August 21, 2017


News and Views


DONALD TRUMP, NATIONALISTS, WHITE NATIONALISTS, AND CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS. WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY? ALL OF THESE RATHER FRIGHTENING ARTICLES RUN ALONG THE SAME VEIN, BUT WITH ENOUGH DIFFERENCES TO SHOW THAT HILLARY CLINTON’S “VAST RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY,” WAS NOT A PRODUCT OF HER FEVERED BRAIN AS PEOPLE SAID.

MAJESTIC UNCONQUERED SUN IS RUNNING FOR US SENATE ON THE REPUBLICAN TICKET. ARE YOU READY FOR THAT? GILLESPIE/INVICTUS IS JUST ANOTHER WHITE SUPREMACIST/NUT JOB WHO HAS BEEN ENCOURAGED BY DONALD TRUMP’S FAILURE TO DISAVOW THE RADICAL RIGHT. I ASKED MY FATHER ONE TIME WHY HE REFUSES TO VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN, AND HE SAID IT’S BECAUSE YOU AREN’T GOING TO GET JUST ONE. THEY’LL BRING THEIR WHOLE GANG IN BEHIND THEM. THE EVENTS SINCE TRUMP GOT INTO THE PRESIDENCY SHOW HIM TO BE CORRECT IN HIS RATHER CYNICAL VIEW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Sol_Invictus
Augustus Sol Invictus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Augustus Sol Invictus (Latin: majestic unconquered sun), born Austin Gillespie[1], is a Republican[2] politician, attorney, and former candidate for the Libertarian nomination in the United States Senate election in Florida, 2016. His candidacy prompted the resignation under protest of party chairman Adrian Wyllie.[3] He lost in the primary by a margin of around 50 points to Paul Stanton.[4] Invictus is the publisher of The Revolutionary Conservative*, a right-wing publication with the stated aim of restoring the American Republic and defending Western Civilization.[5] He was widely criticized within the Libertarian Party for his use of fascist imagery and history of white nationalist associations.[6]

[*http://therevolutionaryconservative.com/ -- This is the “Invictus’” website. It is either flawed, or it isn’t fully set up yet. I can’t even get the “About” portion to work. Look at it if you want to.]

In a paper advocating for eugenics, Invictus wrote a disclaimer to the eugenics paper stating that while he believes the strong and intelligent should breed and the weak and stupid should not, he does not believe that the government can be trusted to implement such a program.[7][8] On April 7, 2017, the Libertarian Party of Florida, under threat of a defamation lawsuit from Invictus, issued a full retraction of the 2015 press release, stating "that it exceeded the mandate of the executive committee."[9] On July 13, 2017, Invictus changed his party affiliation to Republican.[10] On August 14, 2017, Invictus announced his candidacy as a Republican for the 2018 United States Senate election in Florida.[11]


I HAVE CONSIDERABLE HOPE AND CONFIDENCE THAT, THIS YEAR AT ANY RATE, THESE NEO-NAZIS WILL NOT WIN IN AN ELECTION. NONETHELESS, WE NEED SOME LEGAL LEEWAY TO PREVENT OUTSIDERS OF SUCH RADICAL VIEWS FROM ENTERING AND REPRESENTING OUR PARTIES IN VALID ELECTIONS FOR SUCH IMPORTANT OFFICES AS THE US SENATE.

https://thinkprogress.org/white-nationalist-elections-fada471b0870/
White supremacists are running for office as Republicans. Will the party stay silent?
What can the GOP do about the neo-Nazi on the ballot?
KIRA LERNER
AUG 21, 2017, 11:20 AM

Photograph -- WHITE NATIONALIST DEMONSTRATORS GUARD THE ENTRANCE TO LEE PARK IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA., SATURDAY, AUG. 12, 2017. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/STEVE HELBER

Three days after he was scheduled to speak at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville—a speech that never occurred as the event descended into violence that left one woman dead and 19 others injured—Holocaust denier and far-right radical Augustus Sol Invictus announced that he is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.

Wearing a suit and tie and standing outside Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)’s Washington office, Invictus filmed a shaky live-streamed announcement video* in which he blamed liberal counterprotesters for the violence in the Virginia college town.

[DO WATCH -- Announcement video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iycoGvlNCeY.]

“We now enter a new age of American history, and the question to be answered is this: Will we restore the republic our forefathers created, or will we allow it to be annihilated by those who hate America, its history, and all it stands for?” asked the Florida man, whose given name is Austin Gillespie*. “A reckoning has come. God wills it.”

Though he has not yet filed the Federal Election Commission paperwork necessary to raise money, Invictus said he will be running as a member of the Republican Party, challenging Nelson in a Senate race that is expected to draw notable establishment Republicans, potentially including Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R).

The Republican Party of Florida, contacted repeatedly by ThinkProgress, declined to comment on Invictus’ candidacy or whether the party will make any efforts to keep him off the primary ballot.

As national attention on white nationalist groups mounts—emboldened by the Trump presidency, far-right factions have shown more public and frequent displays of hate speech and violence—it’s likely that Invictus will not be the only neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier, or radical far-right figure to seek political office. Shiva Ayyadurai, who is running for Congress as a Republican challenging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), spoke at the Boston Free Speech Rally on Saturday. One Charlottesville participant from Missouri, interviewed by the New York Times during the rally, asked to be identified only as “Ted” because he said he might want to run for office some day.

David Duke and Augustus Sol Invictus. CREDIT: Diana Ofosu

The prospect of neo-Nazis representing the GOP raises serious constitutional questions for political parties, who will have to decide whether to allow controversial figures to appear on their primary ballots. And with a president in the White House who has not only fanned the flames of white supremacists, but effectively sided with them in the wake of the Charlottesville violence, establishment Republican leaders will have to calculate if allowing extreme figures to appear on their ballots causes more harm than good.

For many Republicans, the potential to alienate a small group of extreme voters within the party while distancing itself from hateful rhetoric, will be worth the effort. Veteran GOP operative Mark Corallo told ThinkProgress that the party should do everything it can to disassociate with candidates like Invictus.

“If there is any legal way to prevent a racist from appearing on the ballot, then they should absolutely use all legal means to prevent it,” he said. “And if the party rules need to be changed to prevent racists, neo-Nazis, and other vile human beings of that ilk from appearing on the ballot then they should be changed immediately.”

Corallo, who until recently served as a spokesperson for Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz and had been handling the White House’s defense in the Russia investigation, said that disassociating should be a priority for the GOP.

“Simply put, they should formally disassociate the party from the haters,” he said. “Furthermore they should make it clear that anyone who identifies himself as a Republican and hold those vile racist views is not a Republican and will not only be deprived of support but will be condemned in the harshest terms by the Republican Party.”

‘The David Duke Problem’

Case law on whether a party can exclude a candidate from a primary ballot is anything but clear. In fact, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and founder of the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke has both been blocked and permitted to run for political office.

In the mid-1990s, appellate courts sided with the Georgia Republican Party, which blocked Duke from appearing on the state ballot as a Republican candidate for president in the 1992 election. But 24 years later, just one day after then-candidate Trump secured the Republican nomination, Duke announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. Despite his hate speech and felony record, the state party made no effort to formally disassociate from him. In fact, they invited him to participate in a primary debate at a historically black college and prevented students from attending because of fears that protests could grow violent.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke at the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday, July 22, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Max Becherer
Louisiana GOP Isn’t Ready To Ban Former KKK Leader David Duke From Running For Office

Duke has had political ambitions for decades, running in at least 11 state and local races over more than four decades as a Democrat, Republican, and third-party candidate. His success, however, came after he switched to the Republican Party. In 1989, he won his first election and served as a Republican Louisiana state senator from 1989 to 1992.

In 1991, Duke decided to seek higher office and run for Louisiana governor. But with his search for more power came more scrutiny. Then-President George Bush announced his opposition to even letting Duke campaign, saying: “When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.”

Despite the president’s denouncement, the party did not block him from the ballot. In fact, he made it into the run-off and squared off against three-term Democratic governor Edwin Edwards. Though Duke lost with just 39 percent to Edwards’ 61 percent, he won 55 percent of the white vote.

The losses did not deter him, and as Duke sought higher office, the Republican Party tried and had mixed success in shutting him down.

That mixed success is a result of complicated laws regarding the rights of a political party. In a 2000 article in the Georgetown Law Journal titled “Candidates v. Parties: The Constitutional Constraints on Primary Ballot Access,” election law professor Nate Persily looked at the legal precedent of political parties denying ballot access to individuals, including court rulings upholding the Georgia Republican Party’s decision to ban Duke from the ballot in 1992.

Two panels of the Eleventh Circuit considered Georgia’s decision and agreed that it was constitutional for the Republican Party to exclude Duke from the ballot because he didn’t meet the ideological litmus test.

“Duke has no right to associate with the Republican Party if the Republican Party has identified Duke as ideologically outside the party,” the court held, adding that the state had a “compelling interest” in protecting parties’ right to exclude.

Keeping Duke off the ballot did not infringe on voters’ right to have their favored candidate on the ballot because Duke could still run as an independent, third-party candidate, or write-in candidate, Persily noted. But he added that case law is anything but definitive, and that parties run into thorny ground when they try to play a “paternalistic role deciding whether a candidate is sufficiently authentic” to deserve an opportunity to try to appeal to the party membership. Allowing the candidates to appear on the ballot would permit the party membership to filter out in the primary who is not “on message” with the party without potentially violating the candidate’s constitutional rights.

Though he lost in court in the mid-1990s, Duke couldn’t be kept away from the Republican Party for long. In 1996, he tried again, this time running for U.S. Senate in Louisiana in a race in which he placed fourth out of nine candidates. Then he 1999, he ran for U.S. House, placing third and narrowly missing the run-off with 19 percent of the vote.

Former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke, visiting a Miami Spanish language radio station, Dec. 26, 1991, said he?ll go to court if necessary to get his name on the ballot in the March 1992 Florida presidential primary. Duke wants to run on the Republican ticket but state party leaders have said they'll block his effort. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

His most recent attempt came last year, when he tried to ride Trump’s momentum into the U.S. Senate. “I am overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues I’ve championed for years,” Duke said in his announcement video. “The New York Times admitted that my platform became the GOP’s mainstream and propelled Republicans to the control of Congress.”

Louisiana Republican leaders and the other GOP candidates immediately issued statements denouncing him. Some even thought of bringing legal action. “We looked at litigating to get him thrown off the ballot as a Republican,” Jason Doré, executive director of the Louisiana GOP, told The Atlantic. But, according to The Atlantic’s report, the state party has no bylaws controlling who can run as a Republican. In August 2016, the state party met to consider changing the bylaws to ban former felons from running for office as Republicans (Duke pleaded guilty in 2002 to a tax charge and fraud). But even that move would not have kicked in until after the November election, and in the end, the party decided not to adopt the change.

Explaining his inaction, Doré said that excluding Duke would require wide-reaching statutory changes that would throw “the entire election into chaos.” He made no mention of the chaos that could be caused by having a self-identified white supremacist on the party’s ballot or appearing at the party’s debates.

Duke’s name ultimately appeared on the ballot, and he received more than 58,000 votes.

Political parties in each state have different bylaws governing who they can block from running under the party’s umbrella, so while Louisiana has recently allowed Duke’s candidacy, other states could make different determinations and formally distance themselves from white supremacists and their supporters. The question will be: Is the Republican Party ready to take that stance?

Invictus and the Republican Party

If the Republican establishment’s reaction to Trump’s “both sides” comments is any indication, the party is not ready to take a bold stance against white supremacy. Only a handful of Republican members of Congress explicitly criticized Trump, and neither House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) mentioned the president in their statements. Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA), who represents Charlottesville in the House, has not yet commented on Trump’s remarks.

So it’s no surprise that Invictus felt comfortable walking into the U.S. Senate offices just two days after the Charlottesville rally to declare his candidacy as a Republican—previously, he did not associate with the party.

Last year, in his first foray into electoral politics, he challenged Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), running as a Libertarian candidate.

His appearance on the ballot at the time was highly controversial. News reports highlighted the absurdity of his candidacy: He earned headlines for claiming that he had walked from central Florida to the Mojave Desert, and upon his return, he said he killed a goat and drank its blood as part of a pagan ritual.

But Adrian Wyllie, then-chair of Florida’s Libertarian Party, was unable to persuade his party’s executive committee to publicly disavow Invictus, according to Politico. So Wyllie resigned from his position, saying that: “I don’t want anyone to think this guy represents Libertarians. He doesn’t.”

Invictus earned 1,063 votes—26.5 percent of the Libertarian vote—in the August 2016 primary.

One year later, as the country continued to process the tragedy in Charlottesville, Invictus announced that he will be running on the Republican ballot. Though he didn’t explain his decision to switch parties, it’s not hard to understand why a white supremacist would think the Republican Party would embrace him in 2017.

A recent poll found that 64 percent of Republicans agree with President Trump that “both sides” share the fault for the violence in Charlottesville. And as of June, 72 percent of Republicans approve of the president who this week refused to denounce the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville holding torches and chanting: “Jews will not replace us.”

While the party has not commented on his candidacy, Invictus said Friday that Facebook has removed his Senate campaign page from the website. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request to comment on its decision.

The GOP could have a hard time disavowing someone like Invictus, when the party is currently led by Trump and is filled with lawmakers who also frequently make appeals to the party’s racist base, without necessarily describing themselves as white nationalists. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) sent a tweet in March—“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”—that was so popular with white supremacists, they dubbed him “King Steve.”

“Steve King is basically an open white nationalist at this point,” Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, wrote at the time.

Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann responded by claiming that he does not agree with King’s statement. But Kaufmann did not go as far as to say that he would try to prevent King from representing Iowa Republicans in the future. Instead, Kauffman reserved his harshest words for Duke, who praised King’s tweet. “His words and sentiments are absolute garbage,” the GOP chair said about Duke. “He is not welcome in our wonderful state.”

The sentiment is unlikely to affect Duke, who may be—and under current Louisiana GOP law, is allowed to be—plotting his next campaign for the Republican ticket in a state 900 miles from Iowa.


SO, FROM THE NEO-NAZIS TO THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT WHEN A CHURCH BECOMES A POLITICAL PARTY, IT NO LONGER HAS ANY LEGITIMACY AS A CHURCH. SURELY, THEY WILL LOSE THEIR TAX EXEMPTION, AT LEAST.

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM – A NEW TERM FOR ME, BUT NOT A NEW CONCEPT. UNFORTUNATELY, IT GOES ALONG WITH “CHRISTIAN IDENTITY” CHURCHES AND DOMINIONISM. IDENTITY POLITICS IS DANGEROUS WHEREVER IT OCCURS, AND RELIGIOUS PREFERENCE OR MANDATE IS FORBIDDEN BY THE CONSTITUTION. SO, WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

ALSO, THIS ISN’T SIMPLY ABOUT RELIGION IN POLITICAL STRUCTURES. SEE THIS RATHER SCARY QUOTATION ON ANOTHER SUBJECT THAT CAME ON THE SCENE WITH DONALD TRUMP: RUSSIAN INFLUENCE ON AN INCREASINGLY NUMEROUS LIST OF AMERICAN ACTIVITIES. THIS ONE SURPRISES ME, EXCEPT THAT RUSSIA IS ALL ABOUT POWER AND GAIN WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT, SUCH AS SNEAKING RUSSIAN IDEAS INTO AMERICAN THOUGHT IN YET THIS NEW WAY.

“SOME AMERICAN EVANGELICALS—INCLUDING SEVERAL THAT EXPRESS CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST VIEWS—HAVE SLOWLY FORMED AN ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIAN CHURCH LEADERS IN RECENT YEARS, LEADING TO A CROSS-POLLINATION OF RHETORIC AND TACTICS.” A LITTLE FARTHER DOWN THE ARTICLE IS: “NAZI SUPPORT WAS A VERY STRONG VOTE IN THE PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY. WITHOUT THAT BASE OF VOTERS, HITLER’S PARTY WOULD HAVE LANGUISHED.”


https://thinkprogress.org/history-christian-nationalism-e3303b46c3bc/
Historians of Christian nationalism are alarmed by its appearance in American pulpits
A lesson on the dangers to the United States.
Jack Jenkins
AUG 21, 2017, 8:00 AM

Drawing: CREDIT: DIANA OFOSU/THINKPROGRESS

This is the second in a series on Christian nationalism and the religious groups supporting Donald Trump. You can read the first one here, and stay tuned for further entries in the coming weeks.

When President Donald Trump defended white nationalists last week, it seemed like much of the country couldn’t condemn him fast enough. In addition to a wave of opprobrium from progressives, Republican lawmakers, conservative pundits, and CEOs all rushed to distance themselves from the scandal-prone president.

But as the condemnations pile up, one group has yet to abandon the commander-in-chief: his evangelical Christian advisers.

Instead of criticizing Trump’s remarks, many of these faith leaders have either remained silent or have simply offered general denunciations of racism. Others, such as Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., have even gone so far as to defend the president. So far, in the aftermath of Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, only one of Trump’s evangelical advisors has stepped down.

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Finally a leader in WH. Jobs returning, N Korea backing down, bold truthful stmt about #charlottesville tragedy.So proud of @realdonaldtrump
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The deafening silence has confused and frustrated many observers, including evangelicals. Some speculate that corporations have replaced religion as the country’s moral compass, wondering aloud why faith leaders aren’t demanding the president walk back statements that were celebrated by white supremacists.

But when it comes to at least one subset of Trump’s religious devotees, this reticence makes sense—and not because all of them necessarily support the white supremacists who rallied in Virginia last week. Instead, it may be because they share a very specific worldview that shapes their relationship to the president: Christian nationalism.

Historians agree the roots of American Christian nationalism—including flavors that do insist on white supremacy—stretch back decades. Today’s right-wing preachers are hardly the first group to insist on a “Christian” America, or to heap praise on a “strongman” leader. Yet historians also agree that previous examples of Christian nationalism are distinct from the variety preached by today’s so-called “Trumpvangelicals.”

The result is an odd theological paradox. Pro-Trump Christian nationalism may be decidedly American in form, but it also has a frightening amount in common with historical examples of flag-waving spirituality in other countries—including those with far darker pasts.


CREDIT: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/PUBLIC DOMAIN
Christian nationalism has always been a key part of American political discourse
Christian nationalism isn’t just common in America. It’s foundational.

At least that’s the argument Aeon editor and former Harvard Society fellow Sam Haselby makes in his book The Origins of American Religious Nationalism, in which he insists American Christian nationalism is an inescapable part our national political discourse. He points to some of the earliest revolutionaries as proof: A band of (apparently laughably bad) poets calling themselves Connecticut Wits were among the first to protest for American independence, calling for a society that was “hierarchical, theological, and anti-racist” in nature.

“[Christian nationalism is] an old debate, as old as the United States itself,” Haselby wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

Granted, the Connecticut Wit social framework didn’t win out against its eventual rival, the so-called Jeffersonian or Virginia model of American identity, which Haselby describes as ultimately “evangelical, egalitarian, and racist.” But like the savior they worship, religious nationalism would not die. As the United States evolved, Haselby says two Protestant Christian ideological frameworks — which he calls “national evangelicalism” and “frontier revivalism” — began to vie for power. Their intellectual dimensions are complex, but the result of their feud was the creation of a shared political rhetoric Haselby describes as religious nationalism, primary articulated through the lens of Protestant Christianity.

The scholar differentiates his definition of Christian nationalism from more contemporary iterations by pointing to three defining (but broad) characteristics.

“Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the ‘political religion of the nation,'”

The first is the almost sacred status Americans often bestow upon the Founding Fathers and the nation’s founding documents. In 1838, for instance, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the “political religion of the nation,” which he argued should be “breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe…taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges…let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls.”

Haselby says this reverence for historical figures is unusual when compared to other industrialized states in Europe, where “founders” in the American sense are an alien concept.


“There is no counterpart in, say, Britain,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “The figure that comes closest to that is probably Winston Churchill.”

The second feature of American religious nationalism, Haselby says, is the fact that leaders of U.S. social movements often invoke what he calls the “Jeremiad” narrative, or the idea that their political cause is in keeping with the spirit of America’s founding. The third facet is the most obvious: The undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or “God talk” in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.

“There’s a lot of liberals and progressive people who theologize,” he said. “When it comes to nationality, Americans are people of the word. They’re textual exegetes, whether they’re liberal or conservative.”

It’s easy to find evidence of these tendencies—sometimes described as our country’s “civil religion”—in modern American political disputes. Fervent debates over what is “constitutional” have defined Trump’s young presidency, with advocates on all sides invoking founding documents in ways that can resemble a theological debate. Trump supporters and “resistance” activists alike insist their movement carried the torch of liberty lit by the Founders. And appeals to the Almighty were present at both the RNC and the DNC this year, with the latter arguably more overtly religious than the former.

But few groups indulge in this tradition more fervently than today’s Christian nationalists, whose repeated (and disputed) calls for America to be “restored” as a “Christian nation” mixes all three of Haselby’s elements. When leaders such as Franklin Graham say God has blessed America more than any other nation on earth, they often mean it in a very specific way: Namely, that America is somehow special to God, and has been since its founding, when it supposedly was “built on Christian principles.”

Their passion for founding documents is also obvious, albeit typically coupled with a very specific interpretation of the text itself.

“Our forefathers, when they gave us our Constitution, they never intended us to leave our faith right here on these steps when you go into the Capitol,” Graham said in 2016.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, foreground center, stands in the middle of a media crush in the Trump Tower lobby in New York, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Trump met with a coalition of 100 African-American evangelical pastors and religious leaders in a private meeting at Trump Tower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

DONALD TRUMP, STANDS IN THE MIDDLE OF A MEDIA CRUSH ALONGSIDE A COALITION OF 100 AFRICAN-AMERICAN EVANGELICAL PASTORS AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN A PRIVATE MEETING AT TRUMP TOWER. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RICHARD DREW

In the Trump era, Christian nationalism is different

Haselby’s assessment only points to the historical tools of Christian nationalism, not the unusual way that Christian nationalists have chosen to wield them. The difference matters: The most diagnostic features of modern Christian nationalism—adherents’ antipathy towards science, so-called “secular” institutions, and government overreach—would have confused their 18th- and 19th-century forbears.

“Their hostility to science and educational institutions is distinctive—American’s 18th-century Christians were obsessed with Isaac Newton,” Haselby said. “America’s early Christian nationalists were very pro-state. The libertarian anti-state of today’s Christian nationalists is the opposite of the original.”

He added: “The most acute Christian nationalists of today would want nothing to do with the politics of America’s [earliest] Christian nationalists.”


But the oddest thing about modern American Christian nationalism is its odd fascination with Trump himself. Throughout U.S. history, faith leaders have showered praise on presidents (including Barack Obama), but today’s Trump-loving Christian nationalists have pushed this tradition to its limits.

“The most acute Christian nationalists of today would want nothing to do with the politics of America’s [earliest] Christian nationalists.”

Evangelical leaders such as Lance Wallnau proclaim to their followers that Trump is anointed by God to lead the country. Robert Jeffress preached a sermon entitled “When God chooses a leader” to Trump himself on Inauguration Day; Jeffress has since made (highly disputed) scriptural arguments insisting God gives Trump the “authority” to kill foreign leaders, and even commissioned his own church choir to sing a hymn-like ballad based on the president campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Taken in isolation, it’s possible to find examples in American history to justify most of these actions. But the intensity of pro-Trump faith rhetoric — combined with the broader mosaic of Christian nationalism — is unusual.

The end result has been enough to unsettle evangelical writer Ed Stetzer, a leading theological voice among Christian conservatives. Just this month, the Wheaton College professor published a pair of Christianity Today op-eds denouncing those who make faith-based excuses for Trump’s mistakes (she [sic] called it “21st century idolatry”), and warned against the dangers “both scripturally and historically” of honoring country over God.

Haselby, for his part, chalked up talk of Trump’s anointment to the influence of other American institutions.

“The novelist William Gass once said if America ever has a dictator, he’ll be a football coach. I think Trump makes as much sense in that authoritarian context as in one of Christian anointment,” Haselby said. He later added: “Especially in business and sports, two vibrant American undertakings, leaders are often seen as driving history … Anointment is mostly just a theological idiom for recognizing an idea of how history and the world move, behind individual leadership, that is more familiar in sports and business.”

Photograph -- A banner with an anti-Jewish slogan is displayed at Madison Square, New York, February 20, 1939, shortly before adherents of the German American Bund, an organization largely financed by the government of Nazi Germany, began marching in for a rally. The banner was later re-arranged to read "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans." (AP Photo)

Power-driven Christian nationalism is scary stuff

Although less common in U.S. history, there are ample examples of Trump-style Christian nationalism in other parts of the world.

The Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, currently enjoys disproportionate freedom compared to other religious groups in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and church leaders often act as advocates for the state’s agenda at home and abroad. Some American evangelicals—including several that express Christian nationalist views—have slowly formed an alliance with Russian church leaders in recent years, leading to a cross-pollination of rhetoric and tactics.

Other nations showcase a wide range of Christian nationalist expressions. In China, it’s arguably imposed upon believers: The government approves Catholic bishops, for example, and sometimes insists faith leaders only preach state-sanctioned theology. In heavily Catholic Poland, by contrast, the Catholic Church is credited with helping topple Communism’s reign over the country—a point of pride that Donald Trump highlighted during a speech in Warsaw last month.

But if history is any indication, the strongest versions of leader-linked Christian nationalism aren’t just powerful—they’re dangerous.

Arguably the darkest case of leader-linked Christian nationalism (not to be confused with Christianity as an instrument of empire, which has its own depressing history) is the role of Nazi Christians in 1930s Germany. Christians are known to have been active participants in Adolf Hitler’s rise, a tragic story that Robert Ericksen, a historian and professor at Pacific Lutheran University, chronicles in his book Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany.

“Nazi support was a very strong vote in the Protestant Christian community. Without that base of voters, Hitler’s party would have languished.”

While Christian pastors such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer have achieved worldwide acclaim for resisting Hitler, Ericksen explained, many German Protestants fell in line with Nazis—so much so that the Führer relied on them.

“Nazi support was a very strong vote in the Protestant Christian community,” Ericksen told ThinkProgress in an interview. “Without that base of voters, Hitler’s party would have languished.”

Direct conflations between Nazi Germany and U.S. politics are prone to gross hyperbole, and Erickson was quick to list a number of differences between the modern political moment and the rise of the Third Reich. 1930s Germany, for instance, was still reeling from a humiliating defeat during World War I while also enduring the Great Depression—neither of which are directly applicable to the United States in 2017. And while Trump-supporting Nazi sympathizers have made news in recent days, virtually none have any major institutional faith affiliation.

Diana Ofosu / ThinkProgress
Why Christian nationalists love Trump

God and country.

But Ericksen argues the past is meant to inform the present, which is likely why he was one of the first scholars to point to broad parallels between Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and those that backed the infamous German dictator.

In a Huffington Post op-ed published in September of 2016, Ericksen observed that evangelicals were already falling in line behind the businessman despite his questionable ethics during the campaign—and observed similarities between their fervor and that of 1930s German Christians. Like modern American Christians, these Germans emerged out of a deeply Christian Europe, where religious nationalism was embedded in many cultures. Although obviously distinct from Haselby’s understanding of faith-fueled political discourse, fusions of faith and politics permeated German society in ways not altogether dissimilar from American “civil religion.”

“To be loyal to God and country was a very powerful emotion and a common slogan,” Ericksen said.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,”

There are also eerily familiar cultural factors that accelerated Hitler’s rise—including appeals to what modern observers might describe as “family values.” The infusion of women into the workplace during and after World War I altered traditional perceptions of gender roles, for instance, and the forced imposition of democracy on Germany as a byproduct of losing the war didn’t sit well with many citizens.

“All of these things were perceived by the Christian community as a moral breakdown,” he said. “Democracy we believed to have encouraged that moral breakdown, because democracy believed in political equality.”

What’s more, the relatively few residents who were able to celebrate aspects of the “roaring 20s”—dance halls, the emergence of the movie industry, and a “more open sense to people having a moral right to express themselves”—suddenly became targets.

“They were perceived as not accepting Christian values and standards,” Ericksen explained. “They were aggressively blamed for pornography and prostitution.”

The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

<i>By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between the Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.

“There were a lot of comparisons to [famous theologian] Martin Luther, who was, up until then, probably the biggest German hero,” he said. “He saved Germany or created Protestantism by his response to the Bible and God’s word, and now Hitler had come along to save Germany in this time of need in a different way—but still according to God’s will.”

Ericksen pointed out that Christians did this even as Hitler exhibited behavior to contrary—much as Christian nationalists have publicly ignored Trump’s attacks on the press, democratic institutions, and other evangelical faith leaders. And even if Trump ultimately has little in common with Hitler, Ericksen noted that Trump has more dangerous weapons in his arsenal—weapons Christian nationalists such as Robert Jeffress has proclaimed God gave him the authority to use.

“In the end, Trump could be more dangerous than Hitler, because Trump has the nuclear option,” he said.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical; it’s happened before. Arnie Bernstein of the Tablet recently noted that the last time there was a major effort to bolster support for Nazi-style fascism in the United States, it was under the leadership of an allegedly Trump-like Fritz Kuhn, a Nazi sympathizer who convened a pro-Hitler event in Madison Square Garden in 1939. Kuhn’s group drew directly on aspects of “civil religion” to muster support for their hateful cause, calling their event “Washington’s Birthday Rally” and adhering to a constitution that championed the “preservation of the inalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in a truly sovereign United States of America, ruled in accordance with Aryan Christian Precepts.”

Yes, history matters
Again, Trump is no Hitler. “To just say, ‘Trump’s another Hitler,’ doesn’t show how awful Hitler really was,” Erickson said.

And Christian nationalism isn’t solely to blame for the rise of authoritarian leaders. Neither Hitler nor Trump nor any U.S. president were the creations of one religion or one group — a democratically elected leader requires a coalition.

Nevertheless, tracing the history of Christian nationalism can still help shine a light on the actions of pro-Trump evangelical leaders like Graham, Jeffress, and others — knowledge that makes their actions less shocking and more predictable. Perhaps more importantly, the past offers hints as to how religion can help catapult people into power. And the more infamous iterations of religious nationalism can serve as alarm bells for modern ears.

While historians like Haselby note that there “are certainly substantial grounds of comparison” between Christian nationalism in the United States and elsewhere, the key element to watch for may not be faith, but power.

“Most people are loyal to those who take care of them,” Haselby said. “Christians take care of a lot of people in the United States. It’s not all about belief.”

#CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM, #RELIGION


ACLU TOO “LIBERAL?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/aclu-first-amendment-trump-charlottesville.html?_r=0
The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech
By K-SUE PARK AUG. 17, 2017

Photograph -- White supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday. Credit Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The American Civil Liberties Union has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups on both the far left and the far right. This commitment led the organization to successfully sue the city of Charlottesville, Va., last week on behalf of a white supremacist rally organizer. The rally ended with a Nazi sympathizer plowing his car into a crowd, killing a counterprotester and injuring many.

After the A.C.L.U. was excoriated for its stance, it responded that “preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.” Of course that’s true. The hope is that by successfully defending hate groups, its legal victories will fortify free-speech rights across the board: A rising tide lifts all boats, as it goes.

While admirable in theory, this approach implies that the country is on a level playing field, that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy, the cornerstone of which is freedom of expression.

I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011, and I respect much of its work. But it should rethink how it understands free speech. By insisting on a narrow reading of the First Amendment, the organization provides free legal support to hate-based causes. More troubling, the legal gains on which the A.C.L.U. rests its colorblind logic have never secured real freedom or even safety for all.

For marginalized communities, the power of expression is impoverished for reasons that have little to do with the First Amendment. Numerous other factors in the public sphere chill their voices but amplify others.

Most obviously, the power of speech remains proportional to wealth in this country, despite the growth of social media. When the Supreme Court did consider the impact of money on speech in Citizens United, it enabled corporations to translate wealth into direct political power. The A.C.L.U. wrongly supported this devastating ruling on First Amendment grounds.

Other forms of structural discrimination and violence also restrict the exercise of speech, such as police intimidation of African-Americans and Latinos. These communities know that most of the systematic harassment and threats that stifle their ability to speak have always occurred privately and diffusely, and in ways that will never end in a lawsuit.

A black kid who gets thrown in jail for possessing a small amount of marijuana will face consequences that will directly affect his ability to have a voice in public life. How does the A.C.L.U.’s conception of free speech address that?

The A.C.L.U. has demonstrated that it knows how to think about other rights in a broader context. It vigorously defends the consideration of race in university admissions, for example, even as conservative challengers insist on a colorblind notion of the right to equal protection. When it wants to approach an issue with sensitivity toward context, the A.C.L.U. can distinguish between actual racism and spurious claims of “reverse racism.”

The government’s power is not the only thing that can degrade freedom of expression, which Justice Benjamin Cardozo once described as “the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” The question the organization should ask itself is: Could prioritizing First Amendment rights make the distribution of power in this country even more unequal and further silence the communities most burdened by histories of censorship?

This is a vital question because a well-funded machinery ready to harass journalists and academics has arisen in the space beyond First Amendment litigation. If you challenge hateful speech, gird yourself for death threats and for your family to be harassed.

Left-wing academics across the country face this kind of speech suppression, yet they do not benefit from a strong, uniform legal response. Several black professors have been threatened with lynching, shooting or rape for denouncing white supremacy.

Government suppression takes more subtle forms, too. Some of the protesters at President Trump’s inauguration are facing felony riot charges and decades in prison. (The A.C.L.U. is defending only a handful of those 200-plus protesters.) States are considering laws that forgive motorists who drive into protesters. And police arrive with tanks and full weaponry at anti-racist protests but not at white supremacist rallies.

The danger that communities face because of their speech isn’t equal. The A.C.L.U.’s decision to offer legal support to a right-wing cause, then a left-wing cause, won’t make it so. Rather, it perpetuates a misguided theory that all radical views are equal. And it fuels right-wing free-speech hypocrisy. Perhaps most painful, it also redistributes some of the substantial funds the organization has received to fight white supremacy toward defending that cause.

The A.C.L.U. needs a more contextual, creative advocacy when it comes to how it defends the freedom of speech. The group should imagine a holistic picture of how speech rights are under attack right now, not focus on only First Amendment case law. It must research how new threats to speech are connected to one another and to right-wing power. Acknowledging how criminal laws, voting laws, immigration laws, education laws and laws governing corporations can also curb expression would help it develop better policy positions.

Sometimes standing on the wrong side of history in defense of a cause you think is right is still just standing on the wrong side of history.

K-Sue Park is a housing attorney and the Critical Race Studies fellow at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 17, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech. Today's Paper|Subscribe


http://www.uuworld.org/articles/uu-attendance-surges-after-election
Attendance surges at Unitarian Universalist congregations after Trump’s election
UUs went to church in large numbers yearning for community, solidarity, and ways to serve.
TINA PORTER | 12/2/2016

Photograph -- Members of Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas, invited neighbors to donate food for a women’s and children’s shelter on the second weekend after the presidential election. (© Jeff Boxell)

nitarian Universalist ministers throughout the United States are reporting a surge in attendance at Sunday services after the presidential election on November 8. Some ministers compared the increase in attendance to the period after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“This time feels comparable but different,” said the Rev. William Sinkford, senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon. “Then, the sense of shock predominated, shading off into the fear we have all learned to live with,” he said. “Today, the folks in my sanctuary begin with disbelief and now yearn both to be in community and to find something to do.”

The increase in attendance most often represented members of the congregation who had not been active recently and were seeking to reconnect with their faith community. The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Landrum said her small congregation, the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty, in Clarklake, Michigan, typically sees forty-five people in attendance, but on the Sunday after the election, there were sixty. The increase, she says, were “people who remembered what was valuable to them” in times of distress: community and action.

Although Unitarian Universalists hold a range of political views and affiliations, surveys show that they tend overwhelmingly to vote Democratic. The Pew Research Center reported in February that 84 percent of self-identified UUs lean toward or identify with the Democratic Party.

The Rev. Joan Javier-Duval, minister of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier, Vermont, said the average attendance at her congregation is 191 children and adults. On the Sunday after the election, there were 309. Javier-Duval says she thinks that people are coming to church “still grieving and processing difficult emotions.”

Related story
New Jersey church ponders how to heal division after ugly election
NORTHJERSEY.COM

“Many have also started planning for action,” Javier-Duval said. “At a recent Social Responsibility Committee meeting, we discussed the possibility of becoming a sanctuary congregation” for immigrants threatened with deportation.

The Rev. Theresa Soto, interim minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Flint, Michigan, said that the congregation has many educators among its members. “When we came together to discuss the election results, part of their palpable grief was that austerity measures and cutbacks to programs and services represent destruction of their carefully crafted life work, especially in creating resources and access for people who have usually been marginalized in educational systems,” said Soto.

The Rev. Amy Shaw, minister of Lake Country UU Church in Hartland, Wisconsin, noticed an increase in attendance beginning the Sunday before the election. As soon as she knew the results of the election, she sent an email out to the congregation letting them know that the church would be open from 11:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday should anyone need to talk. “It ended up being a series of one-on-one conversations all day long,” Shaw said. “People came to cry, to talk, to express their fears and their challenges.”

The following Sunday, like many of her colleagues, Shaw preached a sermon to remind the congregation that they would find a way forward, together. “There is work to do,” she said, “and there is a path, and we will go together.”

The Rev. Bruce Beisner of Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas, reminded his congregation that the arc of justice is long: “Perhaps now we need to focus on the word long.”

<i>Beisner, Landrum, and Shaw describe the congregations they serve as liberal oases in conservative areas. In their churches, the results of the election have created an energy of fear coupled with determination to “do something.”

Keep heart flag
Related resources
Show the Love: Resources for responding to the election
UUA.ORG

In Houston, Bay Area UU had scheduled a food drive for a women’s and children’s shelter for the second weekend after the election. “The idea was not for us to provide the food,” Beisner said, “but to invite others to donate—going out and meeting our neighbors.” The turnout from the congregation was so great, said Beisner, they had to open new areas for people to canvass.

At First Unitarian in Portland, Sinkford told his congregation that if the new government acts on Donald Trump’s proposal to register Muslims, he will register as one, too. He asked how many in the congregation would vow to join him. “I estimate that three-quarters of the 1,000 individuals in the sanctuary during the two services that day raised their hands,” Sinkford said. “It was a powerful moment of solidarity and recognition that there almost certainly will be witness for us to make in the months ahead.”

After the election, discord in the online forums of the Church of the Larger Fellowship—with 3,556 members, the UUA’s largest congregation—prompted the Rev. Meg Riley, senior minister, to send a pointed letter to all members. “We are a sanctuary for the vulnerable,” Riley wrote. “If you voted for the President-elect and are appalled by his blatant racism, tell him about it. Don’t act as if it’s nothing, and do not insult or assault people who are already struggling for well-being. If you are not appalled by the racism, perhaps you might reconsider what Unitarian Universalism means to you.”

“We will not tolerate posts in any of our forums which minimize the very real terrors of people of color, immigrants, GLBT people, disabled people, women, and others who are currently under vicious attack in the U.S.,” Riley wrote.

Riley said response to her letter has been overwhelmingly positive. “Our principles are a wonderful testament to these times and we don’t have time to ‘wait and see,’” she said. “There is no better time to be true to our values.”