Soft vs. Hard Christian Nationalism

Dr. Brian Kaylor, president and editor-in-chief at Word&Way, describes how a progressive Presbyterian partner got President Eisenhower to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. Brian's new book, "Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism," is coming out June 4, 2024.
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TRANSCRIPT:
I do think that one of the things that's happening in the conversation now is this reevaluation of the kind of older term of “civil religion.” And I think that's what some people are now calling kind of a soft Christian nationalism - which I do think is a healthy perspective, because civil religion was sold to us for decades as: this unifying God language is generic, it brings us all together. It's harmless. But Christian nationalism is what's really dangerous. And one of the things we argue is that civil religion was never as innocent as it seemed. Right? Like “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is one of the examples, actually, that Robert Bellah puts in his original essay on Civil Religion. But it was never as unifying as it seems.
It only seemed unifying, because at the time 92% of Americans claimed to be Christian. And so, yeah, God language seemed pretty unifying. But in a more pluralistic society, it doesn't work. It's not unifying. So civil religion today would look like Christian nationalism. It just is. It can't be implemented.
That demographic shift, it works both ways, is also what is fueling some of our more violent Christian nationalism - the concern that they're losing the nation. And so that's why Christian nationalism is becoming more dangerous.
But yeah, that idea of soft Christian nationalism - I mean, there is a difference between the flag being in the sanctuary, and then storming the Capitol and using the Christian flag as a weapon against police officers. I mean, there is a difference there. At the same time, the one leads to the other, eventually. I mean, we've discipled generations of people to merge and to fuse Christian and American identities. The more violent version or the hard version of Christian nationalism doesn't come out of nowhere. It might start with the kind of gateway drug version of just the American flag in the sanctuary and singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And sure, it seems all happy and innocent; but then it leads, in some cases, to a much more violent version. And so I think we need to work hard to detox any level of Christian nationalism, because it is inherently a threat to democracy. And then for those of us who are Christians, it's a threat to our faith.