Christian Nationalism Built Upon Assumptions

In an article written by David L. Holmes for Encyclopaedia Britannica (see The Founding Fathers, Deism, and Christianity) he starts, “ For some time the question of the religious faith of the Founding Fathers has generated a culture war in the United States. Scholars trained in research universities have generally argued that the majority of the Founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians.”

The Age of Enlightenment made ideas like Deism, a natural God who does not interfere in the affairs of humankind, and THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, popular in the time when our nation’s founders were being reared overseas. These same ideas shaped many of their political ideals, like renowned Deist Benjamin Franklin, when they colonized America.

Most of them did attend Christian churches, such as Christ Church in Philly, Pohick Church in Virginia, United First Parish Church in Quincy, Mass, Old Meeting House in Boston and Trinity Church in NYC (source here). The majority attended offshoots of the Church Of England, like the Anglican and Episcopal denominations. Others were Puritans, Quakers and Catholic. Not all of them practiced Orthodox Christianity and very little of it looks like American Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal denoms today. In fact, if most Protestants stepped into an Anglican mass, they would probably think it was Catholic.

It is very important to remember that the revolution they fought was against a tyrannical king who was coronated by THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND! In effect, the revolt was not only against the crown, but against the very church that propped up his government…CHRISTIANITY! Our Founding Fathers were explicit in their disdain for a religious monarchy where the Church ran the state by coronating its leader. There was no separation of church and state nor freedom from religion.

So how any half-educated person in 21st Century America believes they were bent on forming a theocracy over here is literally insane! They didn’t leave one Christian monarchy just to establish George Washington as the Christian monarch of America. No they used Enlightenment era ideals and deist language, “their Creator,” instead of Almighty God. The Constitution uses that language and never mentions Christianity, or names the Creator or quotes any Bible passages. If the founders of this country wanted to establish a national religion, don’t you think they would have done all three things? Why leave England, then lead a revolt against their God-ordained king? Why not just institute The Church of America (be it Anglican or Episcopal) and deem Washington our nation’s monarch?

They didn’t like that system of government…not one bit! They fought a revolution over it and setup a Representative Republic because they believed in equal representation for everyone in the colonies. Every American was given the right to worship how they wanted freely without their government ramming religion down their throat or one church anointing their leader. This is just historical fact!

And it’s gaslighting by America’s fundamentalist leaders and their political think tanks, like Heritage Foundation, that would have us believe otherwise. They are selling the myth that the religion of 18th century, students of Enlightenment lines up perfectly with their 21st century Christianity and it doesn’t. They further promote the lie that our Founding Fathers established America as a Christian Nation. They did not.

Christian Nationalism, with its roots in genocide, xenophobia and racism, is built on an absolute lie. Look at how the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620 treated indigenous people. They were even ruthless with other Christian believers—Quakers and Baptists—because they believed they were of the pure faith. Christian Nationalist are extreme, cult-like brutes of that same ilk. They believe only American fundamentalism is the true religion and they are hellbent on cramming it down our throats. And like the Puritans, they feel it is Manifest Destiny to rewrite our history and implement their theocracy over this nation. It’s pure bullshit! Our forefathers are rolling over in their graves.

Kristi Burke touches on some of this, including Manifest Destiny, in her new series on Christian Nationalism.

I think it is very dangerous, to allow a cult of one branch of one sect of any religion to rule over America. I see it no different than if the Taliban were to overthrow our government and institute (religious) Shariah Law over all of us. I call the Heritage Foundation and their ilk THE XIAN TALIBAN! Their fundamentalist views are just as barbaric, savage and unAmerican. They must not be given power over us.

NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING

I touched on this a few years ago on this blog. Thanksgiving is a bogus holiday. Many of us learned as adults that the feltboard version we were taught in grade school is totally false, a-historical. Just ask the Native Americans. They don’t honor or celebrate this day like we do. They mourn the loss of everything.

DAY OF MOURNING

There is a memorial plague set into a boulder and erected by the Town of Plymouth on behalf of the United American Indians of New England (see below). There is nothing to celebrate according to the Native Americans, whose land was stolen as was their knowledge of the soil and agriculture. That’s what most Americans celebrate tomorrow, right? The bountiful harvest of corn crops that we learned to cultivate from “the Indians.”

They have no reason to celebrate that the Europeans who invaded their continent broke every single treaty they made in good faith. They TRIED to tolerate us white folk. We lied and killed them for believing us, taking us at our word. Why would they celebrate that?

From the National Day website:

The organizers of this observance consider Thanksgiving Day as a continued reminder of the democide and suffering of Native American people. Since 1970, participants in the National Day of Mourning have honored Native ancestors and their struggles to survive today. Part of the mission behind the event is to educate Americans about the history of Thanksgiving.  

So while you’re choking down stuffing and mashed potatoes in mass quantities, just know that our native brothers and sisters are not. They are in mourning that we ever came to their land. They have every right and reason to be somber on Thursday. They are not thankful for the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock.

#NationalDayofMourning

WHITESNAKE

 

This kickass rock band from the UK got my attention in junior high when I first heard the track, “Love Ain’t No Stranger,” on the radio. I loved that song! It had a Led Zeppelin vibe, starting slow and mellow, the grovelly vocals of David Coverdale soulfully singing, “Who knows where the cold wind blows…” Very poetic and Robert Plant like. Then the song kicks into high gear with the heartfelt scream, “Love Ain’t No Stranger!” Think the dynamics of Zep’s “Ramble On.” I’ll link the video here:

I loved that song so much that I went out and bought the album, titled “Slide It In.” From the provocative album cover to even more provocative (and downright naughty) lyrics, it resonated with my pubescent, sexually-frustrated self at age 15. It came out in January 1984 when I was starting my second semester of Sophomore year in high school. I opened the album, put it on my stereo console and rocked out to the first three tracks, wearing out the grooves on “Slide It In,” “Slow and Easy” (with their highly-charged, sexual lyrics) and Stranger, their radio hit.

Slide It In album cover

I was a big fan! Never saw them in concert, though. Loved their videos on MTV. They toured the U.S. in 1984, opening, first, for Dio, and then for Quiet Riot.

They didn’t put out another album for three years!

Work began on the album as soon as they finished touring in early 1985, but it was recorded piece-meal by ever-changing band members and even some legendary session players, like guitarist Dann Huff (source: Wikipedia). The final pieces were recording Coverdale’s vocals, delayed because of sinus issues and required surgery, and piecing together a whole new lineup for the band. He enlisted Rudy Sarzo, from Quiet Riot, and Dio’s lead guitarist Vivian Campbell, who he’d met on the ‘84 U.S. tour, and Ozzy’s drummer Tommy Aldridge, who had previously auditioned for the WS gig.

This was a whole new Whitesnake. None of them performed on the 1987 album, but all appeared in the subsequent music videos. That was my introduction to Aldridge, who is known for his crazy, curly locks and soloing without sticks! By the time the new album was released, Mar. 1987, I was living in Tallahassee and I purchased it on cd. I then recorded the album on cassette tape to play in my brown Chevelle Malibu at high levels through aftermarket Pioneer speakers. I wore that goddamn tape OUT! I loved it and so did America’s youth as the album shot to #2 on Billboard’s chart. The videos for multiple singles were MTV favorites that year.

“Still of the Night,” to this day is the rockinest, most badass Whitesnake song of all time. It was a total Zeppelin ripoff, especially the Kasmiresque bridge that quiets to a near replica of “Black Dog” before exploding into a soaring Vivian Campbell solo! Gone were the blues undertones of say “Ramble On,” replaced with the harder Zeppelin-like riffs that laid the foundation for hard rock and heavy metal. Coverdale openly admits they were shooting for the new hard rock sound of bands like Bon Jovi that appealed to American youths. It appealed to me! I thought that album was epic. I loved the callback to classic Zeppelin!

It would be my last Whitesnake purchase, and only the second of their albums I ever owned. I couldn’t see how they could top what they had already done. And by 1987, I was getting into religious music (CCM, as it was termed) and groups like Petra, Whitecross, Whiteheart and The Allies were making rock albums that captured my full attention. A great example, complete with Zeppelin ripoffs, is The Allies’ “Long Way From Paradise” album.

So that’s my story. I figured a break from politics, racism and sports was in order.

Rock on 🤘

WHITE BIRTHRIGHT (MANIFEST DESTINY)

MANIFEST DESTINY

The racist ideology that white men have a God-ordained right to power and control over people and land. It was the ideology of Europeans who sought to colonize the West, native peoples be damned! Pretty much how the story of North America, specifically our part, played out, right? Because God gave us that birthright, or right by being born white, right? Just ask the passengers aboard the Mayflower.

When they got lost and landed north of their destination, they didn’t feel too welcomed by the non-whites who already lived in the area we would later name Cape Cod. So once they landed, they conspired to produce the Mayflower Compact in 1620. America just celebrated the 400th Anniversary of this event in 2020. Why is that significant? Well, it was Manifest Destiny in full effect. The white Europeans had arrived!

"The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population. US President James K. Polk (1845-1849) is the leader most associated with Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War,” says The Khan Academy.

Interesting how you can draw a straight line from our domination of Native Americans to the institution of African slavery using that ideology as a guide. And how that same ideology persists today in American democracy all these centuries later.

WHITE BIRTHRIGHT

I’ve written here about white privilege a number of times, but my most elaborate explanation can be found here, “Understanding White Privilege.”  But trying to explain this to uneducated white people is a lesson in futility! They get hung up on one word, privilege, and misunderstand that to mean family wealth or socio-economic status. I watched a video on the Troubled Waters YouTube channel the other day where the host, Reese Waters, talked to another black man about this problem. They agreed that the word “privilege” was the problem. We need a better word. I chose birthright.

I used it once already at the top of this post. It was the white man’s “God-given birthright” to take land that wasn’t theirs. Now, had they been of royal lineage, they would have had their own lands in Europe to claim as their BIRTHRIGHT. That’s how it works. Your birth into the right family, say the ruling class in Europe, would have given you this privilege. But the Puritans aboard the Mayflower TOOK this right as their own. It wasn’t really their privilege from birth. Yet, they believe GOD ordained it so. Again, Manifest Destiny wasn’t just the right of the wealthy, the ruling class. It was the birthright given to white Europeans BY THEIR DEITY! Thus, white birthright. 

And as the Khan Academy pointed out, this ideology, or way of seeing the world, still permeates our government, our society. I discuss this and make it very personal in my post titled “Systemic Racism.” It’s just as real as Manifest Destiny and white birthright.

So the next time you’re in conversation with ignorant white folks, choose your words more carefully. Words matter. Understanding matters.

If you’re a white person reading this and you still don’t get it. Imagine that your European ancestors had been rounded up, shackled to the hulls of a slave ship and transported half a world away, lying in their own feces, only to be auctioned like hogs in a foreign land. If you can imagine being free in your homeland one minute and a slave in unfamiliar territory with a whip across your back for making eye contact with your captor-owner the next, MAYBE these ideas will begin to crystallize.

WTF, AMERIKKKA???

 

I knew we had a supremely racist country stained with a bigoted past whose foundation was laid on the backs of slaves. Even still, the presidential candidacy of an Illinois Senator in 2008 gave us hope. Barack Obama ran his campaign of hope on the slogan, “Yes We Can” and won the presidency as the nation’s first African American to hold that office. And if that weren’t a monumental step forward for America, he was successful and earned a second term. My pride in America, faith in her Constitution and hope for our future was at an all-time high.

But there was a severe backlash across the largely red states in this country. The innate racism, a systemic issue affecting the heart of our democracy and tearing at the fabric of our union, reared its ugly head in response to eight years under a black progressive president. A crescendo from white Amerikkka, especially in “the Heartland” and “Bible Belt,” the poorest and least educated of our neighbors, built into a red wave which overtook our democracy and became MAGA World and Trumpism (aka The Cult of Trump). An outcry from the lower and middle class, that started with The Tea Party movement a year into Obama rule, bolstered by neo-Nazi and Confederate-loving rednecks, grew into a roar of the alt-right until neo-conservatism was overtaken by fascism and a sense of false national pride. Like post-World War I Germans, Christian Nationalists cried for the fatherland and a new white messiah to save it from the hoard of brown immigrants (“vermin,” just like the Jews had been to Germans). There was also a rise in anti-semitism JUST LIKE in Germany and in 1920’s Amerikkka. Yes, the height of the Ku Klux Klan in the good ol’ US of A!

That backlash is what got us a pornstar-fucking, reality TV star and fake billionaire playboy as president in 2016. The alt-right MAGA cult was now the ruling class. We saw what it unleashed immediately. The Klan’s hoods came off. They marched, unhooded, through the streets of Charlottesville in 2017, leading to violence. They even stormed our fucking Capitol waving Nazi and Confederate flags in 2021! UN-REAL!

Racism reared its ugly head in a very real way. Thank you, MAGAts.

The nation barely survived COVID, racial unrest, growing economic disparity, culture warfare and recession during the Dark Years of 45 and MAGA rule. But we booted his impeached ass out of office and replaced him with another rich, white dude and career politician. We threw a bunch of his cult-loving insurrectionist traitors into prison. We thought we had moved on.

Enter Kamala Harris. She was thrust into the political spotlight in what “the cult” saw as another coup. It wasn’t. It was a necessity. The old, white patriarchy—yeah, the ones who brought us slavery, America’s original sin—needed to be dismantled. The bi-racial woman of color seemed just the person to do that…finally.

Only racist, white Amerikkka wasn’t ready. The only thing worse than an African-American male candidate, apparently, IS A FEMALE. Ask Hilary Clinton.

The misogyny in this vast Republic of 330 million is very deeply rooted. The Christian Nationalists, whose archaic views take a very narrow and fundamental view of the Bible, hold women in shackles very much like their extremist cousins in the Middle East. I prefer to call these American terrorists the Christian Taliban because of their extremist views on women and their desperate need for theocracy. There’s a reason June Cleaver archetypes were so popular in 1950’s American culture. From this worldview, women should “know their place.” Or as 1 Corinthians 14:34 instructs, “Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” The shariah law of the Taliban demands it.

We saw the Harris/Walz campaign end Tuesday night in utter defeat. It wasn’t the first time a woman dared to shatter that last glass ceiling and begin to dismantle the patriarchy, propped up by centuries of white aristocracy (aka privilege). Hopefully, it won’t be the last. And her campaign of joy and hope, Obama at the forefront in the final month, fell on deaf ears.

But white Amerikkka spoke loudly. They said yes to a black male BUT HELL NO TO A WOMAN!

The first Trump administration rolled back women’s rights 50 years. White, Christian Amerikkka thought that didn’t go far enough. They want the Christian Taliban to roll them back 100 years to women’s suffrage, as outlined in their manifesto, Project 2025.

At least Hitler put his name to Mein Kampf and never distanced himself from his own playbook. Tim Walz tried to warn us. You don’t draw up a 900-page-plus playbook just to shelve it! You also don’t name its authors to your Presidential Transition Team, while publicly denying you even know these people. C’mon, mini Hitler, own up to your work! You are named more than 500 TIMES in its pages!

ITS MESSAGE: Women, know your place and keep silent!

Amerikkka shouted that from the top of the ballot box Tuesday.

My YouTube Channel

 My videos are raw and unedited. You’ll find the same topics discussed here—life, politics, sports and spirituality—on my YouTube channel.

In the above video, Deconstructing My Spirituality, I give an intro to how I got here. Like and leave a comment.