Tracing the evangelical roots of white nationalism

It has been over two years since a violent mob attacked and occupied the United States Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. While blame has been laid at the feet of then-president Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters, religion scholar Bradley Onishi takes a close look at the historical events and forces that led up to the attack. 

In “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next,” Onishi examines the history of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and the movement’s increasing involvement with political extremism since the late 1950s. Examining cultural and political movements that reshaped society, he shows how conservative evangelical Christianity has melded with political extremism to exert an outsize influence on contemporary society. His thorough research, close observation, and clear writing are invaluable in helping to understand the insurrection as well as some of the many puzzling aspects of the Trump presidency. 

“January 6 was not an aberration or even some historically bewildering event,” he writes. “It was the logical outcome of the Trump presidency and election defeat but also of the long history of White Christian nationalist rhetoric, organizing, and influence across the United States.” 

Onishi brings an insider’s perspective to his subject. He became a zealous convert to evangelicalism as a teenager in Orange County, California. He later served as a full-time youth minister, before leaving evangelicalism and becoming a scholar of religion (he is currently a professor of religion at the University of San Francisco). In 2018, he melded his scholarly projects with his personal history. His desire was to help people understand one of the most perplexing and contradictory aspects of the Trump presidency. 

“How could those who touted the Bible at every turn support a man who had clearly never read it?” he asks. “How could the pastors who called on Bill Clinton to resign for his sexual misconduct support a thrice-married president who paid hush money to a sex worker and gleefully described sexually assaulting women?”

Onishi makes the distinction between white evangelicalism and white Christian nationalism. While the terms are not the same, they are closely linked. Evangelicalism teaches that “the Bible is the errorless Word of God,” which “should be read and followed as literally as possible.” White Christian nationalism goes further, embracing the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and, as such, is superior to all other nations, and one chosen by God to play a central role in world history. Other foundational components of Christian nationalism are nostalgia for past glory –  when white men were most highly privileged –  and an apocalyptic view of the nation’s future. 

Onishi explains that white Christian nationalism is not so much an established ideology or a cogent theological belief system as it is a marker of cultural identity. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with personal religious practice or identification with a specific denomination. This goes a long way to explaining the proliferation of Christian imagery and symbols at the Jan. 6 insurrection. Among the various religious banners on display, one of the most popular read “Jesus is My Savior – Trump is My President.” 

How did things get to this point? Onishi points to the 1960s and the immense transformation of American society that decade ushered in. While many welcomed the achievements of the burgeoning civil rights movement, new freedom for women, and other sweeping changes, others did not. 

For many, he writes, “the sixties were the time when numerous serpents tempted Americans away from the bedrock values of faith, family, and freedom and toward a new social order, a sexual revolution, and an abandonment of the nuclear family.” 

The John Birch Society, an anticommunist organization steeped in libertarianism and informed by the idea that Christianity and American democracy are inextricably linked, was one of many organizations that flourished as a corrective to the sweeping changes of the 1960s, a counterrevolution held together by Christian identity. 

In 1964, Barry Goldwater was able to tap into this reserve of white Christian nationalism and, much like Donald Trump 51 years later, became the unlikely Republican nominee for president. While his campaign against Lyndon Johnson went down in flames, his candidacy gave rise to the New Right, a grassroots coalition of American conservatives. In the late 1970s, the New Right joined forces with televangelist Jerry Falwell’s Religious Right and changed American politics by inspiring tens of millions of people of faith in the South, the Midwest, and the Sunbelt to vote for Ronald Reagan, the Republican presidential nominee, rather than Democrat Jimmy Carter. (Though Carter’s faith was without question, his politics did not fit the Religious Right’s agenda.) 

By 1980, the extremism of Goldwater had become the mainstream of the GOP. Twenty-six years later, Onishi explains, when it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had a precedent in prioritizing politics over morals. 

“[Trump] was not an imperfect candidate who somehow managed to garner the votes of White Christians. He was the prototype of the candidate White Christians had been searching for since the early 1960s,” Onishi writes.

As to what the future holds, the author acknowledges that the movement Trump has energized will continue even after Trump himself is out of the public eye. He also looks with apprehension at the continuing migration to the American Redoubt, an area composed of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington and Oregon, where white Christian nationalists and political extremists find a safe haven and a sense of separatism in an isolated region of the country. He sees the Redoubt Migration as the next step in the evolution of American politics that started with the Sunbelt Migration in the mid-20th century. Only this time, he speculates, the goal is not to take control of a political party, but to prepare for the collapse of the United States and a chance to rebuild a theocratic state. 

While this assessment may seem dubious and is certainly debatable, a look back at events of just the past eight years should make anyone hesitate to write off any conclusion as far-fetched. Though not an alarmist, Onishi is unequivocal in his outlook. Asserting that white Christian nationalists have been preparing for war ever since Goldwater lost the 1964 election, he ends his thought-provoking narrative with this warning: “What lies ahead is not a contest for electoral majorities or policy initiatives. It’s a test of democracy’s resilience in the face of an apocalyptic threat.”