The Enabling
In The Atlantic, Adam Serwer wrote an important article describing those who have enabled Trump and the MAGA movement, The Unwitting Trump Enablers (January 19, 2024). The basis of Serwer’s essay is a Ross Douthat one in the New York Times, Why Jan.6 Wasn’t An Insurrection (January 12, 2024), Ross Douthat demonstrates yet again the enabling. In Four Ways of Looking at Christian Nationalism (March 1, 2024), Douthat enables and minimizes, this time for the Christian nationalists who are the backbone of Trump’s new drive for the presidency. It’s a sure sign of a threat from the right if Douthat is rushing out to minimize it.
Douthat creates four definitions of “Christian nationalism,” which he then accuses others of conflating. The fourth is just Douthat doing what he accuses “liberals” of doing: using a broad brush to lump disparate people together. It’s a common trait in Douthat essays. He makes vague allegations about “liberals” smearing a broad category of the right based on a few statements from those he considered “liberals.” This fourth definition is, in short, “Christian nationalism is anything liberals don’t like.” Douthat makes no attempt to show those he’s criticizing agree with his definitions or with each other. He just invents his own definitions and decides the critics are conflating the first three and relying on his fourth.
Douthat does a lot of conflating of his own. I haven’t seen anyone criticizing or expressing concern about Christian nationalism conflate Christian nationalists with Christians. That’s left to enablers like Douthat, who insist “liberals” are accusing all Christians and all Christian expression of being nationalist. This would be news to Christian liberals who are concerned about Christian nationalism, but we’re not suffering Douthat’s need to minimize and enable everything on the right.
David French has a much more thoughtful and considered essay in the New York Times on Christian nationalism, What is Christian Nationalism, Exactly? (February 25, 2024). French recognizes Christian doesn’t mean Christian nationalism. Douthat conflates Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail and the Declaration of Independence with the goals of Christian nationalism. French is more honest. He points out the difference between political beliefs and actions informed by religious belief and a political ideology which makes one religion supreme in the nation. Christian nationalists espouse what disgraced, retired LTG Michael Flynn expressed in a speech in November of 2021: ““If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.”
French closes citing a 2023 PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey, which shows about 10% of the population self-identifies as Christian nationalist. He rightly recognizes this is significant, stating “even members of a minority that small can gain outsize power when they fold themselves into the larger Christian electorate.” As Liliana Mason showed in Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, the simple act of identifying with something is powerful. People who are Christians are susceptible to the rhetoric and beliefs of Christian nationalists simply by the fact of being Christian. Enablers like Douthat, who attempt to prevent honest and reasonable criticism of the threat help Christian nationalists extend their reach.
