Christian Nationalists Aren’t Christians
If you’ve spent any time on the religious side of TikTok, there's a very high chance that you’ve encountered videos by Dr. Dan McClellan. And, if you’ve seen videos from Dan, and potentially even read his recent book The Bible Says So, you’re likely also familiar with his argument that certain beliefs are not really beliefs at all, but rather boundary markers for different groups. For example, when a conservative evangelical says that the Bible contains no errors, they cannot be declaring an actual fact-based belief, because such a thing is fundamentally and provably false. Rather, what that Christian is declaring is an identity marker that allows others to know they are one of the “good ones”, that this person is on the right side of the group and should therefore be considered inside the boundary lines.
But these identity markers aren’t just visible within denominations or traditions, they are also found within the overall arc of religious identity, especially as it is tied to other intersecting identities such as ethnicity or nationality. In this way, in order to be a “good” Greek, one may be expected to adhere to Greek Orthodox Christianity, or an American may think they need to be an evangelical Protestant in order to be on the “right” side of American patriotic identity. But for such groups, religion no longer acts as a point of belief or even behavior so much as it does a litmus test for who is “in” and who is “out”.
Seeing some religious identities through this lens I think can help us understand why the rise of Christian Nationalism in the places like the United States is making such a resurgence, despite the fact that many of its adherents seem less than concerned with the actual teachings of Christ or of the Bible. See, the truth is that their primary identity is not as a Christian. For these groups, declaring oneself a Christian - and specifically an evangelical Protestant - is actually a requirement for true American identity. The main identity these groups are concerned with is their American one. Everything else is just a test for which kind of American a person it - a good one or a bad one.
I believe viewing things through this lens can help us start to understand how it is that conservative talking heads and politicians can drone on and on about the Bible or the Constitution while simultaneously not seemingly to actually care about what either text really says about anything. They simply use the Bible or the Constitution as the proof texts to support what they already believe are the fundamentals of American identity. So, when the Bible says something about caring for the poor or the foreigner, we can simply find a way to explain that away or lessen its impact, just as we can do when the Constitution says that your political opponents also have freedom of speech. In the same vein, we can reinterpret Christ into being whatever we want him to be. If we want a white man who supported laissez-faire economic policy and opposed hand outs for the “lazy”, then we can find a way to make him into that. And if we want to hear less of the meek and mild brown man who supported communal economics and self-sacrificial service to the poor and disenfranchised, then we can certainly find a way to make him disappear.
This is the great alchemy of Christian Nationalism: they steep their politics in Christian imagery and terminology while not fighting for a Christian identity at all. They are only fighting for American Nationalism and have found a way to transmute Christianity into Americanism and vice-versa as a way to keep those they desire and do away with all the rest. As such, the pro-choice, non-Christians, gays, trans people, communists, pacifists, and all others who do not or cannot affirm the identity markers of conservative evangelical Protestant Christianity find themselves on the outside of so-called American identity. They become the enemy not because they hate America or despise Christians, but because they are on the outside of the boundary lines for “good” Americans.
And it doesn't matter that Jesus never said anything about abortion and was himself not Christian, nor that he never spoke about trans people, nor that he absolutely fits the mold more as a communist than a capitalist, nor that he was undeniably a pacifist. It doesn’t matter because Christian Nationalists are not actually concerned with Christianity. They are concerned only with what they desire for America, and they are willing to trample the Lord as a means to their ends.
