{"id":46293,"date":"2024-01-08T22:19:07","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T05:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=46293"},"modified":"2024-01-08T22:19:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T05:19:07","slug":"christian-nationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/01\/christian-nationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Nationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One type of journalism I particularly enjoy not reading is the LDS-shaped hole in long-form articles about the agonies of American Christianity.<!--more--> Of course the Church faces challenges in the U.S., but it isn\u2019t currently dealing with or facing an imminent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/united-methodists-lose-one-fifth-of-u-s-churches-in-schism-over-lgbtq-rights\">separation into competing denominations<\/a>. Church leadership is not currently on a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/pope-francis-vatican-conservatives-abortion-us-bbfc346c117bd9ae68a1963478bea6b3\">collision course with its most committed members<\/a>. Where other faiths are looking at how going all in for Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2024\/01\/evangelical-christian-nationalism-trump\/676150\/\">harmed their witness<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.thebulwark.com\/p\/from-evangelicalism-to-trumpism-kristin-du-mez\">wondering what went wrong<\/a>, we get occasional reminders to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thechurchnews.com\/leaders\/2023\/6\/6\/23751117\/first-presidency-letter-emphasizes-participation-in-elections-reaffirms-political-neutrality\">avoid party-line voting or politicking at church<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And there isn\u2019t currently a Mormon flavor of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2023\/04\/03\/how-christian-is-christian-nationalism\">Christian Nationalism<\/a>. Despite a tradition of investing the United States and the Constitution with religious significance, there\u2019s a notable lack of Mormon intellectuals advancing the possibility of minoritarian religious rule as the solution to the nation\u2019s ills. We don\u2019t have general authorities publicly contemplating the end of the liberal order.<\/p>\n<p>To address the whatabouts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>DezNat doesn\u2019t count. From what I can tell, all their manifesto amounts to is the claim that it\u2019s okay to be jerks online (it\u2019s not). The DezNats who have been unmasked are bank tellers, not think tankers. If they\u2019re still around, they\u2019re an inconsequential online sideshow without influence. I don\u2019t think they even fall within a broad definition of Christian Nationalism, as their goals seem to be limited to being jerks online.<\/li>\n<li>Voting for Trump doesn\u2019t count. Republicans voting for the Republican candidate, conservatives voting for the conservative party, and religious voters voting for the candidate that seems better aligned with their preferences <em>do not constitute Christian Nationalism<\/em>. It\u2019s just democracy in action. If you don\u2019t want to see it keep happening, you\u2019ll have to persuade them to vote for candidates or policies that you prefer. Trump is a menace, but the discussion would be a lot easier if people would avoid mistaking core elements of democracy \u2013 such as voters making choices you disagree with \u2013 for Christian Nationalism.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s not entirely unreasonable to wonder about the attractions Christian Nationalism might hold for Latter-day Saints. We actually have some institutional experience with theocracy, and to be honest, I think if we had to do it again, we\u2019d be relatively good at it. I mean, you\u2019d hate it and I\u2019d hate it, but compared to the alternatives, you could do a lot worse. For Catholicism, the peak alignment sacral and secular rule came during the High Middle Ages when the Holy Roman Empire and papacy were at their height, while for Protestants, the absolute monarchies of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries represent the pinnacle. In contrast, the Mormon theocracies of Nauvoo and Utah were built under the overarching structure of American Constitutionalism and <a href=\"https:\/\/bycommonconsent.com\/2022\/07\/28\/christian-nationalist-is-incompatible-with-mormonism\/\">made explicit provision for religious pluralism<\/a>. Like I said, we\u2019d all hate it, but if someone forces you to pick a variety of theocracy to live under, maybe give us a call? You could do a lot worse.<\/p>\n<p>But the truth is that reviving the Great Basin Kingdom isn\u2019t on anyone&#8217;s agenda. The theorists of illiberalism are not interested in making room for Greater Deseret as one element in a rich tapestry of post-American regional despotisms. Not only do Latter-day Saints revere the Constitution, our lost golden age isn\u2019t the nineteenth century \u2013 it\u2019s the recently departed postwar decades where we were within shouting distance of the American mainstream. The basic reason that Christian Nationalism holds no appeal is simply the recognition that pluralism and liberal democracy is the best we can hope for. There is no illiberal future, either under a post-liberal successor ideology or a minoritarian Christian Nationalism, where we would be anything but barely tolerated outsiders at best, if not candidates for re-education or forcible conversion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One type of journalism I particularly enjoy not reading is the LDS-shaped hole in long-form articles about the agonies of American Christianity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46297,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293\/revisions\/46297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}