The Outstater
A Defense of ‘Christian Nationalism’
THE GENERATION now managing our words — the activist journalists and social-media influencers — seem to think nothing happened before they were born. No, they can’t really believe that on mature reflection, but they do act like that in practice. And with that state of mind comes the compulsion to rename everything to fit the narrative of the moment.
A prominent example is “antifi” to describe the disgruntled among us, a segment of the human heart since the beginning of time. The current version is to be disgruntled about supposed far-right ideologies, white “supremacy,” authority, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and so forth.
Note that “supremacy,” as so many of the words being reworked, needs scare quotes because it has a new meaning. It now lumps all of Anglo-Saxon achievement (formerly called western civilization) with that sliver of humans of all stripes who think they are genetically or otherwise superior to their neighbors in every regard.
This new lexicon can get perverse. The term “antifa” itself is short for anti-fascist, a term favored by the early Communists to differentiate themselves from their fellow socialists in the Fascist movement. Now it infers opposition to Republicans, who have nothing to do with communism, socialism or fascism.
All of this Newspeak is wrapped into a series of articles by the Indianapolis Star, yesterday morning’s installment entitled, “The Ku Klux Klan once ruled Indiana. Is its rhetoric returning?” The gist is that the Klan (something that happened before the authors were born) is an example of something the writers want opposed (Christian nationalism).
Drill down a bit further and you realize that “Christian nationalism” is the authors’ way of describing simply how Americans not too long ago thought of themselves. But again, this was before the authors were born so it must be viewed as either bad or irrelevant. In this case, it is bad — so bad that it relates to burning crosses and lynchings.
Nonetheless, for the purpose here I accept their term. As such, though, I would ask them to understand how an older generation came upon its Christianity and its nationalism. They might be surprised to learn that the descriptions are hard-earned.
Many of us, as in every generation, had to find our faith individually with false starts and backward steps, agonizing reappraisal and abject confession — we had to find our salvation, if you will. We wear the Christian label not as a badge but as an expression of extreme gratitude that recognizes our utter unworthiness. There is not an ounce of judgement to it.
The political scientist Charles Murray has written a new book, “Taking Religion Seriously,” that tracks his own strenuous path to Christianity. The Star writers would do well to read it. There is much in there that obviously has never occurred to them, much that makes their portrayal of Christians shallow and ignorant.
I will lean on personal history to address the second part of the defamation. By “nationalist,” the Star means not-right-thinking, that is, not a collection of definite ideas on the relationship between citizen and government as described in the Declaration of Independence but rather someone who doesn’t understand that America is a fluid amoral, poly-cultural economic zone blazing a new world order.
That last, sad to say, would have been an acceptable definition for me as a callow student. I tacitly protested the Vietnam War, for instance, although my objection was more from the threat of being drafted into jungle combat than any sense of geo-political balance.
My year in Vietnam, however, taught me something quite else. All countries and cultures are not the same. Everything is not relative. There are not two sides to every story. And if a man is going to live an honorable life, there is such a thing as duty, a recognition that some ideas are worth fighting for — absolutes that touch on eternal truths, ideas more profound than today’s headlines or Twitter posts, ideas that may not fit a generation’s zeitgeist.
“Christian nationalism,” is one of them. — tcl
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