I Could Have Been a Christian Nationalist
A reflection on how easily good people lose the plot
I am a person of profound privilege.
As a white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian man raised in America, I have had nearly every benefit and buffer afforded human beings and this has made my path exponentially easier than those not carrying these qualifiers.
Simply because of my pigmentation, gender, orientation, profession of faith, and physical appearance, I have been insulated from countless traumas and shielded from a multitude of threats that so many people experience as their default setting.
I have benefited from and participated in a system that has been set up for me and for people like me to succeed in ways I'll never fully comprehend.
I also know that I have been extremely fortunate to become aware of such things, and that I could just as easily missed it all and been someone very different than I am today: I could have been a hateful white man thinking I was pleasing God and making America great again by treating people horribly.
Over the past few years, it's been horrifying to see family members, longtime friends, and people from my former churches reveal a startling ugliness that at first seemed shocking to me; white people I grew up with and knew for years and served alongside. Witnessing their contempt for immigrants, their deep-seated racism, their adoration of guns, and their irrational fear of LGBTQ people, I've often found myself thinking, "I know these people. I know their families. I grew up with them. How could they think like this?" as if this was an unexpected development.
Yet, the more I've thought about it, the more it all makes sense now. In fact, as I considered the people who raised them and the churches they attended and the narrow world they've spent their lives in and the media they've consumed for decades—the surprise would have been if they hadn't turned out this way.
And it is here that I realize how lucky I am.
I could so easily have learned to be afraid of diversity, too.
I could have believed the lie that my whiteness is better.
I could have been polluted by toxic religion enough to hate queer people.
I could have imagined that America was the totality of the world.
I could have learned to parrot back myths about Muslims and migrants and transgender teenagers.
I could have fallen for the dangerous conspiracies and been taken in by the big lies.
I could have weaponized God and country.
And I know the fact that I somehow haven't isn't necessarily a matter of greater character of higher intelligence than those who grew up in similar privilege—but a combination of better information, dumb luck, and the presence of some really beautiful people who helped me transcend the smallness and the sameness of my surroundings when others were not able to.
The fact that I was fortunate enough to travel and meet disparate human beings and get better stories and to hear perspectives on America or opportunity or justice that were different than my own, remade me in ways I can't fathom or take credit for but am grateful for.
Along the way, instead of having my religion reinforced, I had it challenged.
Instead of relinquishing my critical thinking to preachers, politicians, and talk show hosts, I learned to think for myself.
Instead of allowing partisan media to shape my understanding of the world, I went out and experienced it.
Instead of being resistant to difference, I was taught to welcome it.
I know that these people who are so afflicted with such a wasteful hatred are rational adults.
I know they are fully responsible for what they think and what they do and what they post and how they vote, yet part of me has a small measure of empathy for them because in some ways they are the products of their stories, which at many points were not so different from my story.
Even as I despise their theology and oppose their politics and condemn their violence, there is an ember of mercy in the recesses of my heart because we could have been standing in very different places right now.
These are not all mindless, unhinged, unstable caricatures. They are in many ways intelligent, reasonable human beings who remind me how easy it is to be slowly manipulated by persistent and repeated calculated lies, how persuasive fear can be when it presses into the right places, how the desire to belong will make us believe almost anything in order to remain in community. We’re all eventually responsible for our choices, so these adults are not exempt from culpability for their actions, but I also know it’s not that simple either.
I am certainly not without prejudice, not exempt from embracing stereotypes, and not above fearing people because of a false story I have about them.
I am still benefitting from my privilege in ways that I can't fathom but I see myself and the world clearly enough to know that this unthinkable cruelty that confounds and infuriates me every day in people who look like me and come from places I come from is something I am incredibly fortunate to have been saved from.
As I work to resist these people, I need to keep trying to reach them.
There but for the grace of God and good people, go I.
You so succinctly explained my life since 2015. You are not alone in having estranged family and friend relationships, although my friends and I are more like minded; many of them are experiencing friction in relationships, as well. I thought an adjudicated rape charge and 91+ federal and state charges would bring them to their senses. I’m still waiting…
John, you wrote: "Even as I despise their theology and oppose their politics and condemn their violence, there is an ember of mercy in the recesses of my heart because we could have been standing in very different places right now."
That ember of mercy--that is what has been burning in my heart. I've mentioned this in previous comments. Among the deceived are two groups of people--those that celebrate the freedom to express their worst impulses while justifying it by saying they're doing God's work; and those who have been brainwashed because they allowed a pastor, a talking head, and their cultural milieu to herd them away from the Truth.
They might still belong to God. They are like sheep that have been rustled. Their minds have been stolen. Yes, we are responsible for our thoughts and actions, but when someone puts a leader with evil intent in the driver's seat of their mind, they're lost.
My heart goes out to them. They are on the cusp of having to make the kind of decision that decent German citizens had to make in the early 1930s. How do we reach them before they are lost forever? How are they different from the average poor oppressed Jew that lived in Jesus' time, who were under the thumb of the religious elite of their time, under the heavy yoke?
Jesus' message to them--the yoke is easy, God loves you, and wants you live abundantly in love and joy--was resisted by the powerful religion of the time. Jesus' message to the Church today is the message He had for the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes in His time: come out of bondage, and let the Truth set you free!
I never thought I'd live to see a day where an obvious lie, with so much evidence against it, has imprisoned the minds of so many people. Never before has the phrase, "The Truth will set you free" been more meaningful. Time to speak to the truth in love.