A growing movement, led by right wing politicians is increasingly
challenging, essentially is old value of America's political system.
The separation of church and state Laura Baron Lopez explores the
rise of this religious rhetoric and what it means for November's
midterm elections on the ballot this November are a number of high
profile Republican candidates who are embracing Christian nationalist
ideals.
That's a belief that America was founded by and for white Christians
and that the government should center its policies on those religious
beliefs. Take a listen to these Republican candidates facing voters
next month. You can call us extremists. You can call us domestic
terrorists. You know who else was called a lot of names.
His whole life.
Jesus Christian, and I say it probably
Christian nationalists. The church is supposed to direct the government.
The government is not supposed to direct the church so much for this
this myth of separation of church and state when you look at our
platform
It's the only platform out there that recognizes the creator that
recognizes that we have rights that supersede government. We need
people all over the country to be willing to put on that full armor
of God to stand firm against the left schemes.
You'll be met with flaming arrows.
But the shield of faith will stop them. Kristin Kobes do May is a
professor at Calvin University who studies the role of Christian
nationalism in history and in today's Republican Party, and she joins
me now, Kristin, Thanks for joining us the comments that we just
heard. How do they espouse Christian nationalist ideals? Really these
ideas that America is a special nation? It's it's God's nation. And
thus true Patriots Real Americans are those who had
Uphold Christian values and not just any Christian values of particularly
conservative political understanding of what it is to be a Christian
and what it is to be a Christian nation.
Where is the origin of what we're seeing as this modern day Christian
nationalist movement. Where did it come from? You know, you can find
the idea that America is a Christian nation stretching all the way
back through American history in different guises. You could go back
to the American Puritans. Right? Or to the Puritans and the 17th
century. You could. You could hear this kind of rhetoric throughout
Manifest destiny and so forth.
But what we're looking at today really is a modern manifestation
that is in the post War era, really linked with the rise of the Christian
right. The idea that Americans, uh have to preserve and actually
restore a lost Christian heritage. The idea that something had gone
wrong, particularly in the 19 seventies that secular impulses that
feminism are secular humanism, even
In some cases, the civil rights movement, the anti war movement were
seen as disruptive forces.
And so the idea was that Christians conservative Christians needed
to unite and needed to restore Christian America and to do that through
voting through policy and asserting their influence over the government.
And have we seen a greater rise of this sentiment since former President
Donald Trump ran for office? Where do you see it in his rhetoric?
I think we see it certainly surfacing more President Trump was very
clear that he wanted to privilege conservative white Christians.
He wanted to protect Christianity and in particular type of Christianity,
and he very much used this rhetoric of us versus them. He was not
the president of all Americans. He was the president of his base,
and he was going to promote them and privilege. Their ideas.
And so, with that rhetoric, I think it became normalized. And we
started to hear that more in Christian spaces as well. More of a
boldness to say that we have a right here. And also this goes hand
in hand with the idea of em battlement the idea of threat and that
was something that President Trump really excelled at giving this
sense that his followers his base that they were the ones who are
under attack, and therefore they needed to be militant they needed
to strike out.
First it kind of preemptive strike and you see that among many Christian
nationalists as well, even though they are in the majority, And even
though they have a lot of cultural and political power, they will
continue to insist that they are actually the ones who are in battled,
and therefore what choice do they have, but to be ruthless and to
seize power. We saw a lot of Christian imagery in the crowd on January
6th when rioters stormed the capital and faith being used to justify
Violence there. How do you see the connection between the rise of
these ideals and the violence that we witnessed on that day?
Versus important to point out that not all Christians who want to
see their values enacted through our government, our Christian nationalists
or promoting violence, right? Many, like all Americans would like
to see their values kind of find expression in the country in which
they live.
But in more extreme versions of Christian nationalism, we do see
a correlation between the idea that America has a special destiny
and it's a destiny that's under threat and that must be protected.
We see connections between that and a willingness to use violence
to use violence to restore kind of the rightful order to restore
the rightful Dominion over this country so that it can follow God's
path and secure God's blessings.
And a new national poll gets at some of this what we're seeing. It
says that 61% of Republicans favor declaring the U. S. A Christian
nation, but also a majority of Republicans understand that doing
so would be unconstitutional. What do you make of the disconnect
there? It's really important that we focus right now on on the disconnect
between Christian nationalism, particularly and it's more extreme
expressions and our constitutional
Ocracy our commitment to democratic norms and institutions and to
the constitutional rights of others.
And so those statistics are alarming that, uh, the majority of Republicans
want America to declared a Christian nation, even though they recognize
that that's unconstitutional and what we see really in the last decade
or so is the erosion of a commitment to democracy with demographic
changes where we're seeing the end of white Christian America. We
see that for many Christian nationalists, Democratic Means won't
necessarily achieve their ends. And so we
RC. We're seeing voter suppression, denial of voter suppression that
that's even happening and again this erosion to the commitment of
democracy and it's it's really quite alarming.