“Christian Nationalism” Used to Be Taboo. Now It’s All the Rage – By Molly Olmstead (Slate) / Aug 5, 2022
“If it makes the left or liberals upset, I’m more than willing to claim it.”
A year ago, calling someone a Christian nationalist was an insult.
The phrase was in the air after Jan. 6 rioters had come to the Capitol wielding Christian iconography and speaking of their cause as a religious crusade. Crosses and bibles and banners citing scripture were held aloft by a crowd calling to hang Mike Pence and overthrow a democratic election.
In the aftermath, as many horrified Republicans scrambled to condemn the violence, evangelical pastors decried “Christian nationalism” as deeply dangerous—especially in response to experts and reporters who noted that support for Trumpian extremism had become “inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America.”
Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called Christian nationalism “idolatrous” and pushed back on the idea that evangelical Christianity was linked to what had happened at the Capitol.
