'Christian nationalist' right-wingers openly embrace 'warped version of history': Op-ed

Despite controversial connections, the term "Christian nationalist" is increasingly being embraced by conservatives, with some even writing articles celebrating the term and the ideology behind it.

As The Bulwark points out, one of those is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who told a CPAC audience,
"When I said that I’m a Christian nationalist, I have nothing to be ashamed of."

“We’re proud of our faith and we love our country,” she said at CPAC. “And that will make America great again. When we lean into biblical principles, you know, is there anything wrong with loving God and loving others? No.”

She went on to say that the Republican Party needs "to be the party of nationalism. And I’m a Christian. I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

"To understand why a more open embrace of Christian nationalism on the right today is so insidious, we have to understand what Christian nationalism is," The Bulwark's Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque write.

"It arises from a warped version of American history, one that holds that the United States was supposed to be an explicitly Christian country, founded by and for Christian people — often understood explicitly to mean white Christian people. This bad history has been disproved time and time again, but it is central to the self-appointed legitimacy of Christian nationalists."

Christian nationalism also declares that society and its laws should be dictated by Christians and that there should be no separation of church and state. "A third pillar: the belief that only Christians — white, conservative Christians — are 'true' Americans."

The "white" part is seemingly confirmed in a Federalist article published last year. From The Federalist's Carina Benton: "Just from an empirical standpoint, . . . [the] quantitative indicators of Christian-nationalist ideology seem to operate differently for white Americans than for, say, African Americans.

"When white Americans take our surveys and answer questions about whether the United States is a Christian nation or we don’t need a separation of church and state or we should advocate Christian values in the government, for them, it is powerfully associated with things like nostalgia and authoritarianism and a certain vision of America’s history as this kind of mythic story: that we have a special relationship with God and that there is this kind of place that we are going—this deep story."

Studies have also shown that “Christian nationalism was a significant and consistent predictor of anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, and support for anti-immigrant policies.”

Read the full article over at The Bulwark.