Read on Twitter
Let’s talk about Christian nationalism. 4 weeks ago, I tweeted my doubts about trying to attribute the Capitol riots to so-called “Christian nationalism.” I was inundated with suggestions that I check out @ndrewwhitehead and @socofthesacred new book, *Taking America Back for God*
Having read 2/3 of the book so far and a number of articles about the Capitol riots, it is clear to me that “Christian nationalism” names a genuine pathology in our body politic, and a heresy in the church. But it is not clear that anyone really yet knows how to define it.
First, let me thank @ndrewwhitehead and @socofthesacred for noting up front that what they describe is really more “Christian nation-ism” (exactly the term I used in my critique of Thomas Kidd on this subject) and not really about nationalism classically defined.
That said, I must say that I harbor deep doubts about Whitehead and Perry’s sociological method, which seems almost methodologically committed to confusing correlation with causation and to often be simply an exercise in institutionalized Bulverism.
Indeed, it is hard to avoid a certain Bulverism if the sociologists have any kind of dog in the fight. Mauss might manage objectivity in studying Pacific Islanders, but two American Christian (so I take it) researchers can hardly be so objective in studying American Christianity.
This wouldn’t be so bad if the authors wrote as historians or ethicists and admitted that they were making normative claims. But as sociologists they claim to merely describe, scrupulously avoiding making normative judgments on the front end, and smuggling them in the back door.
Thus, they rarely directly address the truth-value of the claims made by their interviewees (e.g., what did the American Founders *actually* say about Christianity?). That’s not their job. They’re just describing, not evaluating. Right? Wrong.
Throughout, they cannot hold back from rhetorically-charged, morally-weighted descriptions. Words like “prejudice,” “xenophobia,” “irrational,” “nativism,” “sexism,” “racism,” “heteronormativity” appear frequently.
Christian nationalists “prey on fear,” are committed to “male authority over women’s bodies,” and use the phrase “Christian heritage” as “shorthand for ‘white-dominated society.’” Christians who oppose them “should give us all hope.” This is hardly a neutral analysis.
Methodologically, this is unsurprising. If you bracket out the possibility that your subjects are saying something *because it’s true,* you can only conclude that they’re saying it to manifest some deep insecurity or hatred. You are methodologically committed to Bulverism.
They also don’t see that this can go either direction. “Not all evangelicals oppose immigration, ergo those who do, oppose it only because they’re Christian nationalists.” Ok. Or, “Evangelicals who support open immigration only do so because they’re social justice progressives.”
While I’m grateful that they try to correct the “all evangelicals are racists who voted for Trump” narrative by showing the variety within evangelicalism, there’s clearly an implicit attempt to distinguish real Jesus-loving evangelicals from bad nationalist evangelicals.
In other words, the book itself is engaged in exactly the kind of boundary-drawing, in-group and out-group-defining, that it accuses Christian nationalists of doing. In fact, boundary-drawing is inescapable. So we just need to make sure we draw the right boundaries.
“The mixture of those things by speech which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error…. Rightly to distinguish is by conceit of mind to sever things different in nature, and to discern wherein they differ.”—Richard Hooker
Now, all that said, it is obvious that there is a real pathology and heresy out there, and Whitehead and Perry are sniffing in the right direction. And they are doing good work in terms of trying to narrow the definition, and not tar all white evangelicals with the same brush.
But they’re still much too broad, it seems to me. For instance, using their extremely vague questions (“Do you believe the success of the United States is part of God’s plan?”) I manage to rank (barely) as an “Ambassador” for Christian nationalism.
This despite the fact that I’ve consistently reprobated Trumpism, the Capitol riots, the election fraud-peddlers, the Covid deniers and anti-maskers, the race-baiting, the MAGA maniacs, the David Barton historiography, the idolatrous God-and-country worship services, etc.
Most of the people in this world that Whitehead and Perry are interviewing seem to think of me a squishy liberal sellout. Clearly a more fine-toothed analysis is necessary. And that, I suspect, requires actual delving into questions of historical and ethical truth.
