Zone1 What Is Christian Nationalism?

Gotta bring in the LOGIC and SEMANTICS facts here

1) To be christian and nationalist CANNOT automatically add up to CN
That would mean the only real nationalist must be an atheist
2)Just because you support X and are a Christian CANNOT automatically mean you support it BECAUSE you are Christian
3) The main impetus to this movement that you malign was an Orthodox Jew !!!!
4) By some of your characterizations, the Founders would be CN
. In his Farewell Address of September 1796, Washington called religion, as the source of morality, "a necessary spring of popular government," while Adams claimed that statesmen "may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand."
There's the Nation and there's Christianity or at the very least BIBLE religion
5) The Founding owes much to Roman and Greek thought but its base is JEWISH
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

John Adams
 
5) The Founding owes much to Roman and Greek thought but its base is JEWISH
Fortunately, our founding fathers established what we now know as freedom of religion to be freedom of conscience; they did not believe the God of Abraham was the universal God that they believed in.

So your point is not to be taken, Saint Libbyvonh let alone not well taken.
 
Fortunately, our founding fathers established what we now know as freedom of religion to be freedom of conscience; they did not believe the God of Abraham was the universal God that they believed in.

So your point is not to be taken, Saint Libbyvonh let alone not well taken.
NOt only are your wrong you are wrong in 3 ways

1)They thought the Creator of ALL , absolutely ALL, was knowable by reason.
2) Freedom of Conscience was established because that is what Christian belief demands. you can see this clearly in

Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom 2019​

by Robert Louis Wilken
"Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how “the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day.”"

ANd what makes you just a whiney teenager is the unsophisticated claim That they believe there was a Creator who was different from the Christian God. DO some research,man Even an atheist would see this

1712687725683.png
 
Do you feel the same way about Israel? They are Jewish Nationalists. Are they not treating non-Jews as “second class citizens”? It’s a nation defined by its religion first and foremost.

Most Middle Eastern countries are “Islamic countries”, whose laws are dictated by the Quran and Sharia Law. Are Islamists “scary” as well? They treat non-Muslims as second class citizens. Are these people good or bad?

Yeah. Nationalism is always racist... Whether its Jewish, Black, Christian or German.

Jizya is a tax paid by able-bodied men who don't want to defend their country.
 
What is Christian nationalism?

Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future. Scholars like Samuel Huntington have made a similar argument: that America is defined by its “Anglo-Protestant” past and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural inheritance.

Christian nationalists do not reject the First Amendment and do not advocate for theocracy, but they do believe that Christianity should enjoy a privileged position in the public square. The term “Christian nationalism,” is relatively new, and its advocates generally do not use it of themselves, but it accurately describes American nationalists who believe American identity is inextricable from Christianity.

What is the problem with nationalism?

Humanity is not easily divisible into mutually distinct cultural units. Cultures overlap and their borders are fuzzy. Since cultural units are fuzzy, they make a poor fit as the foundation for political order. Cultural identities are fluid and hard to draw boundaries around, but political boundaries are hard and semipermanent. Attempting to found political legitimacy on cultural likeness means political order will constantly be in danger of being felt as illegitimate by some group or other. Cultural pluralism is essentially inevitable in every nation.

Is that really a problem, or just an abstract worry?

It is a serious problem. When nationalists go about constructing their nation, they have to define who is, and who is not, part of the nation. But there are always dissidents and minorities who do not or cannot conform to the nationalists’ preferred cultural template. In the absence of moral authority, nationalists can only establish themselves by force. Scholars are almost unanimous that nationalist governments tend to become authoritarian and oppressive in practice. For example, in past generations, to the extent that the United States had a quasi-established official religion of Protestantism, it did not respect true religious freedom. Worse, the United States and many individual states used Christianity as a prop to support slavery and segregation.

What do Christian nationalists want that is different from normal Christian engagement in politics?

Christian nationalists want to define America as a Christian nation and they want the government to promote a specific cultural template as the official culture of the country. Some have advocated for an amendment to the Constitution to recognize America’s Christian heritage, others to reinstitute prayer in public schools. Some work to enshrine a Christian nationalist interpretation of American history in school curricula, including that America has a special relationship with God or has been “chosen” by him to carry out a special mission on earth. Others advocate for immigration restrictions specifically to prevent a change to American religious and ethnic demographics or a change to American culture. Some want to empower the government to take stronger action to circumscribe immoral behavior.

Some—again, like the scholar Samuel Huntington—have argued that the United States government must defend and enshrine its predominant “Anglo-Protestant” culture to ensure the survival of American democracy. And sometimes Christian nationalism is most evident not in its political agenda, but in the sort of attitude with which it is held: an unstated presumption that Christians are entitled to primacy of place in the public square because they are heirs of the true or essential heritage of American culture, that Christians have a presumptive right to define the meaning of the American experiment because they see themselves as America’s architects, first citizens, and guardians.

How is this dangerous for America?

Christian nationalism tends to treat other Americans as second-class citizens. If it were fully implemented, it would not respect the full religious liberty of all Americans. Empowering the state through “morals legislation” to regulate conduct always carries the risk of overreaching, setting a bad precedent, and creating governing powers that could be used later be used against Christians. Additionally, Christian nationalism is an ideology held overwhelmingly by white Americans, and it thus tends to exacerbate racial and ethnic cleavages. In recent years, the movement has grown increasingly characterized by fear and by a belief that Christians are victims of persecution. Some are beginning to argue that American Christians need to prepare to fight, physically, to preserve America’s identity, an argument that played into the January 6 riot.

How is Christian nationalism dangerous to the church?

Christian nationalism takes the name of Christ for a worldly political agenda, proclaiming that its program is the political program for every true believer. That is wrong in principle, no matter what the agenda is, because only the church is authorized to proclaim the name of Jesus and carry his standard into the world. It is even worse with a political movement that champions some causes that are unjust, which is the case with Christian nationalism and its attendant illiberalism. In that case, Christian nationalism is calling evil good and good evil; it is taking the name of Christ as a fig leaf to cover its political program, treating the message of Jesus as a tool of political propaganda and the church as the handmaiden and cheerleader of the state.

More at the link below...

What Is Christian Nationalism?


Sounds scary to me! What do you think?

 
It's no different than Black Nationalism or Jewish Nationalism..... or German Nationalism.
Blacks. Jews and Germans have never laid claim that America was founded as a black nation or a Jewish nation or a German nation.

Blacks, Jews, and Germans have never claimed that America was founded in a Covenant with the God of Abraham, and therefore must be governed based on Judeo Christian biblical values and superstitions.
 
Do you remember?
Yes, I do remember. Any contriteness was due to getting caught in the act. The man was a know womanizer. Yet, he's a political hero for the left.

My point is that the atrocities that one side points out and blames on the other side, there is always fingers point right back.

The political absurdity and hypocrisy is vile in this country and this forum is the microcosm of US political ignorance.
 
Blacks. Jews and Germans have never laid claim that America was founded as a black nation or a Jewish nation or a German nation.

Blacks, Jews, and Germans have never claimed that America was founded in a Covenant with the God of Abraham, and therefore must be governed based on Judeo Christian biblical values and superstitions.

That's true. Let me find the definition for nationalism.
 

What Is Christian Nationalism?​


I know it's antithetical to everything I know about America/USA


 
That's true. Let me find the definition for nationalism.
White Christian American nationalism is a unique phenomenon that equates the creation of the American nation with the way the God of Abraham chooses a people to fulfill HIS ALMIGHTY WILL upon HIS CREATION.
 
It is perverse to think one's people are privileged over other people as meant to be in the eyes of God the Creator of all.
 
Proof in writing that this country was not founded on any religion. 240529. {post•98}. Leo123 May’24 Spiwtt: Nobody said this country was founded on any particular religion. lvvnnn 240529 Spiwnn00098


Well there’s Speaker Mike Johnson,

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has proclaimed that America is and was founded as a Christian nation and that Thomas Jefferson was “divinely inspired” in his writing of the Declaration of Independence, according to a 2015 sermon that drew wider attention with his recent election as speaker.​




Saint Libbyvonh comes pretty close.


WRONG Religious liberty came from Christianity and was not despite it. Read the 2000 page 3 volume 8 years work on the 118 Founders religious views by Judge Boonstra, entitled IN THEIR OWN WORDS.


https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/living/america-christian-nation/index.html

The founders purposely created a nation that based its legitimacy on popular will, not on some higher power.

If one refines the question to ask whether the Founding Fathers were motivated to act as they did based on their Christian faith, the answer becomes a little murkier, but the response is still “no.”

Many of the leading founders were theological liberals who approached religion from a rational perspective.

Even though we have come to appreciate that other founders held more conventional Christian beliefs, all of them, including many clergy of the day, perceived little conflict between their religious faith and Enlightenment natural rights.

By the time of the Revolution, ideas of providence and of America’s millennial role had been modified, if not secularized, by Enlightenment rationalism.

If Benjamin Franklin, the only self-professed deist among the leading founders, could believe in God’s general providential plan for the United States, then the ubiquitous references to God’s interposing providence tell us little about the influence of distinctive religious thought on the founding generation.

If, finally, the meaning of the question is whether Christian impulses and rhetoric existed during the founding period and impacted the “great debate” about revolution and republican governance, then the answer is “yes” (although the question would then lose its distinctiveness at this level of abstraction).

Without question, non-Anglican clergy rallied to the patriot cause and justified the Revolution and new government on religious terms. Similarly, political leaders employed religious rhetoric to explain and legitimize their efforts.

However, the use of religious discourse at such a momentous time – for distinguishing one’s cause from the enemy during war and for rallying popular support for one’s side – is hardly surprising.

The majority of the founders also believed that religion was necessary for maintaining moral virtue and assumed that the nation would remain culturally Christian.

But people should be cautious about reading too much into the religious rhetoric during the founding period.

From where did the idea of America’s founding as a Christian nation arise? In a nutshell, it arose in the early 19th century as later generations of Americans sought to establish a national identity, one that distinguished and exemplified the founding by sanctifying the nation’s origins.

This is the origin of the “Christian nation” myth.

Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University, is author of the recent book “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.”

Demographically speaking, America certainly resembled a “nation of Christians” at the time of its founding and has ever since. But it’s a rather different proposition to claim that the founders established the new American government as a “Christian nation.” Clearly, they did not.

To be sure, the Declaration of Independence appealed to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and asserted that all men had basic rights “endowed by their Creator.” But the Constitution – the document that actually enumerated and enshrined those rights – lacked even those vaguely drawn references to a deity.

The closest approximation came in its date, which was presented, in the standard style of the 18th century, “in the Year of our Lord.” (Even that lone mention was a late addition, as the draft voted on at the Constitutional Convention lacked any reference to the Lord.)

Meanwhile, in the text of the Constitution, religion was deliberately kept at arm’s length from the state. In radical departures from the era’s norms, there would be no religious tests for federal officeholders, no establishment of any national religion and no congressional interference with individual citizens’ free exercise of their own faith.

This was no accident. Despite their respect for religion and their belief in the divine origins of human rights, many of the Founding Fathers worried that religion would corrupt the state and, conversely, that the state would corrupt religion.

In his longest rumination on the topic in the Federalist Papers, for instance, James Madison challenged the idea that religion in politics would lead men to “cooperate for their common good” and asserted instead that it would make them “vex and oppress each other.”

Accordingly, Madison praised the new Constitution for keeping faith out of federal officeholding, which would welcome individuals “of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.”

If the founders had not made their stance on this “Christian nation” issue clear enough in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they certainly did in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.

Begun by George Washington, signed by John Adams and ratified unanimously by a Senate still half-filled with signers of the Constitution, this treaty announced firmly and flatly to the world that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Despite the founders’ intent, later generations of Americans began to assert that the country they created was indeed Christian.

Though the idea originated in the early 19th century, it wasn’t until the mid-20th that it became a fixed part of politics and government.

During the 1950s, new slogans and ceremonies – rhetoric like “one nation under God” in the Pledge and “In God We Trust” as the national motto, as well as rites like the National Day of Prayer and National Prayer Breakfast – convinced many Americans that their country had been, and always would be, a formally Christian nation.
 
I think I agree with alot with Christian Nationalism. Because I do think it should be a Christian Nation and guided by principles of Christianity in politics and in society.
 
Last edited:

Forum List

Back
Top