In the years following the 2016 election, it became apparent in the small mountain community where I live that the word “democracy” was becoming a dirty word to some people. Strange sounds like “freedom, not democracy!” and “democracy never!” began to be heard around us. Some among us were beginning to slide toward an acceptance of the idea of one-party rule — provided that the one party could be largely white and Christian and nationalist.
In June this year, the Theology Committee of the Episcopal House of Bishops called Christian nationalism “the gravest and most dangerous sin of today.”
Why, if the bishops are correct, have they and other Christians been so hesitant to address this grave and dangerous sin from the pulpits and in other public arenas?
One reason is that we have nearly all confused white Christian nationalism with traditional conservative Christian faith — whether Catholic or Protestant — and we don’t want to risk offending our more conservative siblings.
Another is that too many of us have bought the lie that politics and spirituality should be kept separate. In truth, politics and spirituality, when — and only when — they are both generating justice, combine to move among us as the public energy of the sacred spirit.
Let’s be clear: white Christian nationalism is not Christian. It has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. It is a dangerous, violent, political weapon that has cunningly co-opted Christian language, and it is wielded by a movement of rich, predominantly white men to secure control of the United States government in all its branches, nationally and locally. Christian nationalism perverts the spirit of Jesus and his power to make justice-love; it assaults democracy and undermines the aspiration of our nation’s founders that our government should be of, by and for the people.
The challenge for Christians today is to use our power, our voices, our talents and our courage to empower our communities to speak out about white Christian nationalism, to vote against it and to work together against it well into the future. White Christian nationalism will not disappear after the November election, whoever wins; its roots are too deep and strong for it to be easily or quickly eradicated. It will take decades of determination to expunge these sins from our nation and our churches.
We can find wisdom and strength in faith, justice and democracy
There are three deep wellsprings from which American Christians can draw strength and wisdom to disarm and ultimately defeat white Christian nationalism: our faith, our passion for justice and our allegiance to democracy.
Faith is an ability to see with our hearts, a boldness to trust the intuitions of our minds, and the audacity to believe that which usually defies proof and reason. Conservative, traditionalist and liberal Christians are all people of faith, but our theologies and faith practices are often not the same. Different Christians trust in different understandings of God, Jesus, Spirit and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But for all of us, love of neighbor leads to caring for sick, hungry, homeless, destitute and needy people and other creatures. Most Christians, whether liberal or conservative, are guided by faith to undertake service as pastoral ministry to individuals in need. But for too many of us, Christian love stops there.
In 1980, shortly before he was assassinated at the altar in San Salvador’s Cathedral, Archbishop Oscar Romero preached, “When I feed the hungry, people call me a saint; when I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist.” That statement may have marked Romero for death by conservative political operatives in El Salvador and their allies among U.S. power brokers — because this is the subversive power unleashed when Christian leaders publicly ask provocative questions that move “neighbor-love” not just out of but beyond the realm of pastoral care into a prophetic landscape in which we call for justice to roll down like waters.
Most predominantly white Christian churches in America have let social justice take a back seat to worship and pastoral care. We have bought into a politically conservative agenda and a morally shallow notion that the church shouldn’t be “political,” not realizing that everything is political — that is, it relates to how power is organized, used or abused in our churches and our nation. But when we remain silent about how power is being abused, we are actively helping keep that abusive power in place.
Neither pastoral nor prophetic ministry has, however, anything in common with the determination of white Christian nationalists to shape the nation in the image of their lust for power over the U.S. presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court and other American institutions that can be used to control who can marry whom, who can vote for whom, who can teach what to whose children, which books we can read, who can receive health care, who can be admitted to America, and so forth.
Loving our enemies means accepting them as our fellow humans (liking them is beside the point). It may be hard to stomach posters of Jesus in a MAGA hat, but the most faithful way we can regard MAGA Christians — who, whatever their intent, are indeed ambassadors for white Christian nationalism — is as our siblings who have gone missing from the Jesus movement’s commitment to love everyone, including undocumented Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants, gender-fluid middle school kids, or gun safety advocates working on behalf of the kids hiding in classroom closets from usually white man-boys stalking them with long guns.
Whenever we can, we should invite white Christian nationalists to talk with and listen to us. This must, of course, go both ways: To love someone means to respect their humanity and not to disregard them; it also means not letting them bully or harm us. We must make no peace with oppression. But if we respect those whom we believe to be badly mistaken, we signal that there will always be a seat at the table for them if and when they want to join us.
In his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln spoke of our “better angels” as if everyone — Confederates and Unionists — could draw upon their better angels to form a “more perfect union.” To my ears of faith, this was Jesus speaking then and now, urging us to look for the good in one another and to show forth the justice-love that we ourselves yearn for, as we help make whole what has been splintered.
Living in a democracy, however flawed and partial, we have a chance to do this together. Other forms of political organization — theocracies, autocracies, dictatorships — are created to strip people of their collective rights, responsibilities and power to work mutually toward making justice.
We can still build a ‘more perfect union’
For more than two centuries, American leaders have debated, struggled, voted and, from time to time, been nasty as angry hornets, trying to figure out how to be a functional democracy, a government actually representing “the people,” a nation trying to be a “more perfect union,” built on compromise, in which everyone gives and takes something, seldom, if ever, everything they wish.
In a democracy, no one of us sits at the top except as needed, temporarily. In a democracy, we share power and we pass it on when our time is up. George Washington exemplified this passing on of power at the beginning of our democratic republic. Recently, the president of the United States showed us how it can be done with grace and intelligence.
Christian faith has roots in Jesus’ affirmation of all human beings as people of God. As a shape of government, democracy is built on the assumption that all people are deserving of basic human rights to food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, liberty, dignity and justice. Democracy comprises every imaginable color, shape, age, size, gender, sexual preference and religion, and folks with different levels of ability and special needs.
As courageous Americans, it is time to speak out and make our faith public, not confusing our allegiances — one to God, another to the nation — but not allowing our Christian witness to be muted. As Christians and as Americans, we must put and keep justice-making at the center of our lives, along with prayer and care. And we must strive to work democratically, mutually sharing power in our life together, to build a “more perfect union.”
So how do we preserve our democracy? Of course, we need to vote in large numbers this fall. But we also need to try to come together now in whatever settings we can. Imagine actually exploring our values. Listening and speaking to each other. Honestly sharing what we believe and yearn for, as Christians and as Americans. This is something our churches can do. Help us share our stories. We can study the Bible, and other spiritual and political resources, as the early church and the liberation churches have always done. We can create and share contemporary scripture: poetry, prose, drama, art and music that reflect the many words of God to us.
This is how we can weaken white Christian nationalism and finally lay it to rest.
The Rev. Carter Heyward is an American feminist theologian and priest in the Episcopal Church. In 1974, she was one of the Philadelphia Eleven, 11 women whose ordinations eventually paved the way for the recognition of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in 1976.
