Would you like a government that reflects your Christian beliefs? If so then congratulations, you’re a threat to democracy! Or so says Rob Reiner, who produced a movie meant to alarm you about Christian nationalism, He even tweeted that Christian nationalism is “a danger to Christianity itself.”

His message, and his movie, joins an already noisy crowd just dying to tell you that applying Christianity to politics is wrong. Andrew Whitehead, writing in Time magazine, declares that it’s all about political power:

Christian nationalism is about power. Power in the “right” hands to ensure the U.S. fulfills its covenant with God. However, democracy demands we share power. This places Christian nationalism at odds with democracy.

The complainers are trying to box Christians out of politics. But Christians are meant to influence all of society, including its political life. When we teach society about right and wrong, both in making laws and interpreting them, we’re actually evangelizing. Thus, with politics we’re certainly supposed to both instruct and participate. John Adams agrees with this sentiment, saying this about Christians in politics:

Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, … Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Influencing and reinforcing a Christian society turns out to be a never-ending job. We all need constant reminding of who we are and what we stand for. When we neglect these reminders then society starts straying to evil concepts, with changes for the worse.

To avoid becoming the very worst, we Christians must renew our evangelism to America. This article explores the topics:

• The consequences of not defending our culture from non-Christian influences.
• The need to constantly remember what we believe in.
• Defusing lies meant to to turn us away from believing in ourselves and our culture.
• How to be diligent again in defense of American Christian culture.

Consequences of not defending our Christian culture

Suppose that American society comes to conclusions like:

• It’s discriminatory to expect people to conform to the expectations of Christian culture.
• What right do I have to gainsay another person’s concepts of right and wrong?
• Don’t judge me by your imaginary sky buddy!

When society comes to these conclusions, it is abandoning its Christian heritage. What sort of consequences can arise from this direction? Here are some suggestions for you to mull over.

Just shut up. You’ll learn that your “misinformation” about God offends people. And preaching Jesus becomes hate speech.

Lawyers representing the government reportedly maintained that the charges against Dunn were “proportionate” to his words, and they used Old Testament teachings about the death penalty to argue that “there are references in the Bible which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be deemed offensive if stated in public.”

Removing the of rule of law. A society not afraid of God also wants to be free from legal constraints. So why be bounded by ancient laws? Call the Constitution obsolete, and overturn those bounds.

“The Constitution is merely a piece of paper in the face of the monopoly on violence and capital possessed by those who intend to keep things just the way they are,” said legal theorist Mari Matsuda.

…

In place of the existing interpretation, the critical race theorists proposed a three-part overhaul of the American system of governance: abandoning the “colorblind” notion of equality, redistributing wealth along racial lines, and restricting speech that is deemed “hateful.”

…

Taken together, the three pillars of the critical race theorists’ ideal system of governance—the replacement of individual rights with group rights, the race-based redistribution of wealth, the suppression of speech based on a racial and political calculus—constitute a change in political regime.

Under the ideology of the critical race theory, the meaning of the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the protections of private property would be demolished. The result would be a form of tyranny: the state would not only control the distribution of material resources, as in a collectivist economic regime, but would also extend its domain over individual psychology, speech, expression, and behavior.

These twin goals—material and nonmaterial reapportionment—would be achieved through the heavy hand of the state, which would be granted unprecedented intrusion into public and private life.

Conform, or else. The ultimate form of “conform or else” is a social credit system. The Chinese seem to like the concept of “the Mark of the Beast.”

The target, eventually, is that the government system will be country wide, with businesses given a “unified social credit code” and citizens an identity number, all linked to permanent record. “If you go to a credit China website, and you have an entity’s credit code, you can type that in and pull up credit records,” explains Hoffman. “Individuals will have ID-linked codes.” It’s less a score, she says, and more of a record.

Some reports talk about a blacklist; that’s part of the official government social credit system, which means if you owe the government money, for example, you could lose certain rights. There’s a difference between getting a low social credit score and being blacklisted by the government, such as for refusing to pay a fine.

…

Liu Hu is a journalist in China, writing about censorship and government corruption. Because of his work, Liu has been arrested and fined — and blacklisted. Liu found he was named on a List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People’s Court as “not qualified” to buy a plane ticket, and banned from travelling some train lines, buying property, or taking out a loan.

“There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to,” he told The Globe and Mail. “What’s really scary is there’s nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

What recourse is there? With the government system, if you want to be removed from a blacklist, you can either pay your bill or appeal to the court, says Jing Zeng, a researcher at the University of Zurich.

“Bring your money to the court and then you get removed from the system,” she says. “It’s not a judicial system by itself, it’s still the court you need to [appeal to].”

Opponents of the state are removed from society, perhaps killed. A society unbound from the fear of God will have no problem with disposing any objectors. Perhaps you’ll be declared certifiably crazy for spouting “misinformation” against the New Order:

During the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used to disable and remove from society political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted the official dogma.

After all, it’s already claimed that believing in God is a mental illness. Or perhaps the it will be easier to simply imprison and kill “the enemies of the people,” as in the Chinese Cultural Revolution:

After the failure of Mao’s economic Great Leap Forward, a program of collectivization that resulted in tens of millions of deaths, Mao saw the Cultural Revolution as a way to turn things around:

“Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road … so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”

…

The 10 years of the revolution, Branigan writes, “were savage, unrelenting, and extraordinarily destructive. The violence and hatred terrorized the nation, annihilated much of its culture, and killed key leaders and thinkers.”

No one was safe, as factions split into smaller factions and China’s government turned on anyone who wasn’t fully committed to a new society. Teachers, intellectuals, artists, the religious — all were humiliated, removed, and murdered. Education, once a way of acquiring status and respect, was suspect.

…

In his book, The People’s Revolution: A Cultural History, China expert Frank Dikotter observes that Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and have him become “the man who leads planet Earth into communism.” The result of this is evident in pictures from time: purges, torture, rallies, propaganda posters, and executions.

“We were told that we needed to use violence to destroy a class, spiritually and physically,” one eyewitness account reveals. “That was justification enough for torturing someone. They weren’t considered human anymore.”

Failing to continually evangelize

Suppose that American society really does experience these horrors. Some Christians might claim that this somehow proves our faithfulness, that we “suffer for the sake of righteousness” (I Peter 3:14). However, I think that this persecution and suffering (I Peter 3:17) would occur because our Christian society got lazy, forgot about God’s promises, and didn’t evangelize our own children.

Have we forgotten that Christianity is always one generation from extinction? Of course God will preserve a remnant for Himself. But most people will be allowed to find the perdition they earnestly seek. Look at Judges 2:10-12, where only thirty years after conquering the Promised Land Israel abandoned the God who brought them out of Egypt.

The parents failed to teach their own children about God’s very obvious intervention in their lives (Exodus 13:8-16). Also examine this roll of famous congregations of faith in American history. What happened to them? Their congregations stopped caring, for their faith was not that of their forefathers.

Christians need to teach and reteach our faith and culture, to both the children and the adults. That’s because forgetting is so easy. If Israel had remembered to perform this reminder task, commanded by Deuteronomy 31:10-13, then perhaps they wouldn’t have quickly fallen into idolatry. We need to reinforce our beliefs, remembering the features of our Christian culture that make it desirable and exceptional.

Cultures change because people some tout the virtues of other, competing cultures and they get believed. If we don’t value what we currently have, we’ll become enticed by the new things we’ll hear. Acting on these temptations are how competing non-Christian yeast gets worked into society.

That’s why Christian evangelism must never stop. We must constantly remind ourselves, and those we live near, why our Christian-based society is so valuable to us.

Conquered because of our indifference

It’s hard to get a faithful Christian-based society to abide unbiblical laws. If you impose unjust rules on the people they will oppose them, and strive to change them. I’ve explored this topic in my article American Christians, Tyranny, and Resistance.

If you want to advance anti-Christian laws then you must first make that culture ready to receive them. Try promoting these arguments:

• Using religious influence in society is wrong or unimportant.
• We must be a multicultural society, giving equal weight to non-Christian values.
• There is no absolute truth. Truth is relative, and depends on context.

This sort of advertising creates doubt about our cultural values. People will wonder whether opposing demands for change is worth the effort. Instead of having pride and ownership in our Christian culture, you’ll see indifference and perhaps revulsion. People might even apologize for being Christian. Such a demoralized society will now accept all sorts of changes without opposition. After all, why bother defending a culture that you’re no longer proud of?

America was founded by a Christian people, and designed to be a Christian society. Our generation has been given this culture and society, both as a gift and as a responsibility to succeeding generations. We have something here to be proud of, and it’s worth defending. Your part in this begins with understanding the good things that our Christian culture brings.

American Christian culture stands accused

In trying to shame us all, activists have brought what seem to be powerful complaints: systemic racism, white privilege, Christian nationalism. We’re supposed to be cowed into inaction by this name calling, letting these activists overturn our lives. In reality, these complaints shouldn’t bother us at all because they have no meaning or weight. Let’s see the shadows they’re throwing at us, and why we’ve nothing to feel guilty about.

Systemic racism is merely creative statistics

Activists claim that American culture has “systemic racism.” Dr. Nikki Cole said in an article that

…the United States was founded as a racist society, that racism is thus embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society.

According to systemic racism, if you can measure differences between black groups and non-black groups then there must be built-in racism. The government must now rush in to enforce “equitable results.” This results in permanent, and legally approved, racist discrimination.

Ibram Kendi, who invented antiracism, takes things to their logical conclusion. He’s pushing the idea that the government should solve systemic racism by permanently preventing racist thought crimes:

To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

But systemic racism isn’t something you can see. There are no acts of systemic racism. You can find it only through certain statistical studies, custom-designed to reach a desired conclusion. Christopher Rufo calls this approach a Marxist revolution, saying:

With regard to public policy, critical race theory’s key analytical and rhetorical framework is to portray every instance of racial disparity as evidence of racial discrimination. In the metaphor of one recent paper, “white supremacy” is the “spider in our web of causation” that leads to “immense disparity in wealth, access to resources, segregation, and thus, family well-being.” To adopt the vocabulary of the race theorists, the forces of “hegemonic whiteness” have created society’s current inequalities, which we can overcome only by “dismantling,” “decolonizing,” and “deconstructing” that whiteness. In their theoretical formulations, the critical race theorists reduce the social order to an equation of power, which they propose to overturn through a countervailing application of force.

Practically, by defining every disparity between racial groups as an expression of “systemic racism,” the critical race theorists lay the foundation for a political program of revolution. If, in the widely traveled phrase of author bell hooks, American society is an “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” radical changes are needed. Although critical race theory has sought in some cases to distinguish itself from Marxism, the leading policy proposals from critical race theorists are focused on the race-based redistribution of wealth and power—a kind of identity-based rather than class-based Marxism.

When race-blaming studies are used to guide public policy, it will result in increased racism. But in a Christian-based society an individual is to be judged by his or her words and deeds, not by riches, neighborhood, or skin color. In a word, Biblical justice is to be colorblind.

To summarize, it’s dishonest to claim systemic racism. It’s used because these activists can’t find enough actual racism to complain about. What’s more, they don’t want to fix any racism they might uncover. They instead want to smash our society, implementing a non-Christian society in its place. Their “racism!” cries ring false.

Where is this so-called white supremacy?

Critics of American culture are obsessed with “whiteness.” They complain about white privilege, white supremacy, white culture, and so on. According to CASEL, the organization that gets to set the agenda for Illinois’ schools,[xx] students find it hard to learn because “we are operating in spaces of white supremacy. We’re in spaces of whiteness.”

But what do these critics mean by “white?” One common use of this word concerns skin color or race. People with European ancestors used to be called “Caucasian,” but that word became unfashionable. So “people whose ancestors came from Europe” are now called “white.”

But skin color doesn’t define a culture. After all, black people in Africa have Christian cultures, Muslim ones, and tribal ones.

Perhaps the critics use “white” to mean to patterns of thought and behavior. For example, Coca-Cola employees were told by DEI trainers to “be less white.” This version of “white” refers to Christian thought, as we’ll see in the next section. But Christianity is professed all around the world by people of all races. It contains nothing about racial superiority.

What about those white supremacists found at public events, trying to get your attention? So what of them? There are also black supremacists, and Hispanic supremacists. Whichever brand of supremacist you see, they’ve all been rejected by American society. Their claims of racial superiority aren’t found in our cultural values.

Where, then, might this white supremacy be found? All that’s left to the critics is to claim some invisible “all around us” racist influence. You can’t see this supremacy, or feel it, or touch it. Yet they say it’s there, and is responsible for amazing things. For example, Jennifer Ho, who champions Critical Race Theory, writes that white supremacy causes blacks to be racist:

The point I’ve made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy. So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.

White supremacy is an ideology, a pattern of values and beliefs that are ingrained in nearly every system and institution in the U.S. It is a belief that to be white is to be human and invested with inalienable universal rights and that to be not-white means you are less than human – a disposable object for others to abuse and misuse.

The dehumanization of Asian people by U.S. society is driven by white supremacy and not by any Black person who may or may not hate Asians.

If white supremacy is this intangible, then it can mean whatever you need it to mean. Perhaps white supremacy is all about corporate profits:

White supremacy is the promotion of an immigration policy that declares certain groups of people worthy or unworthy based on their ability to generate profit for corporations and using the success of your ancestors as its justification.

In summary, modern American culture contains no white supremacy. Not any more, at least. There are no policies saying “you are less human because of your race.” There is only the invented concept of invisible influence, a claim with literally no substance.

Christian culture favors Christian values

I believe that this hate of whiteness is actually slightly disguised hate of Christianity. Replace “white” with “Christian” and the complaints become ones about Christian privilege, Christian supremacy, Christian culture, etc. “White” is also an old term for European Christian culture. For example, Rudyard Kipling wrote The White Man’s Burden way back in 1899, commenting on Europe’s self-imposed burden to Europeanize, and perhaps Christianize, various foreign lands.

America started with a Christian culture because the founding colonists wanted it that way. They taught their children to like it, and so on through the years. Everybody living in America, except for the most recent immigrants, have lived in a Christian culture for all their lives.

Some people argue that the United States wasn’t founded as a Christian nation because the Founding Fathers were deists, etc. But this claim rings false, because American culture doesn’t come from big-name politicians or generals. The nation is its people, and they were overwhelmingly Christian. Their community values and worldview made America a Christian nation.

To illustrate this, suppose that the Founding Fathers tried to base our government on Muslim values. That attempt would have been universally rejected, as being incompatible with the society’s Christian worldview. We’d also be celebrating some other people as Founding Fathers because the “Muslim values” proponents would be judged as untrustworthy.

Richard Jagers, a “social emotional learning” researcher for CASEL, claims that black people live under the thumb of a “dominant culture.”

As a result, SEL work can be understood with regard to what ways it advances resistance to oppression and collective well-being for a range of disenfranchised groups. Briefly, oppression entails a state of asymmetric power relations characterized by domination and subordination, such that dominating persons or groups exercise their power to restrict access to material resources and convince both the dominant and subordinated groups that such arrangements are justified. Resistance can lead to freedom to determine, pursue, and attain collective economic, educational, and health-related well-being.

But it’s not as though black people in the inner cities just came from Africa and are forced to live under a Christian culture for the first time. Everyone in America, black and white alike, has always lived in this “dominant culture,” and never as part of a subordinate culture. Note that there always is just one dominant culture at a time, and the society’s laws come out of that. It’s a falsehood to claim oppression from America’s “dominant culture.”

Christians ought to be proud, and not ashamed, of a God-honoring Christian culture. Such a culture is the end result of faithfully practicing the Great Commission. We’re meant to convert all of society, in all of the world, and not settle for a multicultural society.

A functioning Christian culture will favor deeds deriving from Christian beliefs. This amounts to cultural Christian supremacy. There is nothing unusual in that. For example, a Muslim society operates on Muslim principles, a Muslim supremacy. A society expects its people to conform to its norms.

To conclude, Christians aspire to create a Christian culture. To “act less Christian” in a Christian culture means abandoning that culture. And acting less Christian is a terrible thing.

Christian nationalism threatens America?

What is this Christian nationalism, that we should be afraid of it? There is what Christians think it is, and then there is what its critics wish it were. A Christian nationalist believes that a Christian nation naturally grows from Christian evangelism.

• The Great Commission calls us, Jesus’ followers, to “make disciples of all the nations… teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
• We learn to conform our desires, preferences, and activities to always honor God. Because non-Christians view us as role models, as “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16), we become change agents in society – yeast, as it were (Matthew 13:33).
• The result of our preferences and role modeling is a society that prefers, and encourages, the behaviors, attitudes, and trappings of Christianity. This society also discourages ideas and activities that challenge the collective beliefs.
• A society in a particular geographical region amounts to a nation. It needs ways of ensuring justice, domestic order, and protection from external marauders. In effect, it wants a suitable government.
• A Christian society forms its government from its people. Note that this government doesn’t impose Christianity on the nation. Rather, the laws are Christian-based because the society wants it that way. The government’s laws are downstream of the nation’s culture.

A largely Christian nation will want ethics and laws that honor Christian principles. A nation that doesn’t know if it wants to be Christian will be torn over challenges to its morals. Its virtues and laws will go back and forth on such moral topics. And a nation that’s indifferent to Christianity won’t resist, and will probably applaud, “newly found” civil rights. For example, a proposed civil right that a child has the right to choose his or her own family.

From a young age children will be given the choice to leave the family home and live in social homes, or on their own, with their food and home being guaranteed for free. In communism, children will be allowed to do anything which does not harm themselves or others; and they will be free to do more risky things from a much younger age than they are now, as soon as they demonstrate they have the rational capacity to take decisions. No arbitrary restrictions, indoctrination nor censorship would take place.

Not everybody likes a Christian culture, and many will try to weaken it. One way to reduce its acceptance is to deride it, to make supporting the very concept seem odious. My article Discouraging evangelism by slandering Christian nationalism reviewed a book trying to do just that. The book Taking America Back For God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, is perhaps the book for defaming Christian nationalism. It’s also the source for myriads of “me-too” articles that reference it. Here is its definition of Christian nationalism:

Simply put, Christian nationalism is a cultural framework – a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems – that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. But the “Christianity” of Christian nationalism is of a particular sort. We do not mean Christianity here as a general, meta-category including all expressions of orthodox Christian theology. Nor will we use terms such as “evangelicalism” or “white conservative Protestantism” (to the extent that these represent certain theological-interpretative positions) as synonyms for Christian nationalism. On the contrary, the “Christianity” of Christian nationalism represents something more than religion. As we will show, it includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious. Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and always should be distinctively “Christian” (reflecting this fuller, more nuanced sense of the term) from top to bottom – in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values, and public policies – and it aims to keep it that way. (page 10)

This passage, and the rest of the book, claims that American Christian political preferences are focused not on morals, but merely on grasping political power. From their book:

• Christian nationalism is about power, not religion. “Appeals to someone’s religion, in this case Christianity, may involve a plea to live out transcendent Christian values of love, mercy, or justice. Appeals to Christian nationalism, by contrast, involve either a proprietary claim or a call to arms, always in response to a perceived threat. In short, Christian nationalism is all about power.” (page 86)
• Christian nationalism is rooted in white supremacy. “Not only do Ambassadors prefer clear racial boundaries, but because “Christian heritage” has historically been shorthand for “white-dominated society,” Christian nationalism is also closely linked with a preference for racial subordination.” (pages 101-102)

“Christian nationalism idealizes a mythic society in which real Americans – white, native-born, mostly Protestants – maintain control over access to society’s social, cultural, and political institutions, and “others” remain in their proper place.” (pages 118-119)

• Christian nationalists want to enslave women. “So why would Christian nationalism still influence abortion attitudes even after the usual suspects like religiosity and political ideology have been accounted for? Ultimately, we contend the connection is found in the identity itself and in Christian nationalism’s commitment to male authority over women’s bodies.” (pages 75-76)
• Converting people to Christ is somehow bad. “… it is Americans’ private worlds that strong Christian nationalists are most desperate to influence. This is actually the case for all reactionary movements, American Christian nationalism being a textbook example.” (page 123)

That last quote has humor about it. The authors want Christians to get out of public life. Then they then complain that evangelism will influence people’s personal lives.

Samuel Perry and another confederate, Phillip Gorski, collaborated on a different book about Christian nationalism, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. In a joint interview to promote their book, the describe what they say is “white Christian nationalism.” Gorski claims that white Christian nationalism is all about Christians keeping the black man down, through violence if required:

And, in particular, I think here it’s important to understand this thing that we call the “holy trinity” of white Christian nationalism in the book: freedom, order, and violence. Which means a kind of libertarian freedom for people like us — “us” being, above all, straight, white, native-born Christian men — order for everybody else, which means racial and gender order above all else, and that kind of righteous violence directed against anybody who violates that order.

His colleague Perry complements this with his own comments:

And I think the link is this kind of appeal, as Phil was talking about, where this is a part of that holy trinity — this idea that “Freedom for us amounts to freedom to control who has access to violence” and “We control problem populations. We ensure order through the access to violence.” That could be physical violence but also the authoritarian removal of access and opportunities from others to be able to participate in democracy.

Perry calls white Christian nationalism a form of fascism:

And yet there are so many parallels between White Christian nationalist ideology and the point of ideology that Jason Stanley talks about that ends up resulting in kind of a fascist situation of radical ultra-nationalism characterized by strong male leadership around a populist myth, anti-elites, anti-cities, patriarchal, pro-fertility, extreme sexual anxiety about homosexuals in our case right now, at this moment in our country’s history. It’s not just anti-gay, but it’s also anti-trans men and women. So, I think there are so many parallels that White Christian nationalism should be understood as a kind of on-ramp to full-blown, fascist-style politics.

Through their comments, Perry and Gorski show that they’re saying the same things as are found in the Taking America Back For God book. What have Whitehead, Perry, and Gorski actually said about Christian nationalism, and by inference about Christians in politics?

They created a “straw man” version of religiously-active Christians. Their version of Christian nationalism means to slander people who are bringing Christian values to politics. They call these people a cabal of white bigots, who cloak their power politics in religious terms.

They intend to confuse people with their straw man model of Christian politics. These authors sometimes say “white Christian nationalism,” and sometimes “Christian nationalism.” They give only lip service to distinguishing between the two labels. Casual readers figure that they mean the same thing. They get the impression is that anyone promoting biblical values in politics is one of those racist power-hungry white guys.

Any politics they hate are called threats to “democracy.” Do you oppose homosexuality, condemn transgender politics, and want to rub out political corruption? Then you’re threatening democracy. Perry says that Christian nationalism is “killer asteroid” dangerous:

Just speaking really quickly as to what can be done about it, I think we are faced with a problem that transcends traditional partisan lines and a lot of cultural lines. It requires a coalition of people who recognize this is a threat. If we were all convinced that one year from now an asteroid was going to strike the earth, we would, I hope, put aside petty differences in order to try to work together to solve this common problem. And we are as a nation and as a world facing common asteroids that are coming to kill us. One of those was COVID. One would hope we would unite together to cooperate to solve the problem of this pandemic. Another one that we are facing is climate change. And white Christian nationalism represents an American manifestation of a global trend toward authoritarian populist regimes, and anybody who values democracy and legal equality and representation and liberal democracy in that regard is facing a problem.

These so-called researchers – I say “so-called” because of their faulty, inadequate research in Taking America Back For God – took counsel with their fears and created their falsehoods. They’re afraid of a real Christian revival, so they invented their fake descriptions of Christian nationalism. Their research in no way supports their conclusions. It’s apparent that the conclusions came first, after which they cobbled together some findings to support their arguments.

But in reality, Christians bringing their values to politics, and to our laws, is a good thing for America.

The trusted media sources who sold you Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation hoax, and “transitory” inflation, are at least this time right about one thing: Christian nationalism is real, and it’s gaining traction. It’s biblical, it’s America First, but it’s not “white.” It’s not about a white supremacist “Christian Taliban” installing a theocracy, idolizing the nation, or in any way rewriting this country’s great Republican constitutional model.

In fact, Christian nationalism is entirely consistent with that model. The Declaration of Independence vests the sovereign power with the people, on loan to the government, and entrusts the state with the responsibility of safeguarding the individual’s Creator-endowed rights. In asserting that “the United Colonies are and ought to be Free and Independent States,” the signers appealed to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of [their] intentions” and committed themselves to “the protection of Divine Providence.” If nationalists believe that government should prioritize the interests of the country and the people, Christian nationalists believe, as did the Founders, they should do so under the banner of God.

Your evangelism helps defend our Christian culture

Once enough people in a community decide that they like some ideas, society will change its laws to align with its new preferences. Preserving a stable Christian culture depends on being aware of new ideas, and countering the bad ones before they take root. This means that Christians must constantly re-evangelize their own communities.

Cultures rarely have sudden changes. These occur mostly when a nation gets conquered, such as Russia by the Bolsheviks, or Pol Pot’s communists in Cambodia. Without a war cultures change slowly, sometimes so gradually that the changes aren’t noticed for a long while. Here is a three-step plan for dealing with gradual cultural changes.

Recognize changes when they’re still small:

Get a good grounding in what you believe. For example, read the Bible regularly. Then when you read the news, and listen to what is happening locally, you will recognize where and how new ideas or plans conflict with Christian values.

Rouse people:

If you learn of something to be concerned about, tell others who aren’t as plugged in as you are. In the musical The Music Man, the salesman Harold Hill tells the townsfolk about an acute imminent danger:

Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.

This song means to amuse us, but its technique of alarm is legitimate. Spreading the news is what all special interest groups do. Go ahead and get loud, and tell people of the danger you’ve discovered.

Reversing changes:

Perhaps you have been loud and insistent, but people still choose to do the “wrong thing.” This happens all the time. For example, look at America’s experience with homosexual marriage:

A decade ago, homosexualist activists were arguing that legalizing same-sex “marriage” was all about “acceptance” and “love,” and that it would have absolutely no impact on the daily life of most ordinary citizens. Opponents of same-sex “marriage” were routinely mocked with statements like: “How is it any of your business what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?”, or, “If you don’t support gay marriage, don’t get one.” In other words: why get yourself worked up about something that has nothing to do with you?

However, just as pro-family advocates warned at the time, things haven’t turned out that way.

There are just too many examples of how same-sex “marriage”, and LGBT ideology in general, have impacted the daily lives of every citizen to cite in a single column. We saw this in a dramatic way throughout June – so-called “pride month.” One could scarcely open a website, or walk down the street, without being confronted by rainbow flags or other overt celebrations of licentious sexual practices. Many schools, libraries, and city and state legislatures flew the flag and held “pride” celebrations, while any effort to question the wisdom of using public buildings in this way was immediately shouted down as “homophobia” and bigotry.

This experience shows that sometimes people simply insist on wanting the wrong things. As recounted in Jeremiah 44:16, “As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you!”

Yet our words and arguments aren’t in vain. Note that American society really hasn’t embraced homosexual marriage. Look around, and you still see active propaganda campaigns.

They’re still trying to force people to believe that “same sex” marriages are normal. It shows that American society still hasn’t decided what it really wants. So more, and persistent, evangelism might yet set things right in America.

One more time: evangelize or else

If Christians don’t promote God’s word, and remind society about what is right and wrong, then who will? We can’t expect truth out of non-Christian people, “who do not know the difference between their right and left hand” (Jonah 4:11).

If we don’t evangelize, then what will keep America Christian?

Remember that any society can repent, and begin to do the right things. The book of Jonah will tell you all about it.