“There’s an image that captures the threat posed by the White Christian nationalist movement — and how it could become even more dangerous over the next four years.
Taken during the Jan. 6 insurrection, the photo shows a solitary White man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the domed US Capitol building. An American flag stands like a sentinel on a flagpole beside the Capitol under an ominously gray sky.
The photograph depicts a foot soldier in an insurgent religious movement trying to storm the halls of American power. What’s unsettling about the photo four years later is that much of the religious zeal that fed the insurrection is no longer outside the gates of power. Many of that movement’s followers are now on the inside, because their Chosen One, Donald Trump, returns this month to the Oval Office.
This is the scenario Americans could face in Trump’s second term. Under Trump, Christian nationalists will have unprecedented access to the power of the federal government. Trump’s GOP has unified control of Congress. And a conservative supermajority, which has already blurred the line between separation of church and state in a series of decisions favoring Christian interests, controls the US Supreme Court.”
Donald Trump’s second term will empower the White Christian nationalist movement, says scholar Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of “Jesus and John Wayne.” “It will transform our government,” she says. “They have seen their movement go mainstream, and now they have incredible access to power.”
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White Christian nationalists are yet another manifestation of the fascist right, another threat to our democratic institutions and protected liberties.
And with a Supreme Court dominated by partisan conservative ideologues hostile to settled, accepted Establishment Clause jurisprudence, realizing the goal of white Christian nationalists to conjoin church and state is real and imminent.
