The Jan. 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol drew recent
attention to the phenomenon of Christian nationalism, but
religious and spiritual leaders acknowledge its existence
long before that.
This article is the fourth in a series on Christian
nationalism supported by the Pulitzer Center.
***
(RNS) — Shannon Rivers believes that Indigenous people
are the moral compass of the United States.
A member of the Native American Akimel O’otham, or River
People of the Southwestern U.S., Rivers points to
historical accounts of the northeastern Wampanoag, who in
the 1600s taught the Pilgrims how to grow crops and
weather harsh winters.
“We were the ones who had that initial moral
understanding of how you take care of one another and we
still maintain that today, despite every wrong that has
been done,” said Rivers, who is a spiritual counselor for
incarcerated Native Americans. “Indigenous peoples still
gather. They still pray for those who are settler
societies.”
The Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol introduced
many Americans to the phenomenon of Christian
nationalism, as some of the rioters carried crosses or
invoked the name of Jesus. But for many non-Christian
Americans, Christian nationalism is an unavoidable fact
of life.
Rivers said the history of Christian nationalism began
when the European settlers answered the Native Americans’
welcome with a belief that divine providence had ordained
their domination of Indigenous land.
Rivers said that to confront Christian nationalism
honestly, churches and other houses of worship need to
focus on a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493
known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Though it gave
theological justification for colonization as the
Americas were occupied by European powers, Alexander’s
bull threaded its way into United States law, providing
the basis for a key 1823 Supreme Court decision awarding
the American West to the U.S.
Any conversation about America as a Christian nation,
Rivers argued, begins with the philosophical eradication
of Native Americans’ right to their homes. “We must be
part of the larger conversation because you can’t just
have talks about religion and spiritual beliefs without
understanding the people that were here first,” Rivers
said. “You’re just ignoring a long history of the wrongs
that these Christians, unfortunately, committed.”
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels of Beth Shir Shalom, a Reform
synagogue in Santa Monica, California, said the roots of
Christian nationalism go back further, to the Christian
belief that Jesus was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy
and made Judaism obsolete.
“Christianity came along and it assumed that it
superseded Judaism and the Jewish covenant,” said Comess-
Daniels, who also works as a rabbi-in-residence at a
Lutheran church. (Comess-Daniels made national headlines
in 2018 when he delivered a Rosh Hashana sermon
denouncing Stephen Miller, a former congregant who was
serving as an adviser to then-President Donald Trump, for
Miller’s role in the family separation crisis at the
border.)
Jewish Americans, said Comess-Daniels, experience
Christian nationalism through this antisemitic lens. In
the United States, “there seems to be a Christian
default,” he said.
Comess-Daniels and Rivers were among several faith
leaders who spoke at a November panel discussion on
Christian nationalism sponsored by the California Poor
People’s Campaign and held at First African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. Another speaker, the
Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the Poor People’s
Campaign, said Christian nationalism is so wedded to
American ideals that its influence “goes beyond those who
identify with its ideology, even those who consider
themselves religious.”
But Theoharis told the audience that churches reinforce a
message “that God loves white Christian America, favors
small government and big business, and rewards
individualism and entrepreneurship, but meanwhile, the
poor, people of color, immigrants, queer people, women —
we’re blamed for society’s problems,” Theoharis said.
Religious nationalism is not the sole province of
Christianity, according to Tahil Sharma, an interfaith
and social justice activist in LA. A Sikh and Hindu,
Sharma said he has faced nationalism on two fronts:
Christian nationalism in the U.S. and Hindu nationalism
in India.
There are parallels between the two, Sharma said,
pointing to how Hindu nationalists see his opposition to
India’s caste system, despite being of a higher caste
himself. It’s “a spit in the face,” he said. While
nationalists would say he is disrespecting his ancestors
by disavowing caste, “I in no conscience of my own can
accept the fact that that should be a part of a faith
tradition.”
In certain Hindu communities, “if you are critical of
rituals or the caste system, you are assumed to be
Hinduphobic.”
Christian nationalism, Sharma said, similarly plays on
Americans’ emotions by stoking a “falsified idea of
patriotism.” Hindus in India and Christians in the United
States want to consider themselves as exceptional.
“You’re just talking about a different majority context.”
Sharma, regional coordinator for North America at the
United Religions Initiative, said white Christians need
to work with other faith groups to fight religious
nationalism. “Christian people have to do a better job in
… being accomplices to folks in the work of social and
racial justice,” he said.
Comess-Daniels agreed that it’s crucial for different
religious groups to defend one another but said they need
to go beyond simply denouncing Christian nationalism.
He recalled how, during an outbreak of antisemitism in
1993 in Billings, Montana, the townspeople united after a
brick went through the bedroom window of a Jewish boy who
displayed a menorah for Hanukkah. Thousands of residents
placed paper menorahs in their windows as an act of
solidarity.
In 2017, after Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in St.
Louis, Muslim activist Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-
Messidi, the founding director of CelebrateMercy, helped
fundraise thousands of dollars to repair vandalized
headstones.
“Those kind of responses are real pure. That’s the
potential of America,” Comess-Daniels said.
“We all need to stand up together,” the rabbi said. “It’s
much more powerful and much more effective in this
country in particular because deep down, I think that
most Americans understand that we are a pluralistic
society and we’re all supposed to be here.”
For Tasneem Farah Noor, an interfaith minister-in-
residence with the Southern California Episcopal Diocese,
Christian nationalism is “embedded in so many different
aspects of everyday society.”
Noor, who came to the U.S. from Pakistan with her family
as a 15-year-old, said she’s learned how to take
ownership of her Muslim identity after the Sept. 11
attacks. It was a moment for her to advocate for a Muslim
identity that was antithetical to terrorism, bombing and
taking of lives. “I wouldn’t be Muslim if that’s what it
meant,” she said.
When she saw the Christian symbols at the Jan. 6
insurrection, Noor said, those actions brought Americans
face-to-face with the fact that “This is America. It’s
our nation,” she said. “It was very much like, ‘OK. I’m
American and Americans look like this.”
--pics and more at link
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