There is an American reality called Christian nationalism, and a major dimension of it is white. Its deep story has recently been broken into four chapters sorting out the history of forming white Christian nationalism. The book is by two professors, Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry, and their new book is called The Flag and the Cross.
To repeat what I have already said in this Tov Book Club series, I became aware of Perry first in a book he wrote with Andrew Whitehead called Taking America Back for God, and then I became aware of some earlier work by Gorski, especially his two books American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, and American Babylon: Christianity and Democracy Before and After Trump.
The challenge to the dominant American story was the proposal to date the story at 1619 in order to suffuse the story with its inherent racism and slavery. The proposal of 1619 was challenged by the traditional dominant story by rehearsing the 1776 story. Gorski and Perry — recognizing the importance of the (always) neglected arrival of kidnapped Africans in what is now called the USA in 1619, without also denying the significance of 1776 — propose that about 1690 the beginning of a dominant story began to develop, the date when kidnapped, enslaved Africans were placed on the soil of the New World and a legitimating story began to be formed.
This chapter is amazing, and it deserves to be read by all Christian leaders.
They break the story into four dates: 1689 and King Philipp’s War, then 1763 with the French and Indian Wars, and then 1889 with the Spanish American War, and then finally 1989’s ending of the Cold War. Each “period” helped to form the deep story they think needs to be told of American history.
1690: Puritans, who were by no means all alike, especially Puritans like Cotton Mather and family, formed a narrative that saw themselves as the New Israel with the land as the Promised Land, claims that were not embraced by all and especially not the land’s native persons and tribes, and that narrative became apocalyptic at times – Christ vs Anti Christ. King Philipp’s War led deaths beyond counting but the Puritans galvanized the story into “white Puritan chosen-ness.” The racist posture here was underdeveloped but it was there. (Nice couple paragraphs on an exception named Roger Williams.)
1763: an economically-driven, slave-backed self-perception and identity in the “New World” identified white with free, black with slave, and red with savage. Slavery was commonly permitted for heathens and war captives, but the colonies were facing a lack of laborers for their tobacco and sugar produce. They needed a theology to legitimate it. There were pre-Adamites without a soul, and there was the curse of Ham. They pinned this on the kidnapped, enslaved Africans: they were cursed and slavery exposed them to Christianity. In spite of some voices opposing slavery and opposing on theological grounds (Samuel Sewall, for instance), a narrative that whiteness had formed. Western Europe was in a battle over the lands and resources of the New World. Three wars sealed the narrative: French and Indian Wars, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. First the colonies leaned toward the British but the Revolution broke that tie. It yielded White, Protestant Christian, Nationalism. To side originally with the British meant Protestant; to be against Britain meant opposing native Americans and kidnapped, enslaved Africans. But America missed the vision of Roger Williams’ Providence Colony and William Penn’s Colony where one could experience a more consistent, radical democracy.
1889: here the American frontier closes and American becomes an empire, and inherent to it was whiteness, divine providence, and a national identity. What formed was WASP imperialism. They call this deep story the “spirit of 1690.” It disenfranchised displaced Africans, displaced native Americans, and began to displace native Mexicans, as well as persons from China and Japan. The liberations of the Reconstruction were defeated by the politicians and the economics, and the narratives that soon formed, like the Civil War as northern aggression and states’ rights and the Lost Cause myth. Victimhood in the south forms; manifest destiny and postmillennialism; racism comes to the fore even more with (pseudo)science and the development of a hierarchical theory of the races and whiteness (and its shades). Anglo Protestants were the true Americans. Empire forms in defeating the Mexicans. They assert that this was more formed by liberal mainline Prots than the more conservative evangelical types, like William Jennings Bryan.
1989: here a White Judeo-Christian Nation forms, and by 1989 it had passed on to conservative white evangelicals. The turn did not happen over abortion but over Brown v. Board of Education. The catalyst for the Religious Right was racism and racial integration pressures. Race cut the Democratic party. They mixed into the brew apocalyptic millennialism. Christian nationalism correlates high with rapture theology. The same group used more rhetoric of color blindedness and the strategy was conversion, along with an obsession about sexual sins. Add to this also Christian libertarianism and free market capitalism, esp in the Reagan era. Rushdoony, Gary North, Abraham Kuyper, and Dave Ramsey as its popularizer.
Over the past couple of years, this rise of Christian Nationalism has become so clear that I'm left wondering how I failed to see it for what it is. I'm embarrassed by it, really.
This book is thorough and so well-done, but it also fills me with so much emotion (anger and sadness, mostly). And I am frustrated that (as I believe Tisby pointed out in the foreword) those who are actively promoting Christian Nationalism will not read it or, if they do, will not take any of it seriously. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to find hope for the American Evangelical Church!
Oh, for a grand audience to these words.