According to an opinion piece from Rachel Mikva in USA Today, I’m not a real American. Well, so says the Republican junior U.S. Senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, anyway. He has said that his mission is to “transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” And to Hawley and other Christian nationalists, if you’re not a Christian and don’t go along with that notion of America as a Christian nation, you’re not a real American.
You may remember that Josh Hawley is the U.S. Senator who stood outside the Capitol on January 6th with a raised fist salute to the gathering of angry, riled-up Trump supporters as he walked into the Senate early that day, buoyant about his leading role in objecting to President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat.
Just a few hours later, those same Trump MAGA-maniacs that Hawley saluted were storming the Capitol building in a violent scene that will now be forever tied with the senator’s attempt to overturn a free and fair election.
As the mob of Trump fanatics entered the Senate chamber on January 6th, a handful of them mounted the podium, with one of them lifting his hands and crying out, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. Amen.”
According to Ms. Mikva, an estimated 20 percent of American adults, most of them white, believe that the United States should be an expressly Christian country, with biblical teachings guiding every aspect of civic life. Furious and concerned about losing culture-war battles over abortion rights, LGBTQ equality, and gender norms, these “Christian nationalists” have declared a holy war, drawing apocalyptic language from the Book of Revelation about a cosmic battle between good and evil. At the siege of the Capitol building, some of the insurrectionists carried large wooden crosses, Bibles, and Jesus flags.
And it’s not just Senator Hawley who espouses Christian nationalism. Others in Congress, including Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, talk of “restoring” America. To Cruz, that means recovering what he believes is its original identity as a Christian nation — a nation where Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions (religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business).
The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asserts that elected officials should look to Scripture when making policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.” The overarching agenda of the Christian nationalist movement is to construct a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the “enemies of God.”
So, if you are not Christian, or even worse, are an atheist like me, you’d best get your passport ready. The proponents of this growing Christian nationalist movement, from both within and outside of the American government, would eagerly replace the U.S. Constitution with the Christian Bible.
And if that were to happen, it would be get with the program or get the hell out.
This morning, when I read Frank’s Truthful Tuesday prompt, I was feeling, much like he described in his post, unmotivated. But then I saw the piece by Rachel Mikvaand suddenly became inspired.
This, That, and the Other 
I think that the Book of Revelation should have never made it into the New testament of the Bible as it seems like the ravings of a mad man.
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😂
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I am not a real American either I guess.
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josh needs to study the old words; many get carried away when the ego is at full flow, may he find the truth he so gladly seeks, amen, the flowers, , many colors, birds too, Josh got homework to do, but being young, he has plenty of energy too, bless him.
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By this definition, I believe there are a LOT of unreal Americans! Count me among them!
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I always thought of myself as a real American, but I suppose at least 20% of Americans disagree.
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I’ve always thought that American Christians are a lot more open about their faith than Australians seem to be. I’m not particularly religious myself and becoming less so as I get older.
A lot of bad things are said and done in the name of religion and going to church on Sunday doesn’t make it OK.
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“A lot of bad things are said and done in the name of religion.” Yes, and the name of God, too.
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Interesting how important freedom of religion was to the people who framed up the rules of the nation. Removing that (which is what being a “Christian nation” is) is very un-American.
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I couldn’t agree more.
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Politics and religion are a deadly mix.
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That’s true, but for many politicians, the two seem to be inexplicably intertwined.
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Sadly for many for many citizens too.
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I’m not even American, and even I know (and I’m sure many others outside America do too). America is NOT a Christian country! It has many Religions, Beliefs and Faith. That’s what most people used to like about America. It wasn’t a Christian Fundamentalist’s country, it IS multicultural.
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It is…or at least it’s supposed to be.
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=(
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These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever.
About six PM on the sixth. DJT
They practically worship him.
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Presented at approximately 3:09 pm by the House Managers, showing a pro-Trump website which the (Trump’s) White House monitored regularly:
THE CAPITOL IS OUR GOAL. EVERYTHING ELSE IS A DISTRACTION.
EVERY CORRUPT MEMBER OF CONGRESS LOCKED IN A ROOM AND SURROUNDED BY REAL AMERICANS IS AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WILL NEVER PRESENT ITSELF AGAIN.
January sixth, in dedication to Donald Trump
[I added the boldface on “real” in contrast to anyone who wasn’t sold out to Trump (including Mike Pence). It’s all bullshit.]
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What happened to the separation between Church and State. If the US goes all christian with that shit getting a strong foothold then you’re fucked
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Yep.
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I’m too old to go running, but if I were younger, I’d be seriously considering getting the hell out of here.
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Following a link within the article, I also read this:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-13/us-capitol-riot-myths-behind-the-tattoos-worn-by-jake-angeli/13053600
………………………….
But if certain symbols are hard for the general public to spot, they are certainly dog whistles to members of an increasingly global white supremacist movement who know exactly what they mean.
Many scholars argue that the best way to counter far-right misuse is to drown it out with positive and accurate representations of Norse myth — the position I took in my recent retelling.
But in the wake of the mass shooting in Norway in 2011 by Anders Breivik, who named his guns after weapons of the Norse gods, as well as the 2019 Christchurch mass shooter Brenton Tarrant, with his allusions to Valhalla, and of this [Angeli “shaman”] latest poster-boy of far-right insurrection, we have to think very hard about whether this is the right approach to counter a truly global extremist movement.
…..
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Gary Kilgore North (a major religious leader mentioned in the opinion article) is an economist (and takes that to a religious zealotry) — of the Austrian School bent, known as libertarianism in the United States. He’s also an Associated Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
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why do Christians think their way is the only way? And why do they always try to get everyone to go along with their religion?
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I guess it’s their “calling.”
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