by William Trollinger

 According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 29% of Americans and 50% of Republicans are full-blown Christian nationalists or Christian nationalist sympathizers. Approximately 80% of white Christian nationalists believe that anti-white discrimination is as prevalent as anti-Black discrimination; 71% of Christian nationalists and 57% of Christian nationalist sympathizers believe that we are enduring an invasion of immigrants who are “replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” 

And 2/3 of white evangelicals identify as Christian nationalists or Christian nationalist sympathizers. So it is not surprising that last October Answers in Genesis (AiG) – which caters to white evangelicals, and which has its primary mission (as we established in Righting America at the Creation Museum)  “preparing and arming crusaders for the ongoing culture war” (15) – hosted the annual “Fight Laugh Feast” conference at Ark Encounter. This gathering at the Ark of militant Christian nationalists included the notorious Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho and promoter of a “militant masculinity” that demands “the submission of wives to husbands” in all matters (DuMez, Jesus and John Wayne: 178-179). 

Befitting the event’s location, the conference theme was “The Politics of the 6 Days of Creation,” which was “explained” in conference publicity as “the difference between a fixed standard of justice and a careening standard of justice.” So of course, one of the featured speakers was AiG’s own Christian nationalist guru, Ken Ham. Ham never wearies of using (or, more accurately, misusing) Genesis 1-11 as support for a Radical Right, “anti-woke,” political agenda, and who enthusiastically pronounces those who disagree with his political views – particularly, re: abortion and the LGBTQ community — to be enemies who will someday find themselves burning in Hell.

In a fascinating and horrifying podcast by National Public Radio’s Heath Druzin, “Onward Christian Soldiers: Joyful, Jolly Warriors,” we get an inside look at this Ark Encounter conference. (Thanks to Dan Phelps for alerting me to this podcast.) Druzin brings home how the folks behind “Fight Laugh Feast” seek to reach a younger audience (the PRRI report highlights the fact that 60% of Christian nationalists are over the age of 50) with a cool and hipster Christian nationalism that includes a love of drinking whisky and smoking cigars. More than this, and hence the title of the podcast, they work overtime to present themselves as “joyful, jolly warriors” (the incongruity of that phrase is, well, jarring).

So what do these hipster Christian nationalists want? As Druzin reports from the conference, they want

• An America which is run by Christians in behalf of Christians.
• An America in which each individual is subject to “biblical law.”
• An America in which (to quote Doug Wilson) “the authority of the Lord Jesus [is] confessed by the House and Senate,” and “the president signs it” into law.
• An America in which only Christians are allowed to vote and run for political office. 
• An America in which all non-Christians are understood to be “the enemy” (a point that conference organizers made clear, albeit it in “friendly” fashion, to Druzin, who happens to be Jewish).
• An America in which patriarchy is the rule, with women knowing their place as homemakers and child-bearers (there was a contest at the conference to celebrate the family with the most children – ten was the winning number).
• An America in which only Christian men vote (and the 19^th Amendment is repealed).

It may be tempting to laugh off militant Christian nationalism as an absurd and minority movement. But that would be a mistake, especially given that these ideas have found a home in one of our two political parties, and in a significant segment of American Christianity. We need to take this movement seriously. As historian Jemar Tisby has pointed out, “White Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to democracy and the witness of the church in the United States today.” 

Of course, the quintessential white Christian nationalist organization is the Ku Klux Klan! In that regard, I am very pleased to invite those of you in the Dayton region to attend my September 05 talk on the “Second KKK,” which will be given in UD’s brand-new Roger Glass Center for the Arts.