Are Accusations of Christian Nationalism Warranted?

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us on WallBuilders today. I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. We've got a great guest coming up, our friend Mark David Hall. Who man guys? I think we've had him on 15 or 20 times over the years. He's always got a new book, always a great topic, and he's tackling the issue of Christian Nationalism. I think we might actually today find out what it means. I've been wondering. It's like if I make up words, do I get to make up the definition? I mean, that's kind of what the left has done and I think Mark's going to take it on.

David Barton

Yeah, he will take it on for sure, because we've talked about this. He and I have had some conversations. But this is an issue that we know it's a big deal because all the left is saying it at the same time. They started really kind of mentioning it three years ago, but now they've really piled onto this and they mentioned it just every opportunity they get. It seems like when they're talking about someone that's conservative, someone that's right, someone that's a faith leader, they're calling this Christian nationalist. And so in looking at that term, we got curious what do they mean by that? And so we went through literally scores and scores and scores of their articles on this. And, by the way, it's such a big deal to them that Rob Reiner, who was in All the Family years ago, decades ago, he was meathead on All the Family and then he did great movies like Princess Bride. He was a producer there and now he's got another movie out, Christian Nationalism. And so you know that it's a big deal when you get Hollywood into doing movies about this. Now the good news is that movie flopped. It made $38,000. That doesn't even cover hardly your electricity cost to show the movie. Nonetheless, it's a big deal.

So we went back and looked to see what does it mean? And here's what we found in the articles and Politico and all these different news sources they're on this. So they say that if you believe that there is a difference between men and women's sports, you're a Christian nationalist. If you think that Roe v Wade should be overturned, you're a Christian nationalist. If you believe that you should place constitutionalists on the Supreme Court rather than social activists, you're a Christian nationalist. If you believe that there should be a border wall, you're a Christian nationalist. Grab this.

If you believe in enacting tax cuts, they said that's a characteristic of Christian nationalists is they want tax cuts. If you want to reduce welfare spending, I mean, just go through. Now here's some of the other things. Here's what they said that Christian nationalists oppose. They oppose critical race theory. They oppose pornographic books in schools. They oppose embryonic stem cell research. They oppose gun control. I mean this sounds like most Americans actually is what it sounds like, and that's why their polling shows 52% of Americans are Christian nationalists. It's nutty what they have 

Tim Barton

Now, Dad, you're saying they, who is the they again? Who did this polling? That the majority of Americans are Christian nationalists?

David Barton

We went through literally dozens of articles. The polling was done by some academics and it's been repeated, and so I imagine they hired some academics who went out and had professional name and did some polling. They all cite the polling and so they have this. But I mean, you take anybody on the left, you take Politico, you take Washington Post, you take New York Times, they're the ones that are talking about this and they're all talking about it at the same time. So I don't know who they is, but it tends to be progressive left.

Tim Barton

But just to even wrap my head around this, you're talking about the people that are accusing individuals of being Christian nationalists. They don't have a shared definition. It's very generic. And the way Christian nationalism is being defined because we have done this several times, we've looked up online to see if there is finally a consistent definition of Christian nationalism and there really hasn't been and the way they're painting this broad swath of what that definition is, and again, by they, whether it's MSNBC or CNN or whatever these major outlets are, whatever these talking heads are, whatever the podcasts are, when the accusations come against Christian nationalists, the definition has been so varied, there hasn't been consistency and it really seems like the goal of using the phrase Christian nationalism is not targeting an ideology as much as it is targeting political opponents, targeting people that don't support the same ideology and worldview. So if you don't support the transgender movement, you must be a Christian nationalist. If you don't support what Joe Biden's been doing, you must be a Christian nationalist.

It seems much more that it's a derogatory or even bigoted term at times, maybe, depending on how far back we go. Right, this could have been a term that was used to try to silence Christians and intimidate Christians from getting involved in the political system and saying, hey right, Christians, you be Christians inside church, but don't bring your Christianity into politics and government or whatever it is, or you're a Christian nationalist.

This was a term used to frighten people, maybe early on, but now it's a term really used to try to tarnish people really like this bigoted term that they're anti-Christian, anti-Christian values, and this is something we talked about. The guest at MSNBC that said if you believe in God given rights, you're a Christian nationalist.. I mean just crazy examples, but there is no consistent definition. But it's certainly being used by people on the left to attack Christians or attack people that love America, that love God, that believe in the constitution, that respect the founding fathers. We are all being labeled Christian nationalists, even though I wouldn't consider myself a Christian nationalist. I'm a Christian who loves the nation, but I believe a lot different maybe than what they mean by Christian nationalist.

David Barton

Yeah, you're right, and it's a great explanation. And their objective. They cannot agree on what one is, but they agree on what the objective of one is. And they say that all of these people who are Christian nationalists, who believe this stuff, their objective is to create a theocracy, which means their objective is to overthrow a Constitutional Republic. Their objective is to get rid of the Constitution, get rid of elections and have a God-appointed person that rules for life. That's what they say these people want and so, whether it be that you oppose Roe v Wade or you support gender differences in sports, they're saying their objective is they want a theocracy.

Now, I think this is significant, the claim they're making, because in talking to Glenn Beck, one thing that Glenn Beck has been really good on over the decades is seeing crazy things before they happen. And Glenn Beck is looking at this and he says you know, I really think what they're doing here is they're trying to create the term Christian nationalist and they're trying to claim you're trying to overthrow the constitution, which, by the way, all of us here at WallBuilders this is going record right now absolutely oppose anything like a theocracy. We support the Constitution, we support a Constitutional Republic. We talk about that all over the nation. We want higher voter turnout, not less voter turnout. Everything they say is opposite to what we support and do.

Tim Barton

Well, and maybe the caveat is it's not that we don't believe in a God, but it's because we believe in God, we believe in God-given rights. That's right we believe government exists to protect God-given rights, not that because there's a God, there should be no government. That is the exact opposite of what we believe based on our understanding of Scripture and certainly based on the foundation of America, which is what we are advocating for a restoration of. Go back to the Constitution, go back to the Declaration.

David Barton

So Glenn is talking about this and looking at it. He says I really think that what they're doing is trying to set this up for a charge under the Patriot Act. It's like the January 6th insurrection the vast majority of the people there were not there for an insurrection. Now there were some troublemakers who tried to do some things, but the vast majority were there for other purposes, but somehow they've been drug into an insurrection which was never their intent. That's not why they went there, that's not what they did, but they're now being charged with that. But they're being charged, he says.

I really think that's what they're trying to do now is they're trying to target people of faith, people who have traditional constitutional values, people who refuse to be progressives and move with progressives, so that they can try to come in later and say, hey, you're trying to overthrow the government, you're trying to overthrow the country, and so that's why they're so open with accusing people of the most ridiculous things. So they'll have grounds later. Now we'll see. Hopefully Glenn's not right on that, but it's crazy. We've seen other stuff too, but I think Mark David Hall really dug into this and he's going to have some really good insight into what this is all about whether it has any feet or legs or whatever. We'll see, but it may become a serious thing. It certainly is a media circus right now, for the last several months,

Rick Green

Yeah, I really got two things from everything else said 100%. Two things that stuck with me. One pretty much all the issues you listed, David and you made this point, Tim, but I mean basically, if you disagree with the left on anything, they're going to call you a Christian nationalist If you're on the wrong side of any issue, as far as they see it. And then the second one the extreme of this is that they do get people to start thinking that if they can make that label stick on you, that somehow that means you want to overthrow the government, which obviously we don't. We love our system of a Constitutional Republic. We want to restore our Constitutional Republic, but, yeah, that is probably where they want to go with it. Mark David Hall is going to be with us when we come back. Stay with us. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Tim Barton

Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to tell you about our new book, the American Story Building the Republic. We start with George Washington as president and we've already become a nation. So really now it's how do we function as a nation? And if we look back in American history, the stability, the prosperity, success we enjoyed as Americans is because of the foundation that our early presidents laid, because the examples they set. How do we live in America under the Constitution? What is the role of federal government? And really what part did each one of these early presidents play? We go through the first seven presidents and a lot of people probably know the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Very few people know about Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. Now, we might know some of their names, we really don't know their stories. We want you to relearn, rediscover American history and see how it applies to today. Go to wallbuilders.com and get your copy of the American Story Building the Republic.

Rick Green

Welcome back to Wall Builders. Thanks for staying with us. Great to have Professor Mark David Hall back with us. Mark, thanks for coming on. 

Mark David Hall

Man, thanks so much for having me. 

Rick Green

I am so thankful you've got a new book out called Who's Afraid of Christian Nationalism? because I've been trying to figure out what in the world that phrase means. Anyway, they throw it around as an insult and scary kind of thing means. Anyway, they throw it around as an insult and scary kind of thing. And you're someone that we trust as a not just a professor but a historian, as a researcher. You always do great work and really dive into these things. So God bless you for doing this and I'm looking for some answers, man. So what in the world is a Christian nationalist anyway?

Mark David Hall

All right. So if you go and look, you will find almost no one in America before 2006 saying I am a Christian nationalist anyway, all right. So if you go and look, you will find almost no one in America before 2006 saying I am a Christian nationalist or Christian nationalism is a good thing. What you begin to see in 2006 is a stream of books warning of the dangers of Christian nationalism. These are Christians who conflate God and country and they're racist and they're sexist and they're militarist and they want to take over the country for Christ and literally oppress everyone except for white Christian males. And so you have a stream of books like this, usually written by polemicists who aren't scholars, who are journalists or work for places like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and they really need not be taken too seriously.

But I think you're exactly right. Basically it's a slur. I think the intent is to shame conservative Christians, to make it seem inappropriate to bring our faith into the public square. Unfortunately, around 2019, you begin to get some academics and they purport to measure this toxic stew of racism, sexism, homophobism, militarism that they call Christian nationalism, and they conclude that 51.9% of Americans fully or partially embrace this toxic stew, and so this would just be a terrifying finding if it were true, but it's not. Um, almost all these works are just ridiculous or grossly inflating um the number of Christian nationalists 

Rick Green

wow, yeah, I, I didn't know that about the basically, going back to 06, it's kind of. It's kind of funny. It's almost like they created a problem that didn't exist, right like they could create this, this moniker, they, they conflate all these things. There's nobody out there that really fits at least nobody serious fits what they're describing and so they almost created it almost out of thin air, and then started applying it to all kinds of people.

I mean, a lot of people call us here at WallBuilders Christian Nationals, even though we don't know what that term means. And a lot of people have said David, kind of start. You know, David Barton is the is the genesis of all this, or at least partially responsible for this, which is crazy. I never heard him use the term before they were using it, nor has he ever called for a theocracy or anything crazy like that. In fact, I don't even know anybody in the entire movement and I'm pretty involved that wants a theocracy, but that's the image they create. So did you look at that at all in terms of where they've thrown, you know, wall builders or David Barton into this mess?

Mark David Hall

Yeah, in fact I did so. Julie Ingersoll has a book, Building God's Kingdom Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, and what she's referring to there is there is an obscure Calvinist theologian named Rousas Rushdoony who wrote in the 60s and 70s, and he is a theocrat or a theonomist anyway. He wants to reinstitute the Old Testament civil law so that literally, in the Christian society, adulterers would be put to death, people who engage in homosexual activity would be put to death, incorrigible juvenile delinquents would be put to death, and so this is really really scary, right? You can imagine why non-Christians, but even Christians, would say oh, my goodness what a scary society.

But almost everyone knows that Rushdoony had almost no influence. And so what they all do is they say, well, fine, most people don't know, and I bet so many people who listen to you want to be able to identify Rushdoony and that's not to judge them, because almost no one knows who he is. But what these authors all do is they say, well, Rushdoony influenced Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, David Burton, and through them he became influential. So Julie Ingersoll has an entire chapter, David Barton, Rushdoony and the Tea Party, and it's really just laughable to read through this. So she begins by saying Barton occasionally cites Rushdoony. She gives no example of this and I in fact went through as many works as I could find and see no example of Barton citing Rushdoony. She then says she gives one piece of evidence, an essay by Stephen McDowell that is on the WallBuilders website and that is in fact there, and McDowell cites Rushdoony a couple of times. It's true, but of course simply allowing something to be on WallBuilders website is not the same thing as David citing Rushdoony himself.

But then I took a step that you think any decent, even a reporter or academic, should take. I contacted Dave. I said Dave, there's this person accusing you of being influenced by Roussos Rushdoony. Is there any truth to that? And he was honest enough and he gave me permission to give his reply. He said well, I've heard of the name of Rushdoony, but I've never read his books. I don't even know what they are.

So I mean there's just no good reason to argue. That is so funny. Yeah, I'm literally, as you're saying, this mark. I'm thinking, I'm remembering, probably I don't know 15 years ago, hearing his name and hearing it a couple of times and wondering who is this guy. And I'm the exact same way. I mean, I'm probably as much of a student of David barton as anybody out there. I've been with him 23 years and I have never read Rushdoony. I couldn't tell you where he's from, what his book titles are or any of that, and certainly if it had influenced David, it would have ended up influencing me. So that's what you're saying. I can 100% confirm.

Mark David Hall

Yeah, and this is true with other people. So they also accused Marvin Olasky of being influenced by Rush Dooney. I contacted Marvin and he said and he gave me permission to share this he said well, in the very early 80s I read Rushdoony and was initially impressed, but I got over it very quickly. I'm actually more of a libertarian than I am a theonomist. And the same could be said for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, almost everyone accused of being influenced by Rushdoony There's just precious little evidence. These people are just creating a giant that they want to fight, because Rushdoony does seem to be kind of scary. You want to split lots of people to death or, he says, they would be put to death in the Christian society.

Now, without getting too technical, let me just briefly mention that Rushdoony is a post-millennialist. He believes that the kingdom of God will advance on earth and more and more people will become saved, societies will become more Christian and so forth. So this is really kind of an eschatological vision. Most evangelicals, as you know, are pre-millennial dispensationalists. They think the world will get worse and worse. The rapture will occur, Christians will be taken up to heaven, there will be a literal seven-year tribulation and then Christ will return. If that's your view of eschatology, it really doesn't make sense to embrace theonomy. And a vast majority of evangelicals, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, are dispensationalists. So two of Jerry Falwell's right-hand men actually wrote a response back when Rushdoony was at his height, saying, in effect, evangelicals will have no interest in this guy because he fundamentally has different theological beliefs than the vast majority of evangelicals.

Rick Green

There's so many things I want to ask you, man, we got to do this again and we've still got a little bit of time, but I wanted to go down one rabbit trail here because you raised eschatology and someone recently and I mean as much as I'm involved in this I did not catch this, I didn't realize this, but somebody recently raised the issue of almost like that there's some people out there that think they can usher in the second coming by being political somehow, that that's good, almost like the caliphate on the muslim side of things, and that that they can bring about these things. And I had never heard that and I I've never been influenced by anybody like that. But they made it sound like that was part of this Christian nationalism thing, that somehow it would usher in the second coming if you got political and you did enough they did. You come across any of that, or is that? Is that covered in your book all, or have you even heard of that?

Mark David HAll

Yeah, not that specific thing Again. So in 2002, for the first time, a couple of Christians came out actually arguing for Christian nationalism Stephen Wolfe, who's an amillennialist, and Andrew Isker and Andrew Torvor, who are postmillennialists, and Doug Wilson, who's a postmillennialist. Moore, who are post-millennialists, and Doug Wilson, who's a post-millennialist. And so there are a handful of Christians out there advocating for Christian nationalism. Again, it's just a handful. They're kind of quirky Calvinists. I don't think their arguments will be of interest to many Americans, but they aren't arguing for what you just described. Again, they believe that in one way or the other, the kingdom of God will advance. It cannot be stopped, and so here's what society will look like. They're definitely not talking about ushering in the rapture or the second coming or anything like that.

Rick Green

Okay, all right, cool. So let me ask you about the kind of the definition. I guess because I was almost thankful that I can't remember her name for Politico, that on MSNBC and it's gone around you know I was like finally somebody defines it. And basically her definition was if you believe your rights come from God instead of government, you're a Christian nationalist. And I was like, ok, well, that's every founding father, pretty much it's most most people that have read the declaration. I think Jefferson would have a few things to say to her. But but is it that simple or is it a more complicated definition?

Mark David Hall

No, that was just pure ignorance. And of course it was so fun to watch. Over the next few days you had clips of Joe Biden saying rights come from God and people quoting Thomas Jefferson. And yeah, no, it's just a ridiculously ignorant claim that we know almost no one embraces. But then they make moves like this.

Whitehead and Perry literally say if you are pro-life, you are really just concerned with controlling women's bodies and therefore you're a sexist. Well, that's an interesting claim, especially when we remember that women are just as likely to be fully pro-life as men. They also say if you think religious liberty means more than the freedom to worship, more than what you do in the church, the mosque or synagogue, then you're a bigot, because obviously they're thinking about Jack Phillips and that sort of thing. But you can absolutely believe in a robust understanding of religious liberty that applies to all Americans and not be a bigot. So here I think, you have the implicit biases of these scholars coming through, So the definitions of Christian nationalism that are out there are either just polemical or, I think, grossly flawed.

What I do in my book, I come up with a definition of Christian nationalism that I think is reasonable. I say look, a Christian nationalist is someone who believed that America was founded as a Christian nation and who believes that Christianity should be favored by the government above other religions, so that Congress should formally declare America to be a Christian country, that public schools should have teachers leading children in Christian public prayers. So these are about 21% of Americans, if you think about it. This kind of returns America to where we were in the 1950s, minus racism, minus Jim Crow legislation, minus the sexism. So yeah, I think about 20% of Americans would be perfectly happy to ban drag queen story hours, formally recognize God, as we did in the 1950s on our money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. But let me hasten to say I think there are good biblical, theological, prudential and constitutional reasons for rejecting even that manifestation of Christian nationalism. So I lay all these out in my new book who's Afraid of Christian Nationalism, which anyone can find easy as pie on Amazon.com.

Mark David Hall

All right, the title of the book's afraid of Christian nationalism. Why? Christian nationalism is not an existential threat to America or the church. Mark David Hall again, you get it at amazon and you can always go to markdavidhall.org to learn more as well. And and Mark I exactly as you just described it.

It's like even the definition that you just gave is benign compared to what the perception of the definition of what it is that they've tried to create. But even that definition you know a lot of those things would not be you politically could not be done today and, as you said, there's arguments against even some of those things that that you discussed man, people got to. This is so important because that nebulous non-definition of it is more dangerous than have people being able to understand what exactly are we talking about here and then people can decide am I in that 20% or am I not? Or yeah, I like this part of it, I don't like that part of it. But by not having a definition, by not having a book like this that delves into where it came from, it's a boogeyman. It just becomes a club that people get hit over the head with.

So what you did here is so, so important and, man, I'm thankful that you did it. I'm thankful that you came on and shared with us, and I'd love to get you back to dive further into some of this, because you also cover what Christians should be doing in politics. If I'm not a Christian nationalist, then what am I and how do I live that out? What we call around here a biblical citizen? How do I apply the Bible to just how I live my life, how I treat my neighbor? And I got a feeling that's probably what you hit on, that kind of stuff. So we got to get you back, man, let's do this again.

Mark David Hall

All right, I would love to do that. Rick, it's always a pleasure chatting with you.

Rick Green

That was Mark David Hall. Appreciate him being on the program with us, back with David and Tim Barton. Now, guys, this is great that he's tackled this. We know how good he is at his research and researching it thoroughly, and I had no idea that he had looked into specifically the fact that they had said that we were Christian Nationalists here at WallBuilders.

David Barton

Well, you know, politico really had us on the headlines here recently. They put us out there as the top of all this stuff. Let's just go on record really clear here. Rushdoony, as Mark David Hall talked about, I can't even tell you who he is, what he believes, what he did. I know he wrote some books back 20, 30 years ago. I don't know of any people who have followed him and I think I'm as well-connected as anybody in this area, this arena, and I don't know people who follow him. And then I'm part of the Tea Party. Look, I've spoken to Tea Party gatherings, but I've never been part of the Tea Party. I mean, let me just say I've also spoken to women's gatherings and I'm not a woman. And I've spoken to young people gathering. I'm not a young people. Because I speak at gatherings doesn't make me part of that, and so that's another crazy claim that they've got

Tim Barton

Well, and dad, let me jump in too. When you look at the tea party movement, it was taxed enough already. Did we believe that we were taxed enough already?

Yes absolutely we did. And so right, if you're going to say, well, then you're part of the tea party, okay, I mean I, we believe that the government has been overreaching, overtaxing, over criminalizing. We believe the government's been abusive in so many areas. But dad, to your point. We've always believed that people need to know the truth of American history and we need to work to restore the moral, the religious, the constitutional foundation of the nation. And so we're going to speak to all kinds of groups. But just because we speak to the group doesn't mean we believe with everything their ideology is, their faith perspective is we're going to share the truth of American history and challenge and encourage people to work to rebuild that foundation that made America the most prosperous, successful, stable nation in the history of the world. But do we believe that there's an overreach of government and that we've been taxed enough already? Of course! That doesn't mean we believe or align with every belief of the people that were part of the Tea Party.

David Barton

And we've spoken. Our position has been if people want to hear, and they want to know what happened with America, we want to tell them, and so we've been in some very unlikely groups as well. I mean, I've spoken to NAACP groups and that's not one that most people would think oh, you guys speak there. Yes, we speak to anyone who wants to hear about American history, hear more about America. We want people involved in this process and this constitutional process, and that's where we've been from the beginning. So this is significant. You're going to hear this term a lot over coming weeks. I just know what it is dismiss it. Just know that nobody among us that we know of wants anything to do with the theocracy. This is just part of the left to get charges going that are crazy.

Rick Green

We're patriotic Americans out to restore our constitutional republic. That's what we are. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders