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The Radical Christianist Revolution [1]

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Date: 2025-05-23

The biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are very popular with the right wing. These books, both ascribed to Moses, are heavy on rules and the divine punishments awaiting those who break them. It’s from these books that we get prohibitions on everything from homosexuality to wearing both linen and wool at the same time. The book of Exodus has some spectacular laws, too: here, Moses observes that it’s OK to sell your daughter into slavery, and that anyone who works on the Sabbath should be put to death.

For more on God’s Law according to the Hebrew Bible, see James M. Kauffman’s brilliant letter to the right-wing radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger at genius.com/.… As Kauffman’s list of prohibitions demonstrates, very few believers today obey the commandments Moses laid out in the Pentateuch (the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament). When so-called Christian Nationalists invoke the prohibitions they find in this section of the Bible, they’re cherry-picking—and very deliberately and selectively so. Homosexuality is an abomination, they piously proclaim, citing Leviticus 18:22. But they’re strangely silent on Leviticus 19:33: “When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.”

So even within the logic of the Hebrew Bible, right-wing Bible-thumpers are inconsistent. But more to the point, how come we never hear them invoking Jesus? Isn’t that what Christianity is about: practicing what Jesus preached? What about “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44)? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus specifically blessed the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers. These are the people, he promised, who would attain the kingdom of heaven. But we don’t hear a lot about meekness, mercy, or peacemaking from the right-wingnuts who love to threaten the rest of us with the wrath of God.

Clearly, then, the people who call themselves “Christian Nationalists” are not followers of Jesus. If they were, they’d be practicing his teachings. When they appeal to the Bible to affirm their cruelties and greed, it’s never the New Testament they invoke; it’s an angry, vengeful God that even contemporary Jews seldom cite. Accordingly, to call these people Christians is erroneous—and an insult to those who do, in fact, follow the teachings of Jesus.

I propose that we call our self-identified Christian Nationalists “Christianists.” This clarifies that their position is ideological, not faith-based. Christians practice the teachings of Jesus. Christianists invoke the Christian tradition to justify their stance on cultural and political issues, just as capitalists draw on the gospel of capital and nationalists base their beliefs on the sanctity of the nation-state. They are all “ists,” dedicated to their respective “isms”—and as the marvelous poet and political scientist Maria Popova has observed, “almost all isms are damaging myths.”

So let’s stop calling these people Christian Nationalists. They are Christianist Nationalists. Or maybe Nationalist Christianists. Either way, they have not earned the title of Christian, and should no longer be dignified by that name.

As for the “white” part of White Christian Nationalism, let it be remembered that Jesus wasn’t white. Nor was he a Christian. Jesus was a brown Jew. Were he to seek asylum in today’s USA, he would be denied for embodying the demographic impossibility of Making America Great Again.

While we’re at it, let’s take a look at the word “conservative.” A conservative is a person who strives to conserve those things they cherish. The people we’re currently calling conservatives don’t fit that description. The politicians we’re calling “conservatives” are characterized by their opposition to the way things are. They’re against queers, immigrants, Democrats, single-parent families, and the separation of church and state. All of these things exist. Most of them have existed for centuries; some for millennia. The right wing wants to destroy all of them.

A true conservative—someone who wants to conserve things of value—would not support the selling of public lands to the highest bidders. A true conservative would not challenge birthright citizenship, due process, or Medicaid. Real conservatives strive to maintain and nurture the laws and social norms that have proven beneficial to the most possible people. Our “conservatives” today are doing their best to funnel our collective resources to the wealthiest men in the world. What are they “conserving”? Nothing but their own privilege. As the great Molly Ivins once remarked, the term conservative for such people is “factually inaccurate.” We should stop calling them “conservatives,” and instead name them for what they are: radical right-wing revolutionaries.

George Orwell’s classic 1984 describes how a dystopian governing power employs language to deceive, gaslight, and oppress an entire population. “War is peace,” proclaims Big Brother. In our world today, lies are truth, and the social programs that we’ve spent our working lives paying into are “entitlements.” The country’s most prominent welfare queen, Elon Musk, is a brilliant, self-made billionaire, while the poverty-afflicted single mother struggling to get her children’s needs met is a shameful drain on the public teat.

The linguist George Lakoff pointed out decades ago how the political right in the US has used language to blind us to its machinations. Ronald Reagan was masterful at this game. It was he who called an intercontinental ballistic missile “the Peacekeeper” and the skewing of the income tax system to benefit the wealthy “tax relief.” Who could argue with peacekeeping or relief?

Language matters. Let’s call the MAGA movement what it is: a radical right-wing Christianist revolution. Let’s decline the invitation to adopt the language of the oppressor. Let’s use our language to communicate reality, rather than to affirm the fever dreams of a deluded elite.

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