A Rise In Christian Nationalist Violence Is Being Fueled By a Permission Structure From MAGA Republican Politicians

Nilay Saiya writes at Religion Dispatches, Should We Expect To See A Rise In Christian Nationalist Violence In The US?:

Troubling new details regarding the violent propensity of Christian nationalism have been revealed by a new survey on American Christian nationalism released last month. According to the PRRI/Brookings Institution data, adherents of Christian nationalism are almost seven times as likely as those who reject it to support political violence. A stunning 40 percent of Christian nationalism supporters believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

Note: White Christian Nationalists, who desire a theocratic autocracy (i.e., the American Taliban) over the pluralistic democracy we have in the U.S., are by definition NOT “true patriots.” They made up the core element of MAGA insurrectionists who stormed the nation’s Capitol on January 6 and tried to overthrow the U.S. government to install Donald Trump as the cult leader of their theocracy. How Christian nationalism paved the way for Jan. 6; Report on Christian nationalism and the January 6 insurrection. They are the enemies of democracy.

The revelations of the survey do not bode well for the future of Christian nationalist violence in America. Over the past decade, I’ve analyzed hundreds of religious militant groups around the world. My studies have consistently found that the tipping point toward violence occurs primarily when religious identity and national identity become intertwined. As these identities fuse, historically and culturally dominant faith communities come to see themselves as the victims of encroachment by minority faith traditions. This perceived victimization results in a “persecution complex,” with little regard for the degree of historical or cultural dominance the community enjoys. What matters is that majoritarian religious communities feel like they’re victims. 

Perceived victimization often stems from changing religious landscapes, like the unprecedented rise of “the nones” in the US. This new pluralism is seen as threatening to the privileged station of the majority religious tradition, often prompting the self-segregation of majority communities from the rest of society. The resulting echo chamber further reinforces the paranoia surrounding the victim narrative. 

Increasingly, members of religious majorities see violence as an acceptable way to beat back the threat posed by religious heterogeneity. Whereas religious violence is commonly believed to be a “weapon of the weak,” it’s actually more often a “weapon of the strong” wielded against marginalized and oppressed minority communities. We see evidence supportive of this thesis in countries as diverse as Brazil, Central African Republic, Pakistan, India, and Myanmar, where vigilantes from dominant religious communities routinely attack the homes, businesses, and houses of worship of religious minorities with impunity.

Note: Antisemitic incidents in the US are at the highest level recorded since the 1970s: “The incidents including assault, vandalism and harassment increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022, a new ADL report published Thursday found.”

As I show in my recent book The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, similar dynamics appear to be unfolding in the United States today, where a combination of forces—new cultural mores surrounding gender and sexuality, increasing religious diversity, and declining numbers of Christians—are disrupting the religious landscape and leading to a sense of angst among American Christians that their country is turning its back on what they believe to be its Christian heritage. Accordingly, Christian nationalist rhetoric is deeply cloaked in threat narratives, prompting efforts to retain Christianity’s hegemonic status, sometimes through violence.

[T]his fusion of religion and nation has created a fertile breeding ground for a culture of violence to take root. Of course, Christian nationalist violence in the United States is nothing new. In the 1990s, violent Christian nationalists carried out the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City, the bombing of Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, and numerous bombings of abortion clinics across the country.

But Christian nationalist violence has also experienced a resurgence in recent years. Christian nationalist ideology figured prominently in the violence of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; mass shootings at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, at three different spas in the Atlanta-area in 2021, and at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York in 2022; as well as dozens of other instances of vigilante violence against religious minorities. And, of course, it was on full display during the 2021 Capitol insurrection two years ago. 

Given the dynamics present in the United States today, we can expect Christian nationalist violence to increase in the future. Paradoxically, the thumping Christian nationalist political candidates took during the 2022 midterm elections—including the failed gubernatorial candidacies of Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano, Maryland’s Dan Cox, and Arizona’s Kari Lake—will likely deepen the sense of embattlement among Christian nationalists, prompting a backlash. 

Fortunately, not all is lost. My research also shows that religious violence dissipates when these narratives are discredited from within the religious traditions from which they arise. To see such a happy outcome, American Christians—and in particular the Christian communities where Christian nationalism is most likely to thrive—must offer a counternarrative that can demonstrate that there are other, equally valid expressions of Christianity that respect this nation’s diversity and secular foundation. The amplification of these voices is paramount to countering the scourge of Christian nationalism and the violence it has helped produce.

A White Christian Nationalist church, The Bridge here in Tucson, has teamed up with the domestic terrorist organization the Proud Boys, to engage in targeted harassment of Tucson’s iconic bookstore, Bookman’s, for hosting a drag queen story hour.

They have been given a permission structure to engage in such criminal behavior by MAGA Fascists in the Arizona legislature, and nationally, who have made criminalizing drag queen shows a key piece of their culture wars. This is part and parcel of the QAnon conspiracy cult about a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children (Democrats) operating a global child sex trafficking ring, who conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office. Republicans who do not condemn such criminal behavior are implicitly condoning it. It is stochastic terrorism. Your silence is your endorsement of this terrorism.

The Arizona Daily Star reports, Drag story hour postponed after Tucson church calls for protest:

A drag story hour event scheduled this past weekend at Bookmans’ northwest location was postponed over safety concerns after a local Christian church used social media to organize a protest.

Bookmans’ president Sean Feeney announced Monday that the event scheduled for March 25th at the Ina and Thornydale location was to be postponed and moved.

“The decision to make any changes to this event was an extremely hard one for Bookmans,” Feeney said in a statement. “I am in disbelief that I am being forced to postpone and relocate, and I want to be absolutely clear as to the reason. Threats, protests, and bullying were not factors in making the call to move the event. We fully support and will continue to support Drag Story Hour-Az. The choice to relocate and postpone this Drag Story Hour event was based solely on ensuring the safety of the attendees, performers, and all members of our community.”

In the statement, Feeney said the store had held many well-attended performances over the years. This time, however, he said a harassment campaign spearheaded by The Bridge Church and adopted by the local Proud Boys chapter had targeted the event, causing those on social media to encourage community members to attend the story hour and disrupt it.

Days before the event was postponed, The Bridge Church posted on their website about the story hour, saying that they hope people called Bookmans’ everyday in hopes to get the event canceled. The post also included the phone numbers for all of the state’s Bookmans’ locations, the names of the managers for each location and the coordinators’ emails from each location.

“We are hoping that many churches will decide to get involved and help stand for our community, city, and society. It is a time to stand for our children and their future. Stand for God and His Truth,” the post said.

After Bookmans’ postponed the event, a Tweet from the church’s Twitter account said that the protest would no longer take place and they “will continue to monitor and reschedule it if needed.”

Feeney said called having to postpone a popular children’s event due to threats of violence tragic. He said the goal is to return the event to what it is: “a celebration designed to foster a love of literacy in children.”

“We are enormously grateful for the outpouring of positive support that the Tucson community has shown to us and to Drag Story Hour-Az at this time and in times past,” Feeney said. “We appreciate everyone who took the time to extend support in person at our stores and with emails and phone calls. The volume of positive support we have received from the Tucson community in the last few days has been truly overwhelming.”

What people should be outraged by is that White Christian Nationalists, QAnon cultists, domestic terrorists, and GQP politicians are all working together hand-in-glove to engage in a quasi-religious culture war against their fellow American citizens. It is a cold civil war which could easily turn into a violent insurgency from the American Taliban who “believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” They have been plotting and waiting for this moment since the 1990s.