According to a study released last month by the Public Religion Research Institute; more than a third of Texans agree with the following five statements: The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation. U.S. laws should be based on Christian values. If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore. Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. Such agreement indicates what is known as Christian nationalism. Worse yet Texas is only slightly above the national average. In Louisiana 46% agree with those statements while in Mississippi 50% agree.
Americans under 50 years of age or who have earned a bachelors degree or higher are far less likely to be Christian nationalists. Gender isn’t an indicator, as men and women are equally likely to be Christian nationalists. The percentage of Christian nationalists among Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks are nearly the same. The big indicator is the variant of Christianity someone belongs to, two thirds of members of evangelical Protestant congregations are Christian nationalists as opposed to about a third for Catholic and mainline Protestant congregations. The biggest concentration of Christian nationalists is among the followers of prosperity gospel purveyors such as Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, John Hagee, T. D. Jakes, and Paula White.
The higher the percentage of Christian nationalists in a given state the more likely that state is to vote Republican and the more likely the voters there are to support Trump. That’s bad enough, what’s worse is more than a third of those folks also believe political violence may be justified. That means that should Trump lose in November, as I believe is likely, 1 in 10 Texans may very well support a violent attempt to over turn the election.
Aside from the threat of political violence perpetrated by Christian nationalists the other thing the rest of us need to worry about is their desire to base U.S. law on their distorted interpretation of the bible. They’ve already succeeded in denying many women bodily autonomy. They’re working on denying rights to the LGBTQ members of our society. The Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, wants to go back to the days when women were denied the right to vote. Where will they stop?
As an excuse to eliminate public agencies like the Department of Education, Republicans often claim that if it isn’t in the constitution then the federal government isn’t allowed to do it. At the same time nothing in the constitution says the country is a Christian nation and in fact the reverse is true, in Article VI it says: “but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Then to make it even more clear the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Either Republicans and Christian nationalists haven’t read the Constitution or they don’t understand it.
In November it is important that everyone votes to reject Christian nationalism which means voting against Republicans from top to bottom.
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