Stephen

Think about whether an evangelical worldview person would call you a "secular humanist." If so, consider that references to right-wing Christians as "Christian nationalists" are about as accurate as that. It's not necessarily completely *wrong*, it just doesn't really describe a person's viewpoint.

Yeah, I take it that "Christian nationalism" is mostly not a description of the administration itself (with a few obvious exceptions like Hegseth), but its supporters. Some of the most wildly white supremacist figures like Miller have no connection to Christianity that I know of.

I simply don't think this is an adequate account of the people of color I know who support MAGA for "Christian" reasons, and I think that invoking "white Christian nationalism" promotes that kind of generalization about tens of millions of people who don't fit the concept.

I think many are fine with allowing for white supremacist policies if they can get their own policy positions put into place, but they're not the same group. For instance, NAR leaders have sometimes pushed back on deportation policies and integralists have envisioned a pan-American Catholic state.

I actually don't think that second part is true. Most MAGA Christians believe in a kind of "colorblind" approach to race and say that they are happy to include "legal" immigrants and citizens of any ethnicity in their vision of the nation.

I guess I wonder why we can't just casually call them something like "MAGA Christians," then, which would also be more accurate about the many leaders and followers who are not white.

And each group can be very anti-nationalist in their own ways, so I don't know that "they're nationalist" does much here either.

I'm not sure what this means. Who is "they?" Catholic integralists? NAR Charismatics? Reformed Reconstructionists? They kind of all think of the others as not meeting "their standards," but they're also all described as "Christian nationalists."

There's nothing particularly Christian about those driving goals, which plenty of other religious right-wingers can and do support. There's a very limited threat to, say, US Hindus, compared to current implications for trans people or women who don't want to live under patriarchy.

I guess that's the disagreement. People using the term seem to think that it's a "movement" to make the US a "Christian nation," but that says nothing about the main goals of those being described, which largely amount to imposing right-wing positions, especially on gender and sexuality.

There's a reason I'm currently writing a book chapter on the Social Gospel and NAR political theology: there are some real resemblances, but also wide gaps on many of the most crucial issues. Rauschenbusch's book "Christianizing the Social Order" is simply not doing the same thing as so-called CN.

I'm glad he mentioned the thing about Black "Christian nationalists." Every time I see that, I'm like "what are we even doing here."

Yes! This is so good.

It’s already happening. Iran attacked a desalination plant in Bahrain.

This war has to end immediately. If it turns into a water war we will be dealing with a whole different level of a humanitarian catastrophe across the region.

aje.news/64yl8m?updat...

Chicago Cardinal Cupich on the White House video mashup celebrating the Iran bombings:

“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening. Hundreds of people are dead…”

www.archchicago.org/statement/-/...

i get that moderate evangelicals think they have a cute little gotcha here that will make folks inside the Religious Right pause, but: Christian rightists already planned this out awhile ago

they don't want infrastructure investment, they want to endlessly critique infrastructure investment

Thinking of a kind of woke guy who is like, "well, as an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, it's Markwayne's right to think that"

This is kind of wild. I'm inclined to think that a lot of the US being an outlier comes from antisocial attitudes, propaganda about crime rates, gun culture, and car culture.

Dispensationalists generally believe that they can trigger the Rapture, not by starting wars, but by ensuring that every person on earth has clearly been invited to "have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." It's titillating to believe otherwise, I guess, but that's their standard view.

And even the rubes generally don't think the wars are going to make Jesus cone back. World evangelization makes that happen, and the wars are just a sign that it's getting closer.

To follow up: The Guardian says they have viewed the one complaint that was described in detail, so there's apparently at least something that happened with one officer:

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

The tricky thing about guys like Hagee is that they say this stuff every time someone sneezes in the entire Middle East. They then typically call people to "support Israel," remain aware of events, and pray, not to sign up for military service or try to make the apocalypse happen.

Among other things, this also misunderstands that they're typically Christian Zionists first and foremost, and they shape their "Bible prophecy" commentary on current events around whatever Likud or more radical factions want. Their politics is not mainly motivated by the eschatology itself.

It does to them what they themselves do to Muslims/Islam and Jews/Judaism. It elides their roles as human actors with human (if sometimes reprehensible) desires and opinions. If we fundamentally misunderstand them, that makes it more difficult to beat them in public discourse.

Over-focusing on their eschatology demonizes them--it turns them into something other than the human beings with very common base instincts that they are. It says that they're fundamentally other than you and I in a way that is outside the scope of common humanity.

My point isn't that they're good people with good intentions. It's that explanations of "they're doing war because they want the apocalypse" skip over so many things that are a far bigger factor in the religious warmongering: patriarchy, gun culture, Islamophobia, nationalism.

A lot of these people are bloodthirsty warmongers, and they even invoke religious reasons for being that way, but the wars aren't what brings the apocalypse closer, according to their beliefs. It's something else that you don't hear much about from their critics, oddly.

There's one thing that premillennial Dispensationalists generally believe they can do to hasten the return of Christ. They've invested billions of dollars and millions of workers in doing it. It has little to with war, although some fantasize about achieving parts of it in the wake of various wars.

Not really. Cornyn stood and waved to the crowd. He didn't say that he's trying to make the apocalypse happen through supporting the current war.