Patterico's Pontifications

7/25/2022

GOP Representative Says Republicans Should Be Making the Party One of Christian Nationalism

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:39 pm



[guest post by Dana]

[Pressed for time so I’m going to do this quick post for you to chew on.]

Checking in with today’s Republican Party this weekend:

The Republican Party’s primary focus this year should be on making the political party one of Christian nationalism, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Saturday.

“We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists,” [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] said in an interview with the conservative Next News Network while attending the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida.

…Greene said the Republican Party should conform to Christianity to make it easier to identify with and sway Christian voters.

“When Republicans learn to represent most of the people that vote for them, then we will be the party that continues to grow without having to chase down certain identities or chase down certain segments of people,” she said. “We just need to represent Americans and most Americans, no matter how they vote, really care about the same things and I want to see Republicans actually do their job.”

Also zeroing in on the theme of Christian nationalism at the Turning Point event was none other than Donald Trump:

Former President Donald Trump said during a speech on Saturday that “Americans kneel to God” alone, as the concept of Christian nationalism continues to gain traction among conservatives.

[…]

“We will not break, we will not yield, we will never give in, we will never give up, we will never, ever, ever back down. As long as we are confident and united, the tyrants we are fighting do not stand a chance,” Trump said. “Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God, and God alone.”

Last year David French presented a compare and contrast of Christian nationalism vs. Christian patriotism:

I love this country, but I love it with eyes wide open. The aspirations of our founding have long been tempered by the brutal realities of our fallen nature. The same nation that stormed Normandy’s beaches to destroy a fascist empire simultaneously sustained a segregationist regime within its own borders. Our virtues do not negate our vices, and our vices do not negate our virtues. America isn’t 1619 or 1776. It’s 1619 and 1776.

What is Christian nationalism? It’s a deep emotional attachment to a particular and exclusive culture, a skewed version of history, and a false sense of “marked superiority” that must and will fade away.

What is Christian patriotism? To echo C.S. Lewis and George Washington, it’s a love of home and place and neighbor that does its best to fulfill the vision of peace and justice articulated by the prophet Micah so many long years ago—“Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

Anyway, this is where things currently stand in at least one wing of the GOP. Hopefully, this dangerous rhetoric will be shut down by party leadership and the party at large, but if Trump is still the de facto leader of the party, then we know there will be no cleanup on the right side of the aisle.

–Dana


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