The name of it is not important. It’s important that it’s so far in the past, and the same forces are still at work. It’s important that even if we ever know what the “first cause” was, there are still billions of years between us and it, and more reactions than we can comprehend since then.
Thank you! Now I understand. And I pretty much agree. Except that I think each person is special. Yes, we are made up of star stuff, but we are star stuff trying to understand star stuff. That’s so meta!
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Words all need to be redfined. Each is special, but not privileged, not better because of birth circumstances, not better because they work harder, not more deserving of rewards or punishments.
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Personality differences? That’s the first thing that comes to mind. For example, I don’t really care about space exploration, yet plenty of others think it’s important.
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Sounds benign, but it’s accurate in a way. Not just the kind of differences that make a dog or cat person though. The kind that make you care for starving people in Africa or America, or being a gun owner or not, or interested in preventing a pandemic or not, or understanding the fibonacci sequence. I could go on.
No doubt about it. Only a small percentage of humanity cares about what you care about.
And that difference is expressed today in the thousand-year-old wars among countries and races. It is fear of the unknown by “ignorant” populations" that makes them vulnerable to manipulation by “smart”, but care-less minds.
Why cant you call it for what it is~ christian fascism ?
I can. It’s christian fascism.
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I think it is blown completely out of proportion. The “Christian Nationalist” are the same people who went off to war and defeated the Nazis. In reality you could just drop the Christian part and it would make little difference. What they are is traditionalists. Christianity just happens to be part of their tradition. As to the rest of it, does anyone really believe that Christianity was tied to racism? Martin Luthur King was a Christian minister and he was political. The point being that the root causes have very little to do with Christianity or Nationalism.
The mistake that people make is in assuming that religion drives culture where for the most part religion is just a reflection of culture. My reading of the New Testament leads me to believe that the saying the last Christian died on the cross is close to the truth. When in A.D. 380, with the Edict of Thessalonica issued by Theodosius I Christianity became the offical Roman religion, did any thing really change? Christianity as it was in the first century could never have been a state religion. In fact it broke completely away from the Jewish tradition of religion and state being inseparable.
As to the tie between nationalism and war you have to remember that for most of civilized existence the idea of a nation would have been very alien to people. The evidence suggest contrary to common perception is that war was even more common before nations existed. It was just on a smaller scale.
Steven Pinker is not a very meticulous author but his book the “Better Angels of Our Nature” should be required reading. Not that I share his conclusions on solutions but to remind people that the further we get away from our “human nature” the less violence societies experience. Most of our problems are do not come from ideological sources but from our nature. People like to point at the Nazis and say see ideology is the problem but genocide wasn’t invented by the Nazis. If you think European history is the problem the Nazis were anything but Christian Nationalists. Their state religion was a kind of strange tribalism.
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Welcome to the forum, Wolfhnd!
This is a great thread, and a nice summary by wolfhnd. Too much to respond to, so I’ll have to select a few.
Well, yes, many do. Not me of course, I don’t have beliefs, just conclusions based on evidence, and I’m open to new data (boy, does that sound arrogant 
) The “tie” is the use of scripture to justify racism. But, evolution was used to justify eugenics, so tying is one thing, actually connecting real dots is another.
Root causes are important. Nice to see a Theodosius reference. I’m not sure what you mean by “really change”. History certainly changed, but are you going further into human behavior for the root cause? Seems so, since you point to constant tribal warfare. I like to also point out that if tradition always won the day, we’d still all be in Africa. Something innate led us to keep breaking away from our tribes, travel across continents and oceans. Could have been many reasons, not liking the rules of your tribe, curiosity, war (escaping it, losing, or conqueriing), seeking resources, I’m probably just scratching the surface.
Can you uncouple ideology and human nature? Isn’t ideology an expression of our nature, or an attempt to express it? Ideas get corrupted, even just in the lifetime of people who came up with brilliant ideas, and it’s worse within a few generations when people start using the memes of the idea generators for their own power purposes. – okay, that was a mouthful, I should write a book and have people say I’m not a meticulous author but I should be required reading.
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You begin by obfuscating the topic title. Inconsistency is a common tool of obfuscation. Here is how I parse the first paragraph.
- The heroes who defeated the Nazis were Christian Nationalists.
- But let’s drop the Christian designation.
- What should be used here is the term, traditionalist.
- But let’s not really drop the Christian designation since these traditionalists were Christians.
- And these Christians could not have been racist because some black people were Christians.
- Also, nationalism doesn’t really apply here either.
2 belies 1. 4 belies 2. 5 belies itself. 6 is just fluff.
Just no. Religion fights against culture. Religion is at the root of most anti-lgbtq efforts. As a society grows, religion is there to say, “Stop!”
Well I thought I would make my first post controversal
I have no problem with your critique of my comment.
I’m not a big fan of the “religious right” but I’m also not a big fan of the people that coined the term “Christian Nationalist” for political purposes. I’m a big fan of Daniel Dennett because he got humanism about as right as you can. Instead of brow beating Christians he set up an organization to help “pastors” who had lost their faith. What you call obfuscation was may poor attempt at humanizing the “Christian Nationalists”.
I think we should all stop and consider how politics has gotten out of hand. Try these dehumanizing words for example “clingers and deplorables”. A true liberal should be liberal enough to not need these propoganda tools to promote their positions. Labeling people is almost always a bad idea. I just don’t think that making every conservative person a “Nazi” is helpful nor particularly accurate.
Anyway thanks for the reply, I do obfuscate a great deal.
Again, welcome.
I’m not sure who coined the term, but one of the best explanations of Christian Nationalism I’ve seen is found here.
After watching the events of Jan 6, 2021, along with Trumps use of Christianity to stoke his base, I’m happy someone gave it a name.
Nice dialog here. I think wolf is on to something, but needs to work it out.
As for this term, I never heard a liberal defend it, even Hillary. It was spontaneous, and a grave error. Generally, I do here a lot of othering by liberals, which is ironic.
I’m reading Monica Guzman’s book. She distinguishes reasonable polarization which is differentiating from people who oppose your views using evidence, and affective polarization which is the emotional reaction to people not like us.
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I have known many “Christian Nationalist” over the years. And the article you linked to describes the situation well. I still think that the label is counter productive, it increase the feeling they may have that they are an oppressed minority justifying in their own minds radicalization.
Here is the way I would look at it. Why did Rome outlaw Christianity while it tolerated many other cults? I think it is tied to the fact that Christianity doesn’t really recognize any “earthly” authority. Next ask yourself how a eschatological cult would become the de-facto government of Rome existing as the "The Roman Catholic Church. A third question would be why did Gibbon feel Christianity contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. What makes Christianity appealing at least in part is as I have said it doesn’t recognize authority. What do governments hate the most? their authority being challenged. Why did persecution by Rome of Christians not help stop it’s spread? Because it’s authority was already being questioned by the vast majority of the population due to incompetent leadership. It has little to do the religion itself and a lot to do with cultural forces outside of religion. Why does it have little to do with Nationalism? Because Christians don’t really respect national authority. It is ironically a religion that transcends ethnicity. In that regard it does that as well as Islam and that is why a large percentage of Christians are not of European descent.
When you oppose something you should never let the people that you are opposed to label them selves. The propaganda of “Christian Nationalist” is self defeating. Don’t give them any justification for feeling they are a oppressed minority. Sense they do not function in the secular mind space don’t give them a secular identity.
There are many movements afoot today that are functionally cults. Addressing them collectively is going to be much more effective than singling those you feel are the most dangerous out.
I used the Find on page feature on my iPad to search for nazi. The first instance of that term is your post. I agree with your statement.
Again you are not wrong and I understand your point. I will address it as best I can.
Well this forum may be a bit more sophisticated than what you usually find on social media. But what is put out for general consumption such as “alt right” etc. etc. are buzz words and apparently Nazi is the only history a lot of people know.
I have to ask out of curiosity how many “Christian Nationalists” do you know personally?
My son, and some of his friends. My next door neighbors.
Of course, they don’t use the term. They believe that they are “real” xtians.
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