JIHAD FOR JESUS
As the J6 insurrection continues to be unpacked, we see that more than 725 of the Republican faithful have been charged with crimes against the American people. But exactly what kind of faith is it that these Republicans are full of? What is their shared ideological vision and messaging? It’s the fallacy that America is and always has been a Christian nation, that the Bible is on the verge of being outlawed, and that our nation is the last bastion of Christian freedom. In short: White Christian Nationalism. The threat is so dangerous that this week the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty issued a statement strongly condemning it.
With their giant wooden cross, prayer rallies, Christian flags, shofars, and shouts of “Jericho!”, these Republican terrorists intended on J6 to murder the Vice President of their party, Speaker of the House, other elected officials, and law enforcement officers in the name Jesus, the Prince of Peace. This is an ideology so corrupt that its evangelical adherents will burn down the churches of Black American Christians to demonstrate white supremacy in their version of Christendom. Convicted felon, General Michael Flynn, stated recently at a White Christian Nationalist rally here in San Antonio that “America should have only one religion!”
The moment America becomes a Christian nation, it ceases to be America. Our founders fled a nation where the bullying monarch was the head of both state and church. They left in protest over taxes and, in the case of the Puritans, to escape religious persecution (though they did not believe in the tolerance of other sects). White Christian Nationalism (or Dominionism) means to displace democracy with a fascist theocracy where our laws would adhere to a particular set of “Christian Values” and outlaw the values of other faiths.
From the crusades to the inquisition to the holocaust, religion has been horrifically weaponized against Jews, Muslims, and people of other faiths deemed to be incorrect. Millions have died as a result. It is fair to say that those who commit the most callous, cruel, and brutal atrocities in history do so precisely because they believe they have divine permission. Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Stephen Weinberg put it this way: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
The violence of Christian Nationalism is explicit and that was the message during the Bible-based rallies surrounding J6. These jihadists take their cue from the stories of Moses leading the God-ordained slaughter of the Amalekites down to the last infant and the wholesale slaughter of the people of Jericho, among others. When you believe you have an angry God on your side, any struggle becomes a holy war and all crimes against humanity are justified. Ask the Nazis soldiers whose belt buckles proudly displayed Gott Mits Uns (God Is With Us). There are no representative forms of government in the Bible, only authoritarian kings. This is what Christian Nationalists long for. They have turned their backs on democracy, full stop.
To my friends in Bandera, I ask you to reject this wolf in sheep’s clothing. It has been said that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. America is a shared idea. And Christian nationalism refuses to share. It excludes non-Christians and the wrong kind of Christians. This is the choice we face as a nation: Christian Nationalism or America? We cannot have both.
K. Schexnayder
San Antonio