Why Christians can’t wash their hands of the white nationalism we saw at the Capitol riot
I want to tell you about how I got chewed out by a Christian nationalist this past election day at a polling station.
I had been sent out by the university paper with a vague assignment. I was to interview two voters and write vignettes about them — what brought them out to the polls, why they decided to vote in-person rather than absentee, what they were hoping the United States would look like at the end of the day, or really, whatever they wanted to talk about.
As I drove to the polling station, Church of Christ in Streetsboro, Ohio (a busy suburb in the otherwise rural Portage county), I acknowledged to myself I was nervous. These would be my first man-on-the-street interviews, and I was alone. The last time I’d approached strangers and asked them invasive questions about themselves, I was a Christian. I was part of a group called Healing on the Streets where we laid hands on people and prayed for God to heal them.
This was going to drudge up something in me.
I had been at it for about an hour, asking people for interviews and hearing a lot of polite “no”s, when a white man wearing sunglasses, a mask, and a ring on each of his fingers approached with his teenaged son.
I introduced myself and asked if he’d speak with me. He glanced at my press badge and sneered like a Harry Potter character. “No.”
He walked a couple paces, then pivoted. “You know what? Sure, I’ll talk,” he said. “What do you want to know?” I noticed from his posture (arms crossed over his chest), his proximity to me (closer than I’d have liked), and the tone and volume of his voice that he could be feeling combative. When I asked what brought him out to vote, he confirmed it.
“Well, you’re a member of the press, so you’re probably liberal” he said, spitting the word like it was dirty. “I’m here to cast my vote because I hate Kamala” (he pronounced it “Kah-MEL-uh”) “and Biden is senile.”
I had my notebook and pen at the ready, but I froze when he said “hate.” Even though he consented to the interview, I couldn’t tell if he truly wanted to be on the record or if he just wanted to argue.
He continued speaking, getting angrier and angrier. “I don’t want to live in a socialist nation. I think COVID is a hoax. It’s a flu, and if people don’t survive it, too bad for them. Businesses are closing.
“And I want to go hunting with my son any time I damn well please.” He was not far from yelling at this point, though between the mask and the sunglasses, I had no read on his facial expression. “Screw those people in government who want to take that away from me.”
I glanced at the son. He had been staring at his shoes the entire time, not even bothering to look up when his father mentioned him.
“So are you going to ask for my name and print this or what?” the father said.
I felt small and shaken by how brazenly he wore his vitriol. Since the pandemic began, I had interacted with people from behind a screen. How could I have forgotten how unreasonable and unkind strangers could be to your face? And COVID, a hoax? Just before I left my house, I finished reading a piece that talked about how November was projected to be the worst month of the pandemic so far. People were still dying.
I felt embarrassed for myself and disrespected and insulted, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. I hadn’t taken any notes. I wanted him to go away.
I shook my head no.
“Figures,” he said as he walked away. Before he entered the church, he spat over his shoulder, “Typical liberal media.” I sunk down on the curb and tried to take in whatever that was and figure out if I should try to ask for more interviews or just leave.
Ten minutes later, the man and his son emerged and walked to the parking lot. On their way past me, the man gestured to a different church across the street and told his son they’d be going to worship that Sunday.
That, it turns out, was my breaking point. I walked to my car and wept.
Two days ago, when white nationalists stormed the Capitol building, they too announced what religion they belonged to by flying the Christian flag alongside the Confederate one and holding signs that said, “In God we trust” and “Jesus saves.”
In the aftermath, I watched progressive-leaning Christians jump to defend the “real” Jesus, as they do every time Christians behave badly. As they did, for instance, when Christians raised $500K for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen who this summer open fired on Black Lives Matter protestors with an AR-15 style rifle, killing two.
“This is NOT the Christianity the Bible describes [because] we follow a God of peace, love, truth, justice, and mercy,” one Facebook friend wrote. Another quoted a pastor who said, “There is a huge difference between the Jesus of the Bible and the ‘Jesus’ that these ‘Christian’ nationalists are proclaiming.”
“Don’t believe those Jesus signs they were holding,” author, reality TV show star, and Christian It Girl Jen Hatmaker wrote in an Instagram post. What in the world, I wondered, is she asking us to believe then? Should we disregard the message “Jesus saves” when it is pushed into the air alongside the Trump flag? Or should we believe that Jesus does indeed save, in spite of the fact that these witness-ruiners are saying it?
This tendency to quickly denounce controversial members of the group, as the Instagram user @heretical_theology rightly pointed out, is an issue of bypassing, or separating yourself from a problem so you don’t have to confront or work through it.
Why should you get to decide who is a Christian and who isn’t? Does a wave get to say to a tsunami, “You’re not a real wave. A real wave wouldn’t destroy a building”?
Some of these people probably own Bibles that they read regularly, go to church, and come forward for altar calls. Certainly, some of them were baptized. What other markers are there? Instead of saying, “Eh, not my people; not my problem,” maybe the better response is, “Yeah, fuck. We’re in the same book club. I have to process that.”
“I don’t know the Jesus some have paraded and waved around in the middle of this treachery today,” said Beth Moore, who built for herself a Bible teaching empire.
Really? Why? Why don’t you know this Jesus? He is everywhere in our country. He turns up in all the Facebook debates with distant relatives. When “family values” politicians and celebrity pastors open their mouths, he is there. He is on bumper stickers and T-shirts you can buy at truck stops that say, “I stand for the flag and kneel for the cross.” Or “I support LGBT — liberty, guns, Bible, Trump.”
He was right there, standing next to that man who chewed me out on election day.
He might not be the Jesus who walked the earth, or the Jesus you picture in your head, but this Jesus, the one that lives in the minds of Christian nationalists, is real because his presence has real consequences. We saw them in force at the Capitol.
Listen: We’re at where we’re at today as a result of decades of American Christian nationalism, an ideology that seeks to undermine science and education, establish a sexual order, and unite the country around a single religious identity at any cost, including upending foundational democratic principles and institutions, wrote Katherine Stewart in her book, The Power Worshippers.
Those who ascribe to this ideology claim there’s only one correct way to be an American, Whitehead and Perry wrote in their book, Taking America Back for God, and that is to fall in line with conservative views of immigration reform, racial injustice, and policing; agree with the Christian right’s way of thinking about “marriage,” “the family,” and LGBTQ rights; and adhere to Republican-sanctioned opinions about Israel, health care, military spending and climate change. It’s been well-documented how Christian nationalism overlaps with and masks white supremacy.
While it’s important to recognize not every Christian is a Christian nationalist (and conversely, there are Christian nationalists who lead basically secular lives), this pervasive, distinctively American way of thinking is directly tied to the culture Christians perpetuate and participate in.
How can you say you don’t recognize this Jesus? Or are you like Peter on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, intimately acquainted and deeply ashamed?
Acknowledge him. Recognize what he stands for. Notice how he moves through the world and manifests in the actions of those who claim him. Own that this Jesus is a part of our shared legacy as white people in this nation. Confess the harm he has done.
Then do what you can to cast him out — of your community leadership, your churches, your homes, and yourself.