12 Christian Nationalism and Revival

Amazingly, the “Christian” Nationalists seem to be all in, counter to any reasoned interpretation of what Jesus Christ actually stood for and against. It starts with an evangelical Jim Garlow in 2016 likening Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton to Jezebel … with some help here from ChatGPT 5.2:  “…he was not making a colorful remark. He was: delegitimizing female political authority; sanctifying opposition; transforming politics into moral warfare; justifying authoritarian instincts; and signaling alignment with a theo-political radicalization. Laura Field includes this example because it illustrates how the MAGA New Right weaponized religious myth to override democratic norms.” Yes, it did, to great effect:  It helped put a  pseudo-Christian, a person violating all standards of Christianity  --- immoral and unethical to the core --- into the Presidency.

Extreme Christian Charismatic Framing in Play

The same Jim Garlow had Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson the lead off speaker in a livestreamed Worldwide Prayer Network, as Field (2025, p. 276) notes was  framed by (quoting Garlow):  ‘To pray for holiness and righteousness and for Biblical justice, not social justice …  We’re way beyond the issue of partisanship. We’re way beyond the issue of Republican versus Democrat, or right versus left. Where we are squarely is right versus wrong, good versus evil, light versus darkness, biblical truth as opposed to anti-scriptural constructs, the things of God as opposed to the things of the evil one.’  Field points out that Speaker Johnson uses the same frame of thinking.

So, everything on the MAGA New Right is self-righteously associated with some God defined by Garlow, Johnson and other Christian Nationalists who claim special favor with said God, and everything on the Political Left is demonstrating evil associated with Satan. It explains the MAGA New Right in righteous demonization of “woke” and anyone on the Left who is guided by empathy-with (woke) the other. Garlow allows for the notion of a kind of dark empathy-with by in effect using neofascist framing, as in empathy-with the “us” who buy into the MAGA New Right claims and no empathy-with the “them” who stand in opposition. And, it is justified by the “them” being evil and serving Satan.  Really. Self-righteous, indeed.

Even the House Speaker Uses Extreme Charismatic Framing

Field (2025, p. 277-278) points to how “(then Representative, but would become House Speaker) Johnson began his prayer request: ‘What we need is a spiritual intervention from the God of the universe, the God in whom we Trust… We are different. We are a nation subservient to Him. The reason that we became the great nation that we did, as everybody on this call knows, was because that was the foundation, that we hold truths to be self-evident, because God created us all equally and gave us our rights … our nation has abandoned that …This is an inflection point. We are at a civilizational moment. The only question is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judgment for our collective sins, which his mercy and grace have held back for some time? Or is he going to give us one more chance to restore the foundations and return to Him? (and the) ‘terrible state that we’re in,’ citing a loss of faith in institutions, low church attendance, and a culture that is ‘so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable.’ He noted that ‘the number of people who do not believe in absolute truth is now above the majority for the first time.… We’re losing the country.’” Solution? Well, for starters, install a “Christian-prince” as the President.

Again, really, and, evidence please, including whether the Creator as envisioned by the Founders is a Him. It never ceases to amaze how religion can distort rationality and reason, as in such claims have little to no empirical credibility when serious and systematic inquiry in science and humanities is applied to the question of some claim of “abandonment” or even the very nature of a God, if there is one at all, in play.  It seems the Deism of the Founders is a far more defensible frame --- which is actually the only religion in play in the Constitution --- than that of the Extreme Christian Nationalism now coming even into the Halls of Congress, and imposed in an authoritarianism with a neofascist twist.

America Claimed a Christian Nation Without Credible Empirical Evidence

The story weaved by Field is detailed and complex, with the overall frame that the Christian Nationalists believe, and fully rationalize within that bubble, that America is Christian Nation.  Said Nationalists reflect an “embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad … America enjoys a world-historical situation analogous to the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and that God’s favor is bestowed or denied according to Americans’ adherence to Christian values … (reflected in a) Christian Founding Era (CFE) doctrine  … (which has worked to frame)  many … antifeminist, anti-LGBTQ religious organizations  … and outright rejects the religious pluralism of the present (Field 2025, pp. 279-280).”

Field (2025, p. 281) points to the controversial book by Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (2022).  The overall frame is that the moral and ethical dimension of the United States can only come from one source, the Christian Bible as interpretated, often read literally as in Biblical Christianity, and as applied by the Christian Nationalists. Quoting a MAGA New Right supporter by the name of Crenshaw, a  Christian Nationalist, the claim is that the United States was established as ‘a nation whose political institutions, laws, morals, and cultural mores are grounded on the truths of the Christian religion’ (Field 2025, p. 284).” Well, that amounts to a claim lacking in truth content, and on the edge of what some might call a Noble lie, but it is actually not Noble because, well, it is still a lie. Why? Well, the fact is the Founders were Deists, not using Christian claims of the Christian God being the source of all moral and ethical framing. It was something more akin to what the Right Wing calls Cultural Christianity, or even more broadly, a Cultural Constantly Evolving Religion, which might give some content to the shared other-interest, but certainly does not subsume it.  More nonsense, lacking in empirical credentials:  Crenshaw also called for installing a “Christian Prince” to the Presidency, essential to solving the non-problem.  

Clear the Founders Had No Plan to Form a Christian Nation

As one of the founders, James Madison (quoted by Field 2025, pp. 284-285) said, the Constitution was:  “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination  … (and as a case in point, from the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by a representative of George Washington) no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims).”  The 1787 Constitution certainly had nothing to do with etched in stone dictates read literally in old books like the bible, and supposedly only from some “Christian” God. It was about religious pluralism, period.  And, it was not about religious fundamentalism, or any other kind of fundamentalism (like market fundamentalism):   Rather, it was about framing a system for lots of talk, talk, talk among all people no matter the religious leaning in the search for sufficient reason to build a shared other-interest reasoned people could go along with.  In DIT terms, it was about Progress up a balanced, and ever evolving road 0Z not going backwards as the Conservatives always prefer. It is about the 1787 Constitution giving rise to 250 years of pluralistic evolution, and the need to keep going forward, and not going back to the Dark Enlightenment, going back toward the 1500s.

Field then turns to the role that Christian Nationalism played in the events leading up to, and then in actual implementation, on January 6, 2021. Field (2025, p. 287) highlights the Christian Charismatics, who “played an outsized role in organizing and supporting the Capitol insurrection The role that Christian nationalism played on January 6—and in the broader story of Trump’s rise—is one of the great neglected stories of the era.”

Truth Content of No Accord to Charismatics

In exploring the role of the Charismatics and others who went along for purpose of taking power, it is captured well here:  “Truth becomes irrelevant once revelation is asserted (from my query using ChatGPT 5.2)” --- yes, indeed.  Believing Donald Trump was being put into power by God positions said believer to do whatever it takes to ensure that happens. It is about fighting on the side of God against “Satanic” forces. So, acting as in the assault on the Capital is reframed as being moral.

Field (2025, pp. 287-290) points to a specific group within the Charismatics, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which is a subset of the broader network. Quoting author religion scholar Matthew Taylor from the 2024 book The Violent Take It by Force:  “the distinctive prophecy-driven, charismatic spirituality of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) provided the Christian stage-setting to January 6, tying together what would otherwise seem like a bizarre array of Christian expressions .. (NAR represents an) “amorphous, tumultuous Wild West of the modern church… (said independent) … Charismatic communities are the epicenter of Christian Trumpism … the fringe becoming the rug.”

It is claimed that God speaks to said people directly, putting same into action.  Pentecostalism is represented in said way of thinking, with one of the first from said frame to enter the political realm being Sarah Palin. House Speaker Johnson is another with said mindset. Televangelist Paul White, too, who came to have a substantive interaction with Donald Trump:  As journalist Sarah Posner has explained, Trump was always --- Field (2025, p. 289) quoting Posner:  “more like a televangelist than a politician…” so the influence of White came into play, as both use the televangelist way.  And, often truth content is optional, as in say what serves purpose.

As Field (2025, pp. 290-291) sums it up:  “The New Right gave intellectuals a justificatory rationale for Trumpism; the evangelical right helped to provide that for conservative Christians. In both cases the fringe became the weave, and in both cases the fabrics stayed intact, and were even strengthened and reinforced, after January 6, 2021, at which time the new ‘Lost Cause’ narrative gained momentum.”  Fringe, it is, proclaimed by the current Administration as giving some kind of mandate: It is not. It is the kind of faction now in power about which the Founders knew full well could emerge.

Dominion Theology and the Seven Mountains of Domination in Play

Field (2025, p. 291) also points to Dominion Theology, and the “…  Charismatic, Pentecostal variation on Dominion Theology that delineates the seven distinctive ‘mountains’ that are ripe for Christian takeover and control: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government …  the Charismatic version of Yarvin’s destruction of the Cathedral and ‘Retire All Government Employees,’ of Catholic ‘integration from within,’ or of Rufo and Roberts’s ‘march through the institutions  … (including) the influencer Charlie Kirk and the prophet Lance Wallnau … as Christian nationalists.

Unfortunately, such framing often brings “theologies of violence, the ideation of violence, and the romanticization of spiritual violence that have grown up in Charismatic evangelicalism. It is about the culture of violent rhetoric that has spread from there into broader American Christianity and into American politics … a movement that rejects, in the strongest possible terms, the idea of church-state separation, and seeks to dominate and control all areas of public life (Field 2025, p. 292).”

Field (2025, pp. 293-295) points especially to the political scientist Stephen Wolff and the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism. In some ways, it brings even more extreme views into play. The overall idea is to restore (if ever it was so, a questionable claim, and DIT wants empirical evidence) total Christian dominance in American politics, business, and society. Using DIT, it is about God writing the law, God giving all the content to the shared other-interest, the content to all institutions in play ---  “submission to the sovereignty of the triune God … Wolfe’s thinking stands in stark opposition to mainstream American liberalism. And as with Christian Founding Era doctrine, Wolfe’s reading of the past dismisses all modern Enlightenment influences as deeply misguided. Indeed, Wolfe’s version of Christianity is so austere that it is not altogether clear whom his audience is.”

Misogyny, Homophobia and Nazi Philosophy Commonly Put into Play

Field (2025, p. 296) points out the book is nuanced, but sums it up this way:  “First, Wolfe’s politics are deeply misogynist. His work is utterly Schmittian, and for him the enemy is the contemporary liberal regime, which he prefers to call, echoing BAP, ‘gynocracy… We live under a gynocracy—a rule of women. This may not be apparent on the surface, since men still run many things. But the governing virtues of America are feminine vices, associated with certain feminine virtues, such as empathy, fairness, and equality.”  Amazing, as DIT clarifies with rigorous empirical support that empathy-with the other is key to a stable society and, yes, is essential to achieving economic viability and efficiency. 

Field (2025, p. 296) continues:  “Second, Wolfe is dedicated to a reactionary aestheticized politics of domination. His book includes encomiums to the possibilities of “Great men,” the possibilities of “heroic masculinity,” and new feats of the will, and, more specifically, to the possibility of a great “Christian Prince” who will lead the whole to greatness and do “everything in his power to make his people’s culture, as a whole, Christian… (book includes) pleas for revolution against the current regime and acknowledges that if a minority of Christians can constitute a secure government ‘for true justice and the complete good,’ then they do not have to care about the consent of non-Christians. He says that non-Christians deserve justice, peace, and safety, but not political equality; heretics and atheists will be treated harshly.” So much for We the People under the frame of the 1787 Constitution.

Field (2025, p. 298) frames the Wolfe claims this way, as in modern fascism we might call neofascism, using the   “historically informed accounts of fascism out there, several of which include lists of archetypal features of fascist movements—things like ‘nostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration … the universalizing universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups … anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity (quoting some modern writing on fascism)’ … Wolfe knows how to check those boxes.” Yet, as Field (2025, p. 298) points out, Wolfe can also be less strident, less in the neofascist frame in the call for Americans to be “self-consciously Christian.”  We might suppose that would be about ascribing to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love … but, then, Wolfe denies any substantive role for love, as empathy-with the other is some kind of a  “feminine virtue” only, and not to be given much attention.

That seems very un-Christian. And, as DIT makes clear, other virtues must  also be in play, most of same having a Pagan origin, as not only prudence and courage, but also temperance and justice both of which are only possible from the frame of empathy-with.  It seems Wolfe needs a lesson in DIT from Metaeconomics, which would give some empirical basis for testing the claims.

Moral and Ethical Dimension Can Only be Sourced from the Christian God

Field also refers to an especially intriguing, from the frame of DIT, conversation with a Clifford Humphrey, at a conference where Wolfe had laid out the self-conscious Christian frame.  The conversation turned to the source of the moral and ethical dimension, with Humphrey as a fundamentalist claiming such things as absolutes laid down by God, so Field (and all other reasoned people) are only and exclusively moral relativists.  Field (2025, p. 299) responded:  “I said that while I believed in principles, I thought that they did change over time, and ultimately had to be negotiated by democratic peoples—and that such shifts were not arbitrary impositions. In our system, people had to show up, reason things through, persuade and campaign hard, protest and organize, and win free and fair elections. At one point he tried to put me in the majoritarian, winner-takes-all Stephen Douglas camp in a manner reminiscent of the 1776 Report. We were both frustrated. I was reminded how hard it is to defend liberal pluralism and epistemology against bull-headed self-certainty and fundamentalism.”  Hard, indeed.

Field (2025, p. 299) goes on to talk about Claremont Institute event that had a panel organized to “What the Right Can Learn from the Left.”  It included complete mockery of anything progressive and left-wing, including mocking the LGBTQ+ community, as in just make total fun of same. As Field (2025, p. 300) says:  “It was vile and hateful.”  It is amazing how “Christians” can be so vile and hateful?  Just asking. The panel turned to the need to “control the (local) sheriff’s office” so such things as Covid distancing and masking would not be enforced, and the need to go after any progressive professor as in “Get’em” and other such nonsense.

Field (2025, p. 301 ) then turns to a DeSantis retreat, a meeting in Florida, where several from the MAGA New Right gathered to explore topics like “… ‘How to Counter the Regime with Red States’ … included tips on how to make the state into a counterrevolutionary force ‘against the woke regime.’”  In DIT terms, any form of empathy-with, other than the dark empathy with the New Right, is to be assaulted.

Field (2025, p. 302) closes the Christian Nationalist story with:  “And so it was that by 2024 the Claremonters, as well as their more genuinely devout NatCon and Postliberal colleagues, were cooperating with the likes of Donald Trump, with sincere extremists like those who constitute the Charismatic world, and with creeps like Stephen Wolfe. It was, in the end, the Enlightenment philosophers who made them do it.”  Irony, indeed.  The Dark Enlightenment, often with neofascist, and clearly authoritarian framing, is here.