On ‘Christian nationalism’; timeouts and intermissions; the immortal Ferris Bueller; and more
In recent weeks, I’ve been writing about privilege: What is it? Who has it? I published a bunch of letters on the subject, and I would like to zero in on one line — one line in one letter. Let me drop into the middle of this particular reader’s letter:
I was further privileged to receive a sound theological grounding in the Christian faith, with a focus on the faith that seems almost quaint today in an era when Christianity seems to be passé and orthodox (small “o” intended) Christianity seems to have been superseded by a kind of God and Country faith or a liberal brand that seems to have adopted the prevailing zeitgeist as its standard . . .
The “liberal brand,” I am well familiar with. “Social justice,” environmentalism, etc. (Maybe some folk songs?) The God and Country brand, I am familiar with too. That’s the line that stood out to me: “a kind of God and Country faith.”
Have you seen those lapel pins that combine the cross with the American flag? Here is an example, from pinmart.com. A lot of people think this is cool. I understand them. Others think it’s an offense to both Christianity and Americanism. I understand them, too.
Travel with me back to 2008: the Republican convention, in St. Paul. Senator John McCain was the presidential nominee. His theme, his slogan, was “Country First.” There were lots and lots of U.S. flags. And chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
About those flags: If Politician Smith has 100 flags and Politician Jones has 102 — is Jones two more patriotic than Smith? Does Jones love America more? (By two?)
You may think of the title of an Evelyn Waugh novel, as I have: “Put Out More Flags.” The title comes from a Chinese sage, who said something like, “A drunken military man should order gallons more liquor and put out more flags, so as to increase his military splendor.”
I think back to 2020 — CPAC, when President Trump literally wrapped himself in the flag. He hugged it, kissed it. Sort of slow-danced with it. A colleague of mine, disgusted, said he was “dry-humping” it. To reacquaint yourself with the scene — or behold it for the first time — go here.
Back to 2008: I admired John McCain a lot, and I gave him a pass on the “Country First” stuff, even if I thought it was overblown. I regarded McCain as a war hero. (Trump, famously, or infamously, does not.) And his love of country was bona fide.
More broadly, McCain loved freedom, democracy, and human rights. He was a champion of those things for one and all, far and wide. That cuts a lot of ice with me.
(Old-fashioned expression. More and more, I have trouble communicating to the young. They have no idea what I’m talking about — and sometimes vice versa.)
There are some people who make a virtual religion of America. Whose religion is America. There is such a thing as America worship.
Others say something like the following: “I’m as patriotic as the day is long. I am deeply grateful for America — and for liberal democracy writ large. Thank God for America. But I don’t worship America. I worship God. And I’m grateful to live in a country where I can do so, freely and openly. Where I can ‘work out my own salvation.’”
These Americans might add, “I appreciate living in a country where there is freedom of non-worship, too.”
Compulsory religion makes a mockery of genuine religion.
In the last few years, Christian nationalism has sprung up all around us. Consider Congresswoman Greene, speaking last summer about the Republican Party: “We need to be the party of nationalism, and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”
Earlier this month, there was a conference of those who consider themselves “national conservatives.” According to this report, one of the talks was titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Christian Nationalism.”
Now, I’m sure that today’s Christian nationalists are all wonderful people (although, frankly, it is often easier to see the “nationalist” part of those who call themselves “Christian nationalists” than it is to see the other part). Yet “Christian nationalism” is nothing new, and it has not always been swell.
In the middle of the 20th century, there was a famous, or infamous, figure named Gerald L. K. Smith. I was interested in him as a subject of graduate study. Rather than quote from myself — I think those papers are gone with the wind, or a-moulderin’ in my mother’s basement — let me quote from the Source of All Knowledge, Wikipedia:
. . . an American clergyman, politician and organizer known for his populist and far-right demagoguery. A leader of the populist Share Our Wealth movement during the Great Depression, afterward he became known for far-right causes including the Christian Nationalist Crusade, which he founded in 1942. He founded the America First Party in 1943 and was its 1944 presidential candidate, winning fewer than 1,800 votes. He was a preeminent antisemite and a white supremacist.
Big-time.
The Christian Nationalist Crusade had a magazine: The Cross and the Flag. You could buy a record of Smith — an LP — talking: This Is Christian Nationalism.
You get the picture. Christian nationalism is back — as a phrase at least — and so is “America First.” There is no party of that name, as under Gerald L. K. Smith. But just last year, alumni of the Trump administration founded the America First Policy Institute.
Grant that people are entitled to their own interpretation of Scripture. But to some, Christianity is apart from nation and nationalism — or, better than “apart,” above.
Jesus was always emphasizing the foreigner, the stranger, the non-Jew. The non-tribesman. He was always celebrating such people, too. There’s a reason a Samaritan is the hero of the parable about how to treat one’s fellow man. The priest is not the hero; the Levite is not the hero. They don’t come out so well.
And, boy, did the Jews hate the Samaritans. Jesus was attempting to teach Jews. He did not choose a Samaritan at random.
You remember how it began. A lawyer approaches Jesus and says, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, no fool, says, “What is written in the law? how readest thou?” The lawyer knew his Bible (or “the Old Testament,” as Christians would call it, in years to come); so did Jesus (cold).
The lawyer cited Deuteronomy, followed by Leviticus: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”
In other words, Love God, totally. And obey the Golden Rule.
Just as an aside: A lot of people associate the Golden Rule with Jesus and Christianity. And they are not wrong to do so. But it comes straight from Leviticus: “. . . thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”
And a little farther down:
. . . if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
So, Jesus is talking with the lawyer. On hearing the lawyer’s answer — his quotation of Scripture — he says, “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.” But the lawyer has another question: Love thy neighbor as thyself, yeah. But “who is my neighbor?”
In answer, Jesus gives the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Can you stand more Scripture? You remember what the Samaritaness said to Jesus when he asked for a drink of water: “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” They sure didn’t.
In due course, Jesus tells her that “the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
You recall that when Jesus healed the ten lepers, only one turned back, to acknowledge what had happened and to glorify God. He was — natch — a Samaritan. “And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.”
In a pivotal moment — a key moment for all mankind — Peter discovered that “God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”
You have stuff like this: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” And this: “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”
I will stop now. That’s enough Scripture for one column. In fact, I think there is more in today’s column than there has been in all my columns combined — and I started Impromptus in March 2001. Don’t worry: I’ll be back to my usual observations about golf, slang, and women soon.
One more jaunt down Memory Lane, please. When I was in college — grad school, actually — Conor Cruise O’Brien came to give a series of lectures (as I recall). They were then made into a book. Or maybe they had already been a book? I can’t remember.
In any event, the book is called “God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism.” Publicity for the book says,
In his famously witty style, Conor Cruise O’Brien illuminates the confusion and conflation of religion and nationalism throughout history, and the enormous tensions produced by interactions between the two.
In coming weeks, I will be revisiting Conor Cruise O’Brien, and revisiting Gerald L. K. Smith as well. Everything old is new again. Whether we like it or not.
Hey, one more thing: The Nation published an article headed “Republicans Are Ready to Declare the United States a Christian Nation.” The article quotes Ronald Reagan, who in 1984, when he was president, gave a speech saying,
. . . we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief.
I have lived to see many strange things — perhaps especially in politics, and political journalism. But The Nation citing Reagan, positively? That is one of the strangest.
Reagan liked to say, in various ways, “We must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side. The question we should answer is: Are we on His?”
• When reading about college football, I thought of something I once said about an opera. No doubt you have the same experience. So, the article began,
You’re not alone: Auburn football coach Bryan Harsin is sick of how long the commercial breaks are too.
Harsin was in the middle of an answer about team leaders during his postgame press conference Saturday when he had a brief aside devoted to the bane of every college football fan’s existence.
“It seemed like we had a football game in the middle of commercials,” Harsin said after Auburn’s 17-14 overtime win against Missouri. “There was a lot of commercials today. So I asked a guy, I’m like, ‘How many more of these we got? Like, there’s a football game going on.’ Anyhow.”
Exactly.
I’m going from memory, but I think the Metropolitan Opera once had a production of Aida that had three intermissions: one after Act I, one after Act II, and one after Act III. That was about an hour and a half’s worth of intermissions. It was hard to keep the flow — the arc, the momentum — of the opera in mind. I opened my review this way (again, going from memory):
Last night, the Metropolitan Opera hosted a series of intermissions, punctuated by a performance of Aida.
Obnoxious to quote oneself — but what the hell . . .
• Donald Blinken, father of the current secretary of state, has died at 96. He had an extraordinary and diverse career — careers, you could say. Let me quote just one remarkable passage in his obituary, published in the New York Times:
He and Rothko listened to a recording of “The Marriage of Figaro” while hanging Rothko’s paintings in Mr. Blinken’s apartment.
Beat that, as Bill Buckley would say.
• Leigh Giangreco had an inspired idea: “Could ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ really be done? We found out.” Is it possible to do what Ferris and his companions did, on that wondrous Chicago day?
While we’re asking questions: Do you know that George F. Will, way back, declared Ferris the greatest movie of all time? He did. I sympathized.
• Finally, a little Sho’. Sarah Langs reports that “Shohei Ohtani has now faced 600 batters this year, making him the 1st player since 1900 with 600+ batters faced AND 600+ plate appearances in a season.”
Talk about “Beat that.”
Later, my friends.
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