The Low-Down on Christians against Christian Nationalism
A brand new initiative called Christians against Christian Nationalism has been launched and is currently signing up recruits.
This movement prompted by the hot button issues dividing the U.S. along political lines like illegal migration, nationalism and now gun control, with the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Daytona in Ohio, driving strong sentiments both sides of the rift.
Despite lone calls to tone down the bi-partisan rhetoric, belligerence and paranoia is in the air, what with pro-gun control advocates protesting outside the home of Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnel, outed Trump political donors receiving threats, protests increasing and established media ramping up the bombast like never before with statements like “I want pitchforks and torches outside Trump’s donor’s house in the Hamptons ”from one MSNBC contributor.
The Mission Statement of CACN
According to the declaration of Christians against Christian Nationalism the aim is; to oppose the merging of a Christian and American identity that distorts the faith, a fault laid at the door of Christian Nationalists.
To ensure government doesn’t favor one religion over the other, including non religion with religious instruction confined to houses of worship, religious institutions and the home.
While the CACN treatise is peppered with ‘Christianese’ code word for Christian speak, it’s not hard to interpret its bald-faced political motives or religious ones come to that.
With that said let’s indulge in a little deconstruction.
First up, while religion is not exactly popular in a secular country this is an attempt to undermine a subgroup and divide Christians along political, cultural AND theological lines with an attitude that can be best summed up as; ‘we are not like those Christians’.
Vilification is never a good sign and proves the situation in America is deteriorating quickly with religion not immune to the wiles of professional agitators and con artists both inside and outside Church.
People wrongly conclude all nationalists are white traditional Christians, going so far as to equate them with Nazism, with many swallowing the lie Hitler was a good Catholic instead of an occultist, and conflating a race based National Socialism on the left side of the political spectrum with a common garden variety nationalism of a cultural kind.
It’s all about the culture, stupid
In the bigger scheme of things it’s a straight fight between Globalization vs Nationalism with the former plugged as good and the latter derided as …..bad.. very bad.
By design globalization reduces the planet to a global village with all that implies, like the elimination of borders and the leveling of dominant cultures in the West with mass migration a tool to achieve this.
It’s about changing the ethos of the host society from white, western and Christian to a multiethnic, multicultural one.
Nineteenth Century French sociologist De Tocqueville observed; Americans victim mentality pervaded society, even back then, where trivial grievances were magnified into oppressions and people constantly brooded over advantages they didn’t possess.
This leads to scapegoating where one’s shortcomings are blamed on other parties to evade personal and collective responsibility for actions and attitudes.
While anyone can fall prey to the syndrome the left in all its forms has turned victimhood into a something of a professional calling.
But it’s important to remember the scapegoat is innocent it’s the accuser who is guilty.
Just mix this natural inclination towards victimhood together with identity politics, adding the left-right policy divide to the blend and voila, you have a recipe for implosion.
Old grievances about the Confederacy and the Civil War are being revisited along with misplaced resentment and prejudices.
The Electoral College with its constitutional voting protections for middle America versus the populous east and west coast states, are a bone of contention for Democrats who are pushing for its demise.
Religion has become another bugbear, particularly Christianity, and with the rise of the nones, that is those with no religion increasing exponentially, it appears beliefs are just another offence Americans don’t want.
The point is the above hostilities have morphed into a contemporary cultural war dressed up as a political one.
Samuel Huntington had it right about cultural and religious identities becoming the primary source of conflict post cold war, which he expounded on in his Clash of Civilizations theory.
Which is not to say political ideologies don’t have a prominent place, they do, but they are just instruments invented to preserve oligarchial power.
The left-right wing political paradigm was designed to mislead with not even academics able to satisfactorily explain or agree on the complexities of fascism or communism nor their differences.
So what is CACN really about?
A quick glance at the CACN statement leaves the distinct impression one is reading a manifesto of the Freedom From Religion Foundation with added emphasis on pluralism at the expense of national cultural heritage.
Both Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama expressed the same sentiments basically saying keep your religion confined to your place of worship.
This highlights a misunderstanding of the constitutionally guaranteed right of Freedom of Religion as opposed to the Freedom From Religion construct these types are pursuing.
Which begs the question who is behind the push of Christians against Christian Nationalism? because clearly their statement isn’t telling the whole story.
Hang, it doesn’t even begin at the beginning with the roots of the movement, which is where we need to look to make sense of it.
Here’s something interesting to chew on, the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, the initiator of the idea of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, is a major lobbyist group championing not only separation of Church and State but is also a co-endorser of “An Interfaith Statement of Principle” .
The statement stigmatizes candidates who appeal to voters based on faith as “ inappropriate and divisive” and calls for religious appeals to be removed from political campaigns entirely.
It should be obvious they mean beliefs that don’t align with their own, with the operative word, divisive, lobbed at ‘those types of Christians’, as they promote a ‘We Are the World’ outlook synonymous with the interfaith movement.
Basically the message to traditional Christianity is don’t stand out, or at the very least conform.
In an interview with Salon, the Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee, Amanda Tyler, went to great pains to downplay the interfaith involvement with this project while stressing that CACN wasn’t a top down movement but a Christian grassroots one.
Apparently besides collecting signatures the aim is to define Christian Nationalism and its effect on society.
What effect will CACN have?
If success is measured in terms of increasing polarization and confusion on all fronts then yes, the initiative will be successful.
People are fickle and have the concentration spans of gnats so they will take the message at face value but more so if it ties in with their hive-mind feel good social justice philosophy.
The following verse while referencing idolatry is so descriptive of a insincere society where people chase every fad and cheap cause for a momentary lift of feigned self righteousness and vindication.
Like a wild donkey sniffing in the wind at mating time, those who desire her don’t need to search, for she goes running to them.
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