Christian nationalism seeks power, panelists say

Christian nationalism presents “a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus,” Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, told a gathering at Southern Methodist University.

Jesus always stood on the side of the marginalized and oppressed, she noted.

“Christian nationalism, on the other hand, is all about power—about amassing power and holding onto power at all costs,” Tyler said. “And so, it uses a white Jesus as a mascot for power, but it actually doesn’t reflect the teachings of Jesus.”

Tyler participated in a panel discussion of “Christian Nationalism and the Texas Public Sphere” at an April 8 conference on “Telling the Story of Religion in Texas Through Journalism.”

The Texas Tribune sponsored the event in partnership with Religion News Service, the Institute for Diversity & Civic Life and SMU Religious Studies.

‘Overlap with white supremacy’

Tyler noted she uses the terms “Christian nationalism” and “white Christian nationalism” interchangeably.

“I don’t think we can understand Christian nationalism in the U.S. context without acknowledging and understanding the overlap with white supremacy and racial subjugation,” she said.

“Christian nationalism both creates and perpetuates a sense of cultural belonging that’s limited to the very narrow group of people who held the rights of citizenship at the beginning of the country. That’s white, Protestant, Christian men who owned property.”

In sharp contrast to the U.S. Constitution, Christian nationalism promotes the idea that “Christianity should somehow be privileged in American law and public policy,” fellow panelist David Brockman from the Baker Institute at Rice University noted.

“It runs headlong into the concept of the separation of church and state,” Brockman said, which influential Christian nationalists dismiss as a “myth.”

Robert Downen, senior writer at Texas Monthly, pointed to a “growing acceptance of the key ideas” of Christian nationalism and an infusion of “spiritual warfare” language within the Texas Republican Party.

He noted the influence of Dominionism, which seeks to establish a nation governed by Christians and based on their interpretation of biblical law.

He pointed to the influence of the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement within charismatic and Pentecostal circles that casts the political battle for Christian dominion in terms of a cosmic struggle between good and evil.

And he discussed the Seven Mountains Mandate, the teaching that Christians have a responsibility to transform society by gaining control of business, government, media, the arts, education, family life and religion.

Texas is ‘Ground Zero’ in public education fight

The desire to privilege and promote Christianity within education is seen particularly in debates over public education, said Mark Chancey, professor of religious studies at SMU.

“Public education is a major arena for the Christian nationalism debate to play out, and Texas is Ground Zero,” Chancey said.

He noted the role of Christian nationalism in the adoption of public school curriculum.

The Bluebonnet Learning reading curriculum, developed by the Texas Education Agency, is a series of more than 700 lessons on multiple subjects that include Bible stories and religious teaching. Districts that adopt the Bluebonnet curriculum are eligible to receive additional funds from the state.

“Those lessons clearly privilege Christianity over every other religion,” Chancey said.

He also pointed to the legislative debate over requiring the Ten Commandments—a specifically Protestant rendering of the Ten Commandments—in every public school classroom.

“News flash: The Ten Commandments are actually religious in nature,” he quipped.

Currently, 19 states are considering Ten Commandments bills, and 15 of those bills are modeled after the law passed in Louisiana, which was modeled after legislation that failed to pass in the Texas Legislature, he noted.

The Ten Commandments bills illustrate a “restorationist” impulse of Christian nationalism—the desire to “get back to our roots as a Christian nation,” he said.

Christian nationalist victories in Texas have a significant influence beyond the state’s borders, panelists observed.

“I often say Texas is an incubator for bad ideas that then get exported across state lines,” Tyler said.

A bill allowing school districts to enlist school chaplains passed in the Texas legislature before it was introduced in more than a dozen other states, she observed.

Tyler noted with concern efforts to establish the government as “arbiter of what is or is not religious,” which she characterized as “a move toward authoritarian theocracy.”