Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism is a form of monoculturalism. It’s leaders are explicitly against the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. Discussions about Christian nationalism usually revolve around the question of whether the United States is or was a Christian nation. CN is an ideology. They think so America has become terrible and that we need a strong man to fight the enemy that diversity represents to them. They believe that conservative Christians should dominate American institutions. Christian nationalist understand the United States as a theocracy. They see Trump as their protector Anointed by God to restore Christianity to its rightful place at the top of the top of the political pyramid.

Historically, Christ rejected nationalism. He rejected the sword as a path to power by taking the way of self sacrificial love and instructed people to pick up their cross and follow him. Christian nationalism is antithetical to the teaching of Jesus. Who is my neighbor? Is the most important question for a democracy. Acceptance of the other, in spite of differences, was taught and more importantly lived by Jesus. He overcame his own ethnocentric prejudices to accept the Romans. The gospels a point of illustrating that. Christian nationalism is having at once a demoralizing and militarizing effect on the churches. J.D. Vance and the authors of Project 2025 are Christian Nationalists.

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Christian Nationalism builds on trends that I identified on this thread. Perry & Palin tied to dominion movement

Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently(7/06/2024) said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The plan is ambitious. The Mandate for Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism (CN) on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic.

Page 4 sets the tenor:

The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights, out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.

Presumably, First Amendment freedoms would be reserved for only those who agree with this dystopian view.

In addition to erasing the rights of women and minorities, the Mandate for Leadership:

  • Expresses a special contempt for the LGBTQ+ community (103);
  • Recognizes women primarily in their roles as wives or mothers;
  • Recommends the elimination of the Head Start childcare program (482) despite the fact that for nearly six decades the program has helped low-income children and families with nutrition, education, and high-quality, affordable day care to prepare children for school and enable low-income parents to work. Indeed, Project 2025 suggests that the new administration should “prioritize funding for home-based childcare, not universal day care” (486). It states that children who spend undefined “significant” time in day care experience “higher rates of anxiety, depression, and neglect as well as poor educational and developmental outcomes.”
  • Recommends banning abortion, ensuring that only pro-life government policy prevails, and outlaws the mailing of abortion-inducing medication (459);
  • Portrays single motherhood as destroying families (4); and
  • Identifies fatherlessness as the root of all evil, stating that fatherlessness is “one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts” (4).

Structural Change

The major means to bringing about such deep and lasting change is by eviscerating the federal civil service and enabling a president to fire 50,000 civil servants. Loyalists would be hired in their place to return the federal government to the patronage system (also known as a “spoils system”) that existed in the 19th century. Education and experience would be secondary to right-wing ideology. Loyalty to a president with conservative principles would become a prospective employee’s primary qualification.

In these and other ways, Project 2025’s vision for America would make the president a strongman. Institutions and departments that are now independent or answerable to Congress would instead be weakened or put under his control. Serving the public would become an afterthought. (Source: Kettering Foundation, August 19, 2024)

Only a couple months into Trump’s second term and we can see how closely he and his administration are sticking to the authoritarian playbook of CN.

The “Theobros” including JD Vance misrepresent Christianity turning it from a religion of universal love into a religion of me and mine versus you and yours.

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Vance tied his interpretation of Christian hierarchy to his role, saying that the “Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family” meant it was logical that your “first duty as an American leader is to the people of your own country”.

So says JD Vance. But, according to the Bible what did Jesus say about family values?

LUKE 14:26

“If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

Mark 3:31-34

Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him. And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You. But He answered them, saying, “Who is My mother, or My brothers?” And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers!

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