I just read Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry’s book The Flag and the Cross and it was eye-opening to say the least. It helps me see why I have named this website “Christian Minus Christianity”–really it’s just an attempt to filter out white Christian nationalism. Reading books like this is essential to that process. According to the authors, “white Christian nationalism is not just a deep story about what was; it is also a political vision of what should be” (6).

I think the part that was most shocking to me–and the whole book was disturbing–was the vindication of violence if it’s for a righteous cause.

White Christian nationalists will say that they are against all forms of violence, and yet then will also have ideas like this: “the best way to stop bad guys with guns is to have good guys with guns,” “the biggest problem with the death penalty is we don’t use it enough,” “authorities should be able to use any means necessary to keep law and order,” “if national security is at risk, I support the use of torture.”

To explain this the authors write, “Though white Christian nationalism was only weakly related with white Americans’ views toward violence in general, here it is not only associated with support for ‘righteous violence,’ but it is far and away the strongest predictor in each of our models. The more white Americans seek to institutionalize ‘Christian values’ or the nation’s Christian identity, the more they support gun-toting good guys taking on (real or imagined) gun-toting bad guys, the more frequent use of the death penalty, any-means-necessary policing, and even torture as an interrogation technique’” (96-97).

Pertinent to Palestine in particular was that by the mid-2000’s there was a strong correlation between white Americans’ nationalist ideology and confidence in the Rapture and Armageddon really happening (69). Zionism, and Israeli ethno-nationalism, are intrinsically linked to that.

Really, it’s the systemic issues that the powerful aren’t aware of. If powerful people hold these beliefs, the impact is systemic inequality, what is best termed “systemic injustice.” If you see this through a ethno-racialized lens, which is the case in the United States and Israel, it is systemic ethno-racialized injustice.

A nationalist ethnocracy.

This is why the authors say white Christian nationalism is a threat to American democracy. It has been a threat to it from the first colonies.