Dr Moalemba
Americans pride themselves as being the beacon of global democracy. It is reflected in both domestic and international engagement. The lofty ideal was shaken to the core with the storming of the United States Capitol Hill on January 6. As the dust settles down and America ‘recovers,’ increasingly, questions are being raised about the Christian imagery on display at the event dubbed by some commentators as “insurrection.”
Amidst the Trump/Pence 2020 and Confederate flags, QAnon memorabilia, and Viking helmets, people held crosses, “Jesus Saves” signs, and “Jesus 2020” banners and across the street, someone blew a shofar while a woman sang “Peace in the name of Jesus. The blood of Jesus covering this place,” recalled an article on Christianity Today.
Many Christian religious leaders have unequivocally denounced the violence and distanced themselves from the event. Likewise, the scrutiny of Religious Nationalism, particularly Christian Nationalism in the case of the United States, has gained prominence.
What is Religious Nationalism, and by extension, Christian Nationalism then?
“Religious nationalism, or the fusion of religious and national identities and goals, is an increasingly salient aspect of nationalism. Rather than secular nationalism simply replacing religious identities and allegiances, religious and national identities coexist and even reinforce each other,” wrote Anna Grzymala-Busse of Stanford University on Oxford Research Encyclopedias.
It is a powerful force in buttressing popular religiosity and attitudes, empowers religious organizations in influencing policy across a wide range of domains, and shapes the patterns of inter- and intra-state violence, she opined.
Though often neglected as an anachronism or an exception, Grzymala-Busse argued that it is powerful and has shaped the very “definition of legitimate citizenship, delineating the nation and privileging some political actors and visions in making public policy, obtaining electoral support, and building states.”
In one of the earliest analysis of the concept, Charles Bloomberg described Christian-Nationalism as a systematic body of closely-woven ideas incorporating “(a) the idea of the 'chosen-people-with-a-sacred mission', and (b) the Right's stress on authority, hierarchy, discipline, privilege and elitist leadership, as well as glorification of God, nation, family, blood and the cult of force.”
It is coupled with a rejection of liberalism, Marxism, 'sickly sentimental humanism' and the equality of humankind regardless of race, he added.
Most recently, Samuel L Perry and Andrew L Whitehead in ‘Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,’ noted that Christian nationalism demands far more than a recognition of religious heritage. “At heart, Christian nationalism fights to preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone—Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women—recognizes their ‘proper’ place in society.”
Described as the first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, they concluded, according to Paul D. Miller of Georgetown University, that it is a “cultural framework, a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems.”
Lee Camp, a professor of Theology and Ethics at Lipscomb University simply called it a perversion of Christian eschatology or the branch of theology concerned with the final events in human history.
Christian Nationalism, Camp stressed, perverts the gospel in at least two ways: First, by falsely giving to a nation-state a Messianic identity, and thereby its primary interests is to act as the mechanism for “saving” human history. Second, by embracing Satan’s third temptation of Christ: To take up the way of might and “greatness” as the way of saving the world.
Such traits are verifiable in the events surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency as well as the run-up to the Capitol Hill violence. Many nations founded on such religious nationalism are anchored on relative lack of religious freedom or autocratic tendencies, while in others; the assertiveness of those adherents to such ideology often creates social tension.
India, many argue, is going through one such strain. Closer home, there is a large cohort of populace adherent to the idea of a “Messianic identity,” though their actions often are “un-messianic.” The Capitol Hill event is a portent cautionary tale.
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