The left’s convenient scapegoat

Once again, the topic of Christian nationalism is all the rage. It has become on the left what woke is on the right—a way to tar one’s ideological opponents. “Christian nationalism” can mean just about anything negative one wants it to mean. However, before I deconstruct this controversy let me be up front. I think it was a mistake, and not a small amount of hypocrisy, for Christians to support Donald Trump. That mistake is compounded by an almost blind loyalty that many Christians continue to give him. My criticism of how Christian nationalism is used should not be confused with a feeble attempt to defend Christian activism in all its forms.

Furthermore, let me assert that Christian nationalism does exist. I do not know the extent of the problem, but I have seen disturbing comments on social media advocating for a Christian state that treats those of other religions as second-class citizens. Often such individuals also make arguments supporting notions of a white ethnostate. I do not know the extent of such sentiment, and that is part of the problem, but it is a mistake to assume that Christian nationalism is a total myth.

I recently learned that the term Christian nationalism may have emerged in 2006 in a book titled Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. But it did not get much attention until 2016. We all know what happened in 2016. Trump was elected and did so with an estimated 81 percent of the vote from white evangelicals. Many of us were shocked at his victory and wondered how it could have happened. There were two discernable ways to respond to this shock. One was to talk to individuals to find out what sort of needs people thought were being met by voting for Trump. The other was to go on a scorched earth campaign to stigmatize those who voted for Trump. I chose the former path and too many others chose the latter.

It is here where the idea of Christian nationalism emerged and bore fruit for the efforts to stigmatize Trump’s biggest supporters—white evangelicals. It was a term that sounded scary and one in which opponents of white evangelicals could load nearly any negative description they wanted. It is not surprising that the use of the term exploded across the media and across academia.

But wait, you may say. Is there not an academic term with a precise definition? Yes, some academics have offered a definition of Christian nationalism. But then they use a scale that has been found to have poor psychometrics, which is a fancy way of saying that the scale does not hold together very well, and is subject to multiple interpretations. There is also a lack of qualitative verification of the scale. Despite these issues, academics keep on rolling with what they should know is a defective measurement instrument.

The lack of a solid way to measure Christian nationalism in academia leads to our inability to define what it is in general. Thus when Heide Przbyla argued that Christian nationalism is tied to a belief that our rights come from God, who is to say she is wrong? Christian nationalism has become an amorphous term that can be mangled to mean whatever people want it to mean. It has become a tool to use against white evangelicals who have become a convenient scapegoat for all that is wrong in the nation.

With the claims that Christian nationalism is more dangerous than authoritarianism and a major threat to democracy, there has been great concern about the political activism of white evangelicals. Yet white evangelicals as a group are not extremely politically active. The notion that white evangelicals as a group are more desirous of political power than other religious groups is simply a myth.

So why all the attention to white evangelicals instead of other politically active religious and non-religious groups? The shock of Trump’s victory in 2016 sent much of the media and academia looking for a scapegoat to explain that electoral win. The high percentage of white evangelicals who supported Trump made them a natural candidate. This blinded such media and academic personnel to the reality that white evangelicals were not the only player in creating our country’s polarization problem. I do not mind seeing criticism of white evangelicals with solid research and analysis. I do mind when much of the focus of the media and academia is only on criticizing white evangelicals and ignoring other groups that have fed into our polarization.

Finally, it must be said that one of the outcomes of disproportionate attention to white evangelicals is that it strengthens the extremism that does exist. When people keep pounding the theme of Christian nationalism and ignore other groups that engage in illiberal politics then white evangelicals will become more defensive. That is what humans do when they feel constantly under attack. I fear that attention to Christian nationalism is not a good-faith attempt to reach out to white evangelicals and convince them to put aside ideas of religious superiority. We would not talk the way many have talked to white evangelicals if persuasion was the goal. Rather I fear a desire to feel superior to white evangelicals has created much of the push against Christian nationalism. And such a desire will only further polarize our already fractured society.