheaper prices and due process of law. A global liberalism divorced from local communities is a pale substitute for the deeper sources of belonging to which people naturally turn when they face a crisis. That, more than anything else, is the key political lesson of 2016.

The question I would like to ask Movsesian is about the basis of this new nationalism. Okay, it is anti-global and anti-immigrant but why? Is it economic nationalism or racial nationalism or religious nationalism or a combination of all of them. Secondly, nationalism is inherently divisive so a 'national' liberalism may not be benign in the end.