Samuel Damren
In the “The Flag + The Cross, White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy,” published in 2022, sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry answer three questions about MAGA Republicans that perplex other Americans.
Why do MAGA Republicans brush aside the violence of the January 6 insurrection as legitimate political discourse instead of condemning it?
Why do MAGA Republicans continue to assert the “Big Lie” – that Trump won the 2020 presidential election – after courts and election commissions have repeatedly found that voter fraud played no role in Joe Biden’s victory?
Why do MAGA Republicans put American democracy at risk?
Gorski and Perry couple historical analysis with research surveys that examine individual responses to specific social issues measured by what they define as the “Christian Nationalist Scale.” Through multi-point graphs of these responses, they identify and illustrate correlations between those issues, political perspectives and group identification.
The correlation between the views of White Christian Nationalists and MAGA Republicans is strong. The views of White Christian Nationalists correlate far less with mainstream Christian denominations.
The absence of the latter correlation is not surprising given that the leader of MAGA Republicans is Donald Trump. All one has to do is contrast Trump traits with traditional Christian values: greed v. charity, revenge v. forgiveness, narcissism v. love for others, loyalty to Trump v. reverence for Scripture, violence v. peacemaking, racism v. one people under God, cruelty v. compassion … The list is endless.
To explain the disconnect, in chapter 2 of their book, Gorski and Perry isolate and discuss a distinct strain of American Christianity. It formed during the colonial period based on a set of Puritan/Protestant beliefs that provided religious cover to enslavers, the slave trade, and to the theft of indigenous lands.
According to the authors, that strain became the foundation for a “holy trinity of racial order, Christian freedom and male violence” which subsequently provided similar cover to the slave States of the Union, the Confederacy, “Jim Crow” South, the KKK, segregationists and now to MAGA Republications. As their modus operandi, these groups embraced white and Christian “freedoms” but denied equivalent “freedoms” to non-whites and other religions.
Given this historical record, White Christian Nationalists might be more accurately termed “CINOs” – Christian In Name Only.
Through surveys, Gorski and Perry found that MAGA Republicans viewed the January 6 insurrectionists as exercising legitimate political “rights” “freedoms” and “liberties,” including violence, which were, from their perspective, exclusively within the province of white Americans to exercise.
In contrast, in the summer of 2020, when then President Trump ordered troops to disperse peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters near the Capitol with tear-gas so he could stride uninvited to historic St. John’s Church with Bible in hand, surveys demonstrated that MAGA Republicans believed that to restore “law and order,” the protestors deserved harsh treatment.
For generations, to White Christian Nationalists the meaning of that code phrase, “law and order,” meant to restore “racial order” through violent means, whether in Wilmington, Tulsa, Little Rock, Selma, Minneapolis or countless other communities.
White Christian Nationalists use a racial lens to determine civil rights in America, which also explains MAGA Republicans perpetuation of the Big Lie.
It is not that MAGA Republicans can’t count votes. Rather, it is that MAGA Republicans believe that too many of the votes in the 2020 Presidential election were cast by individuals who were not “worthy” or were not “Real Americans” – code words for white supremacy. From their perspective, if only the votes of “worthy” or “Real Americans” had been counted in 2020, Trump would have won.
As to the reason why MAGA Republicans continue to put American democracy at risk by animating political violence, Gorski and Perry have a simple answer.
From the inception of the republic, White Christian Nationalist support for democratic institutions has always been contingent on whether those institutions act to preserve white rule. When they do not, White Christian Nationalists have consistently chosen authoritarian rule and violence over democracy just as they did on January 6, 2021.
In this respect, MAGA Republicans share the same admiration for authoritarian leaders as their leader Donald Trump exhibits for Vladmir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
This observation answers a fourth perplexing question – why is Trump enamored with corrupt, cruel authoritarian rulers?
He wants to be one.
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Samuel Damren is an attorney and author.
