Weaponizing Jesus Christ – The Violent Christian Nationalists

Weaponizing Jesus Christ – The Violent Christian Nationalists

From democracy to “theonomy,” by force if necessary

“If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.” Trump Jan. 6, 2021 Trump repeated at a September Wisconsin rally: If he doesn’t win, migrants “will walk into your kitchen. They will cut your throat…You won’t have a country anymore.”

Those words inspire violence. We live in a new era of the ends justify the means, where pastors with significantly large congregations instruct their flocks to do whatever is necessary to ensure liberalism is purged from our governance, structured so it can never return. With billionaires, including two who became “pastors” funding the effort (discussed below), there’s a new super-MAGA GOP that wants it clear: the United States is a Christian nation, and that was the intent of our founding fathers. It wasn’t, as Thomas Jefferson made abundantly clear. The new goal: unleash the economy from government, cut taxes to the bone, purge foreign engagements, shove undocumented immigrants out of the country by all means necessary and impose a fundamentalist Christian wall around all things cultural or scientific. They call that theonomy, masquerading as a new form of democracy, which it most certainly is not.

With assistance from Trump/Vance manufactured statistics, that body of immigrants with lower crime statistics than American-born citizens, is falsely presented in this Trumpian truth: “It was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during Kamala’s three and a half year period as Border Czar.” A non-existing alternative fact. Swallowed wholesale. The politics of fear generates “whatever it takes” election manipulation. “Tethering migration to murder not only creates an inaccurate impression of immigrants; it also wrongly suggests that violent crime is out of control more broadly. In fact, violent crime has remained at historical lows for the last two decades , according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.” Daniel P. Mears and Bryan Holmes for the October 21st Los Angeles Times. For those egging Christian faithful into “self-defense” violent usurpation, it is a powerful justification that goes beyond mere replacement theory.

Writing for the October 12th Mother Jones, Abby Vesoulis drills into this movement under the title of A Growing Movement Seeks to Dominate Not Just Religion, But American Life. Some excerpts: “There’s a quickly growing religious movement whose followers believe Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States. The New Apostolic Reformation [NAR], as it’s known, seeks an explicitly Christian command of the highest levels of the government, including the presidency and the Supreme Court—but its leaders are working on the hyper-local level, too… [We] traveled to a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to see how these Christian nationalists have inserted their ideology into the very fabric of local civic life rather than merely be the ‘head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians.’…

“[There is a growing message emanating from the pulpit of many evangelical churches, an] elusive, hard-to-pin-down New Apostolic Reformation movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God… ‘Estimates of Christians influenced by NAR vary widely, from 3 million to 33 million,’ wrote Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler… [who] noted, ‘Its laser focus on starting a spiritual war to Christianize America has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call NAR ‘the greatest threat to US democracy that you have never heard of.'” As this dark message increasingly seeps into small town churches and beyond, an army of believers is preparing for an actual war.

The effort to demonize becomes far worse than mere labeling. “Christian nationalist leaders are telling followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a ‘Jezebel spirit,’ using a term with deeply racist and misogynistic roots that is setting off alarm bells for religious and political scholars… The concept is inspired by the biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and was punished with a horrible death. The word ‘Jezebel’ was used during slavery and throughout U.S. history to describe Black women, casting them as overtly sexual and untrustworthy.

“In the context of ‘Jezebel spirit,’ the term has sinister connotations, suggesting the person is under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. People who have studied the Jan. 6 insurrection warn that similar rhetoric on spiritual warfare drove many to the U.S. Capitol that day… ‘People … are hearing this woman is possessed by a demonic spirit that is hardcore, terrible, hates men, hates authority, is going to do whatever she wants to do,’ said Anthea Butler, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book ‘White Evangelical Racism,’ who has studied the New Apostolic Reformation.” Isabella Volmert and Michelle R. Smith for the Associated Press, October 18th. Under the guise of some form of democracy (which is a complete misnomer), NAR seeks to replace the Constitution with a Christian-driven directive, while eliminating governmental regulations on business, from environmental to financial. Back to the funding billionaires with an un-hidden agenda.

As Ava Kofman, writing for the October 2nd NY Times, investigates how this movement has been implemented in Texas as two billionaires, self-imbued evangelical pastors, are reshaping what they believe is model for future America: “[State representative Glenn] Rogers, a 68-year-old rancher and grandfather of five, represents a rural district west of Fort Worth. He was proud to serve in a Legislature that, as he told me recently, ‘couldn’t be more conservative if it tried.’ Since entering office in 2021, he co-authored legislation that allowed Texans to carry handguns without a permit, supported the Heartbeat Act that grants citizens the right to sue abortion providers and voted to give the police the power to arrest suspected undocumented migrants in schools and hospitals. In a Statehouse packed with debate-me agitators, he was comparatively soft-spoken — a former professor of veterinary medicine with an aversion to grandstanding… [But Rogers was too independent and unwilling to ‘kiss the ring’ of the real powers in Texas. So…]

“In reality, Rogers had disappointed two men: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. ‘They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,’ he says. ‘You kiss the ring or you’re out.’

“Like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and other conservative billionaires, Dunn and Wilks want to slash regulations and taxes. Their endgame, however, is more radical: not just to limit the government but also to steer it toward Christian rule. ‘It’s hard to think of other megafunders in the country as big on the theocratic end of the spectrum,’ says Peter Montgomery, who oversees the Right Wing Watch project at People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.” Darkness and fear are rising like floodwaters from recent hurricanes, doing even more damage.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while the violence likely to come if Trump does not win, it may be even worse if he does.