by Mark Tapson
The Left pretends to want to save Christians from themselves.
The left hates Christians, even the liberal, nonjudgmental ones in nondenominational megachurches with pastors in skinny jeans. But because this is an election year and their presumed candidate and his vice-presidential backup option are such pathetically weak choices, the panicked left cannot afford to alienate all those Christian deplorables and drive them toward the Republican candidate. So their strategy, as always, is to divide and conquer. Thus, the left is ramping up hysteria about a segment of the Christian population they are painting as a clear and present danger to “democracy” (i.e., Democrat hegemony): Christian nationalists.
The label “Christian nationalism” is the new Progressive dog-whistle for “scary American patriots.” It signals to Progressives that Americans who love God and country – which used to be the norm before our descent into a post-Christian, post-patriotism culture – are a subversive danger to democracy. Christianity, after all, imposes a moral code that chafes Progressive libertines, and nationalism, with its emphasis on state sovereignty and secure borders, frustrates their globalist ambitions.
Whenever Christians wave the Stars and Stripes, wear a MAGA hat, or pray that God blesses our country, the Left hyperventilates over the specter of a fundamentalist theocracy on the rise. They envision America becoming a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia in which white male Christian mullahs hang homosexuals and imprison women for seeking abortions. The Left’s vision of the separation of church and state, therefore, is one in which Christian patriots and their values are best excluded from the halls of government power entirely.
The left believes if they can demonize a politicized segment of Christians as violent radicals by tarring them as being not real Christians – much like they insist that Islamic terrorists aren’t real Muslims – then they can isolate the Trump-supporting Christian nationalists from the “good” Christians.
As a prime example: on MSNBC last week, Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla said that the “base of the Republican Party has shifted” after former President Trump attracted a “more extremist element,” including “Christian nationalists.”
“The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court. They come from God,” said Przybyla [emphasis added].
See what she did there? By stressing that the politically active Christians are “very different” from the “good” Christians who aren’t, Przybyla seems as if she actually respects and cares about the latter.
She went on to warn MSNBC’s hundreds of viewers about “an extremist element of conservative Christians” who advocate against Progressive sacraments such as abortion and gay marriage – because Trump-supporting Christians aren’t nearly half the country; they’re “extremists.”
The Family Research Council and Catholic Vote subsequently demanded an apology in a letter to Politico blasting Przybyla for “trying to demonize the Christian community” with her comment that only extremist “Christian nationalists” believe human rights “come from God”:
Her statements constituted an attempt to spread misinformation about Christians by creating the perception that they hold unique beliefs that pose a distinct and, in her words “extremist,” threat to our country. Setting aside the inaccuracy of her commentary, she was manifestly trying to demonize the Christian community and sow fear through propaganda.
Quite so.
As another example, filmmaker and anti-Trump hysteric Rob Reiner just released his documentary God & Country, about “the threat of a movement that infuses Christian dogma with far-right politics,” as The Hollywood Reporter put it. The film’s trailer features an interviewee who declares, “This is not a movement about Christian values, this is about Christian power.” Reiner himself recently tweeted that “Christian Nationalism is not only a danger to our Country, it’s a danger to Christianity itself.” [Emphasis added on both quotes] The relentless messaging here is, Christianity is fine, it’s Christian nationalism that’s evil.
“To be clear,” God & Country director Dan Partland stated in an interview,
Christianity is not the problem, and having one’s faith inform one’s political beliefs is not the problem. The problem is the intertwining of a Christian identity with a political identity such that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The danger to democracy led me to explore this topic, but what I learned in the process is that the threat may be even greater to the Church itself.
Again, as I wrote elsewhere, “The notion that Partland and Reiner are deeply concerned about protecting Christianity from the secularizing corrosion of earthly power is ludicrous… He and Partland are surely taking this seemingly sympathetic angle to present their film as being Christian-friendly.”
As the executive producer, Reiner brought significant celebrity power to the project, yet it crashed and burned in limited release on its opening weekend beginning February 16, raking in only $38,000 (and only $60,000 total since then). Maybe people aren’t so worried after all that the country will be turned into a Christian version of Iran.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, however. In an interview with Newsweek, which was eager to help promote God & Country, Reiner hammered the same note:
We have to make a distinction between Christianity and Christian nationalism. Because when you watch the film, you’ll see that we have some very, very respected, conservative Christian evangelicals who talk specifically about how not only is Christian nationalism hurting the country and hurting democracy, but it’s hurting Christianity itself. And they believe that it is a terrible attack on Christianity. [Emphasis added]
Reiner and his Hollywood comrades are constantly bashing Christianity; why is he suddenly protective of it? Because he and his Party need the “good” Christians to distance themselves from and isolate the “dangerous” Trump supporters.
“I’ve seen over the years that they’re incredibly organized, incredibly well funded, and have attained tremendous power,” Reiner continued to fear-monger:
And I saw that [with] Trump’s candidacy in 2016, again in 2020, and now it’s really hardened and solidified behind Trump. To me, this is a dangerous path for this country to go down and for the world go down, which is authoritarianism, the idea that it’s my way or the highway, and that you’re even willing to resort to violence to get your own way. We saw this exemplified on January 6.
And there you see Reiner tying Christian nationalism to what Progressives falsely insist was a violent, Trump-inspired insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Asked by Newsweek if he was surprised by anything in the process of producing the film, Reiner once again raised a distinction between Christians and the nationalists: “Well, the thing that I was most surprised by was to see conservative Christian leaders talk against Christian nationalism, because they believed it is not only hurting the country, but hurting Christianity.”
He added that during “a very dark period in my life decades ago,” he did a lot of reading on Christianity “and I came away personally with my own beliefs, which is the teachings of Jesus, which is love thy neighbor, do unto others as he would have done unto you.”
Reiner isn’t saying he became Christian, only that he likes the Christian emphasis on love and peace. Leftists like that aspect of Christianity because they can use it against their political opponents by making Christians live up to their own standards (this is Rule #4 in left-wing strategist Saul Alinsky’s influential Rules for Radicals, which was dedicated to Lucifer, “the first radical”: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”).
“So to me,” Reiner concluded, “this movement is going totally opposite the teachings of Jesus.”
The left doesn’t care about the teachings of Jesus, but they know that Christians do, so this is the manipulative angle we’re going to hear again and again in the state media like MSNBC and Newsweek: real Christians are “very fine people” who are “very different” from MAGA “extremists.”
The left loves the peaceful Jesus; they hate the Jesus who righteously drove the sacrilegious money-changers out of the White House – er, temple.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
Mark Tapson is the Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, focusing
on popular culture. He is also the host of an original podcast on
Frontpage, “The Right Take With Mark Tapson”. Follow him on Substack.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/christians-in-the-crosshairs/
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