SPIRITUAL BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Christian Nationalists cloak rhetoric that promises broad benefits to all Americans when the Christian Nationalist movement gains control of all governments. That is the theme of their propaganda, but the truth is that the movement only benefits Christian Nationalist leaders with political power and material wealth. The truth is that what is good for the Christian Nationalists always means hardship for someone else. Political and religious activism is always a zero-sum game. When Christian Nationalists win, someone else loses. We see this equation at work every day in the news. If we know how to interpret it, we also see this equation at work throughout the bible.

The ironic truth is that the winners and the losers share have the same spiritual roots: The literal words of the bible. The only differences between name brand, legacy religions and Christian Nationalists are in how those literal words are interpreted and applied in doctrine and religious practice.

History tells us that there has never been real peace within and between the Abrahamic religions even though they claim to follow the same God. Religious dominance and submission has always been the reason for interreligious conflict between spiritual brothers and sisters.  Moreover, there has always been intrareligious conflict. Sharing the same spiritual roots has never been a good enough reason for different religions to get along.

The Old Testament reports intrareligious division between the northern and southern tribes of Israel. The New Testament reports interreligious  conflict between Jews and Christians. The crusades and reformation are exceptional examples of bloody interreligious religious disputes played out in a never-ending series of religious conflicts. Even today we see denominations splitting because of doctrinal disputes.

Doctrinal differences are spread across the spectrum of Christian, Muslim and Jewish denominations. At one end of the spectrum, some sects are relatively obscure and benign. Historical, mainline religions know their place in the fabric of American religious culture and are content to maintain their share of the Christian religious market. Not so with the Christian Nationalists who are not content with their share of the United States of America religious kingdom. At the extreme end of the religion spectrum, Christian Nationalists are visible, malignant, and on the move to colonize the nation for God’s glory (so they say) and their control.

Historically, when a religious sect believes God has given it the right understanding of scripture, it mobilizes to force the other religions to adopt that understanding. The case of Christian Nationalism is only the most recent iteration of this history, thus proving what God has said about nothing new under the sun.

Christian Nationalists are at the visible, malignant end of the spectrum even though their doctrines and practices emerge from belief in the same God and the same literal words of the bible read by their spiritual brothers and sisters: Catholics, all protestant sects and Muslims. In fact, Christian Nationalists’ fears of Muslims is evidence that the seeds of historical, interreligious, conflict between the two religions still produce bad fruit.

Sharing a common Christian heritage does not deter Christian Nationalists from wanting to convert all brands of religion to the Christian Nationalism brand. Finding all other religious brands doctrinally deficient  and inferior to the Christian Nationalism brand of Christianity, Christian Nationalists see full conversion to their brand of Christianity as the goal that will earn God’s full blessing for them and America. They have said as much without shame or hesitancy in their Seven Mountains Mandate.

Motivated by unshakeable self-righteousness, Christian Nationalists are fully committed to religious imperialism that presumes to absorb all religions into theirs.