Christian nationalism is alive and well in the US

Someone once opined that when ter­ror­ism comes to America it will be fly­ing the American flag and car­ry­ing a Bible.

It’s here and it’s called Christian nationalism.

It’s not the kind of ter­ror­ism that blows up build­ings and mur­ders civil­ians indis­crim­i­nate­ly.  It’s more like a can­cer that slow­ly eats away at the soul and fab­ric of soci­ety, vil­i­fy­ing minor­i­ty mem­bers of that soci­ety, cre­at­ing bogey­men where none exist, and dic­tat­ing right and wrong accord­ing to very spe­cif­ic reli­gious principles.

Its ten­ta­cles start­ed to spread more vora­cious­ly imme­di­ate­ly after the 2016 elec­tion of Donald Trump.  The Texas School Board man­dat­ed that class­es in the state school sys­tem be taught with reli­gious prin­ci­ples insert­ed into the cur­ricu­lum in grades K through 5.  Oklahoma fol­lowed close­ly behind when the state super­in­ten­dent of edu­ca­tion man­dat­ed that Bibles be placed in every class­room in the state school system.

Louisiana jumped on the band­wag­on even ear­li­er in the year by requir­ing that the Ten Commandments be dis­played in all school classrooms.

The defeat in Kentucky of Amendment 2 was a clar­i­on response to this creep­ing Christian nation­al­ism because the pro­po­nents of that amend­ment relied large­ly on the same bene­fac­tors who are pro­mot­ing this insid­i­ous doc­trine across the country.

Kentucky author Mark Alsip, in his new book Bound by Faith, dra­mat­i­cal­ly illus­trates the per­fidy of the doc­trine by call­ing out so many pro­pos­als with­in the 900-page Project 2025 doc­u­ment that are not even thin­ly veiled sug­gest­ed actions led by and based on reli­gious pre­cepts.  Of course, all those pre­cepts are found­ed on Christian phi­los­o­phy, ignor­ing every oth­er world reli­gion, includ­ing Judaism.

At the same time our elect­ed lead­ers espouse much of this Christian nation­al­ism, per­haps with­out even real­iz­ing it.  Recently, a Republican sen­a­tor expound­ed on his obser­va­tions that the U.S. is expend­ing vast sums of mon­ey sup­port­ing Ukraine’s fight against aggres­sor Russia, bemoan­ing the lack of sup­port from our NATO part­ners and sug­gest­ing that our nation­al inter­ests are not para­mount in that conflict.

However, he nev­er seemed to be the least con­cerned about the mil­i­tary largesse being lard­ed on Israel, even though that coun­try is ille­gal­ly tar­get­ing oth­er nations on their own ter­ri­to­ry and has already killed over 30,000 non-com­bat­ant civil­ians in Gaza — and is alleged­ly attempt­ing to starve the rest.  Why the dou­ble stan­dard?  It’s large­ly because this coun­try har­bors an ill-con­ceived pen­chant for favor­ing Israel based on two-thou­sand-year-old mythology.

Most recent­ly, President-elect Trump has nom­i­nat­ed Russell Vought to be the direc­tor of Management and Budget.  Mr. Vought was one of the co-authors of Project 2025.

Christian nation­al­ism is alive and well here in Kentucky (despite the rejec­tion of Amendment 2).  Ken Ham, founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis recent­ly declared: “The American peo­ple have elect­ed Donald Trump as the 47^th pres­i­dent of the United States, but he has also been appoint­ed by God.”

Answers in Genesis may well be the great­est vac­u­um of tax­pay­er mon­ey in the state, suck­ing funds from both the state and local gov­ern­ments.  It pur­ports to be a reli­gious enti­ty and main­tains a 501(c)(3) sta­tus at the same time that it sup­ports race cars.  Its Creation Museum is 75,000 square feet, and it has acquired a for­mer Toyota engi­neer­ing build­ing of 205,000 square feet.  A quick Google Earth search showed the AIG cam­pus to be at least 1.8 mil­lion square feet, all land that pro­duces no prop­er­ty tax­es to local government.

AIG also receives $1.25 mil­lion from the Kentucky Tourism Commission each year (your tax dol­lars sup­port­ing a reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion) and free adver­tis­ing from the Kentucky Faith Trail, a tax­pay­er-sup­port­ed enter­prise that ignores the AIG lessons being taught that are com­plete­ly anti-sci­ence. It is noth­ing less than mod­ern Ludditeism and Flat Earthism.

Christian nation­al­ism is a hate-based doc­trine that pur­ports to be based on bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples and yet relies on hatred to spread itself, hatred against non-Christians, hatred against trans­gen­der peo­ple, hatred against homo­sex­u­als, hatred against lit­er­a­ture that express­es any thought anti­thet­i­cal to alleged Christian ideals, hatred against any­one with a mind to oppose it, so much hatred against abor­tion and against those who per­form it legal­ly that their mur­ders can be regaled as Biblical justice.

Christian nation­al­ism is alive and well here and it is a grow­ing mon­stros­i­ty which gnaws at the basic free­doms of America.  It is no less ven­omous than the Nazism and Fascism which encom­passed Europe eighty years ago because the peo­ple had become mere sheep and did not rec­og­nize the wolves amongst them.