Christian Nationalism and The Demise of True Christianity

OKEY ANUEYIAGU

The defining feature of Christian Nationalism is of an ideology steeped in the quest for unquenchable power and influence by which many Christians perceive, view and adapt their puritanical roles in society. This pattern of behaviour is not new, and has assumed a global dimension that is as frightening as it has become dangerous.

This movement has its dangerous roots in the perceived myth by the practitioners, especially those in America, that the world should revolve around Christianity, and that the religion holds a privileged place in a world that requires complete strict moral or religious acquiescence binding everyone regardless of their beliefs and faith. Also that we must all fall in line with the rules made by white Christians whether they conform or not with the norms of the real doctrine as preached by Jesus Christ.

They have used this term of Christian Nationalism as a tool and an underpinning object to advance White Supremacy and other racist ideologies. These inclinations include xenophobia, patriarchy, authoritarianism, theocracy and other vices used in the consolidation of power in the hands of a few men who must be white and Christians.

Many have referred to this movement as “christofascism” by citing what the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s when it was called “positive Christianity.” For 400 years, the churches and their preachers have preached political ideologies from pulpits that have no value in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but have been all about control, hate, power and wickedness over people that are not white, and this became the roots of Christian Nationalism.

Many decades ago as an undergraduate student in a Political Philosophy class, l encountered a poem that embraced religious revolution written by Langston Hughes, a black poet who was deservedly referred to as the poet laureate of black America. Hughes had written so many provocative poems that largely drew tremendous attention to the many religious contradictions that existed within the white churches and American democracy. He incurred the wrath of many white Christians who detested the controversial nature of his poems. His poems were meant to be some sort of protest against the domination of whites using the instruments of Christianity to exploit black and brown people.

One of Hughe’s earth-shaking poems that captured my mind then and still remains very relevant today was titled: “Goodbye Christ” This particular poem disturbed many Christians especially the white evangelicals.

This poems went thus:

Listen, Christ

You did alright in your day, l reckon

But that day’s gone now.

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible –

But it’s dead now.

The popes and the preachers’ve

Made too much money from it.

They’ve sold you to many

Kings, generals, robbers, and killers –

Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,

Even to Rockefeller’s Church,

Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.

You ain’t no good no more.

They’ve pawned you

Till you’ve done wore out.

Hughes vacillated between owning his words and running away from them, but the words of his poetry still stand very tall today as the world witnesses the sacredness and the sanctity in the power of those words.

In the wake of the many upheavals that plague our universe, there is a whole lot of ugliness prevalent in Christendom. The ugliness presented itself in so many forms – slavery, torture, lynching, beating, burning, shooting and mutilation – all heinous crimes perpetrated by white Christians, while preaching the word of Jesus Christ, against blacks and other races that were not white. Christians have failed to see the sufferings of blacks, but have embraced the emergence of Christian Nationalism and ignored the moral decadence of the brutality and the oppression of our times.

Throughout my personal journey as a practicing Christian, even within the limitations of my ambivalence, l have struggled with trying to find meaning in a society that preaches virtue and does evil. I have constantly wrestled with my faith within a religion that does not even recognize my existence as a human being. This terrible conflict has fueled my contradiction and has today become exacerbated by the recent happenings of Christian Nationalism that preaches the supremacy of one race over others. I believe that it must be our collective duty and responsibility to address the deep contradiction that white supremacy masked in Christian Nationalism poses for Christianity all over the world.

Writing about Christian Nationalism, one must focus and reflect on the social and economic evils of slavery and segregation in America. Today, pivoting back to the current white supremacy in America, and the rotten politics therefrom, we must ponder and wonder how white Christians profess and confess their pure Christian faith, and still practice and impose their centuries of hate upon other races. Within this prism, lies the corruption of religion, self-interest and deceit. For other races who are ardent members of the Christian faith to continue to endure the brutality of white supremacy, hidden now under the so-called Christian Nationalism, is a paradoxically immanent revelation that compels me, and should also make many other reasonable Christians, to use words as weapons to resist this religious attack on humanity.

This short essay must never be the last word about the wickedness of those who brought Christianity to the world, especially about those who used the religion to wrongly prosecute Africans, but it must be a journey that starts a conversation about how to, while exploring ways to heal the deep wounds of the past, and find ways to liberate the world from the resurgence of the hurt that is being once again, empowered by Trump and his fellow white men and women hiding under Christianity.

From the days when something as simple as an affirmation of one’s blackness took great courage and was a dangerous proposition, to today when whites still act in an arrogantly superior manner towards blacks and other people of colour, the advances made by the civil rights movements to protect and preserve black people and their humanity have been eviscerated by white supremacy and their Christian Nationalism. How else can one explain the complexity of black subjectivity  –  as a people who are formed and created by this same Christian God, and subjected from infancy on, by the prevalent imminence of the ever-present ubiquitous threat of death  –  promised them, and delivered very promptly by these white Christians?

In America today, blacks are being treated as shabbily as they were treated during slavery and thereafter. In a patriarchal society where an adult black male is called “boy” or “nigger”, something must be awfully wrong. Black people’s struggle against white supremacy under the umbrella of Christian Nationalism is undeserving within the laws and doctrine of Christianity. The spiritual power to resist and overcome the suffering, I think, is what keeps them moving and alive.

The symbol of Jesus Christ as the saviour of all people, especially of those who proclaim His faith, to me is not an abstraction or even an anonymous symbol. It is a sign that signifies purity, kindness, equality, equity and fairness to all. But the arrant and sinful behaviour of most Christians, especially the white ones, forces me to continue to seek an ultimate and convincing meaning that is difficult to express in rational terms about the wickedness of the practitioners of Christian Nationalism.

It has become rather difficult for a lot of minority Christians to find the language today to describe the unfairness in Christianity in the face of the treatment that white Christians are meting to them. Is it possible to consider the same Jesus that they have embraced, and which these same wicked evangelical white Christians who have supported and participated in the killings of blacks, to be their same saviour? Many wonder if it is this same God that they worship that gave them slavery, segregation, lynching, poverty and death, asking them to turn the other cheek and await their rewards in heaven.

For several centuries, suffering created by Christians caused deep religious paradoxes especially for people of colour by challenging the faith of many Christians in the justice and love of God. Going through the lethany of the physical and spiritual anguish humanity has suffered in the hands of white Christians, has made many to question the existence of God. How if there was a God, did he allow white people to do as they do for so many years?

How did God allow the Christian Crusades (1096 – 1291) that killed 3 million people, the Inquisition (12th – 19thc.) that took over 100,000 lives; the Colonial Genocide in the Americas (1492-1900) that caused 56 million Indigenous deaths, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (1500-1900) in which 12 million were enslaved, and 2 million died in transit, European Colonial Conquest in Africa/Asia (1500 – 1900) with Tens of millions killed; (over 20 million in  Congo alone); British Colonial Famine Policies in India (18th – 19th c.) which caused 30 – 50 million deaths, Holocaust (1933 – 1945) had 6 million Jews killed in Germany, Taiping Rebellion (1850 – 1864) with 30 million killed under a radical Christian messianic movement, Biafra Genocide with 3 million, mostly children killed by a coalition of Christians and Muslims, Sexual Abuse in Christian Institutions (20th – 21st c.) in which hundreds of thousands of children were abused and molested, and many more killings performed mostly by white Christians all over the world.

These historical atrocities associated mostly with white Christians either through Christian institutions or other avenues are once again rearing their ugly heads up. The pervasiveness of this nonsense is bewildering, questioning the essential meaning of Christianity and the emblem of shame and derogation it has carried for centuries. It signals the demise of true Christianity.

The recent re-emergence of white Christian Nationalism is not good news for the world, and it is a terrible tragedy for Christians no matter where they may find themselves. It is obvious that their actions threaten the teachings of Jesus Christ about the absolute value imbedded in the reign of God’s justice, love, equity and equality for all no matter their colour, tribe, race, nationality or tongue.

For the powerful religious authorities, their corrupt accomplices in the political strata, and with all the white people who perpetrate these atrocities under the banner of Christ, and also with those who are today perverting these sins against God and man, and being comfortable doing it, let it be made clear to you all, that the tragic memory of your sins await you all somehow, somewhere.

•Okey Anueyiagu is a Professor of Political Economy.

Essayist, Columnist and Author of Biafra, The Horrors of War,  The Story of A Child Soldier