Normally I’m not very big on New Year’s resolutions. I don’t know I won’t get hit by a bus tomorrow, and I don’t have the attention span to follow through on them anyway. But after reading a Substack piece by Kristin DuMez of Calvin University, I’m reconsidering.
DuMez, who spent October and November on an anti-authoritarian “Faith and Democracy” speaking tour with three other religious scholars, said she isn’t too big on “ushering in the new year with much fanfare” either. But in her Dec. 31 post, headlined “Resolute,” she promised to to return to the theme in the new year. “What can be done?” she added. “That will be a theme of many of my posts in coming months […].”
A lifelong member of the Christian Reformed Church, which has deep roots in the 16th-century Calvinism of the Netherlands, Kristin DuMez has written extensively of her belief that the Religious Right and white Christian nationalism have corrupted her faith tradition. And she worries that practicing Christians will be among the people most hurt when Donald Trump takes office.
It may be helpful to define our terms here, since Christian nationalism means different things to different people. I take my definition from an ELCA Advocacy statement put out by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America , which has the advantages of: (1) being nonpartisan; and (2) reflecting the values of the church I belong to:
This political ideology, whether explicit or not, includes the beliefs that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired and enjoys godly status, that Christianity should be a privileged religion in the U.S., that the nation holds a special status in God’s eyes, and that good Americans must hold Christian beliefs. Proponents range from those who believe the United States should be declared a Christian nation (approximately 21% of the U.S. population) to those involved in more virulent strains that are openly racist, anti-democratic or gang-like. The symbols and ideology of Christian nationalism were widely evident during the Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to throw out certified U.S. election results.”
Among those values are the Eighth Commandment (in the Lutheran and Catholic version of the 10 Commandments): you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, or, more generally, love thy neighbor. The ELCA Advocacy statement quotes Luther’s small catechism:
[…] we are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead, we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.
Not only does Christian nationalism undermine the wall of separation between church and state, which allows faiths as diverse as Norwegian Hauge Synod Lutherans, Irish Catholics, two-seeds-in-the-spirit predestinarian Baptists, Hasidic Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, too many other faith traditions to mention, and no faith tradition at all to flourish in a secular society. White nationalist beliefs also tend to exclude minorities and others who do not meet “biblical” criteria for inclusion in a promised land.
DuMez doesn’t quote Luther’s catechism, of course, but her argument is equally nuanced, subtle and grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. She doesn’t envision outright persecution of mainline Christians. But she believes the narrow, exclusionary focus in white Christian nationalist theology entitles its believers “to reshape society and even to impose those beliefs on fellow Americans.”
In other words, no one is predicting Christians will be thrown to the lions under Trump 2.0, as they were under the Roman emperors. But DuMez believes America’s pluralistic democracy is threatened.
In addition to her Christian Reformed heritage, DuMez grew up with stories of the Dutch resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II (this I can relate to because I grew up with similar tales of the Norwegian resistance). “Shaped by these stories of Dutch Christian heroism,” she said Dec. 22 in another Substack post, “I grew up believing that Christianity was a countercultural force for good, the source of strength in the face of tyranny.” This heritage was one of the things that led her to study German nationalism, along with history and religious studies, in college and grad school.
DuMez’ primary focus as a scholar has been on the politicization of religion in America, a theme she traced in her 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Despite its clickbait title, it’s an objective account of a militaristic, politically conservative religious movement that has contributed to political polarization in America from the 1970s onward.
Now she’s worried about President-elect Trump.
It’s not so much that he peddles $3 bibles for $59.99, or his personal life is hardly a model of Christian virutes. It’s more that his racist dog whistles and divisive rhetoric seem at odds with the commandment to love thy neighbor. As when he claimed his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, a Baptist who grew up in a mixed Hindu-Christian family and whose husband is Jewish, would “come after Christians all over the country” if elected. Trump also promised to create a federal task force to fight “anti-Christian bias.”
As always, it’s difficult to know whether Trump means what he says or he’s just waxing rhetorical at a given moment, but last month DuMez told Leida Fadel of NPR this kind of talk worries her:
It’ll be very interesting to see what that task force actually entails because within the Christian nationalist framework, often some of the key targets of Christian nationalists are fellow Christians themselves — fellow Christians who did not adhere to the Christian nationalist agenda.
Trump, as usual, didn’t go into details, but he dropped some hints at an October rally with Franklin Graham in North Caroina. Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service reported:
After insisting his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, would “come after Christians all over the country,” Trump promised to create a federal task force to fight “anti-Christian bias,” allow homeschool parents to spend $10,000 a year tax-free on costs associated with their children’s education, ban schools from “promoting critical race theory or transgender gender ideology” and “reaffirm that God created two genders: male and female.”
The proposals were light on details, and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for clarification, instead sending along a statement by [prominent Trump supporter Ben] Carson insisting Trump “did more for the faith community than any president in history.”
Steve Harrison of WUNC in Chapel Hill, who also covered the speech, added some color:
At the Concord Convention Center on Monday, he sounded subdued, even low-energy.
He listed how, in his opinion, Vice President Kamala Harris — who says she grew up in the Black church — is hostile to Christianity by allowing transgender women to play women’s sports, among other issues. He said the assassination attempt against him this summer in Pennsylvania brought him and his family closer to God.
At one point, the crowd of roughly 2,000 people chanted “Jesus! Jesus!”
Trump told them he would use the federal government to protect Christians.
“I would create a new federal task force on finding anti-Christian bias, that will begin immediately,” he said.
(One point in the WUNC report needs clarification: Harris, who grew up in a religiously mixed family, is a longtime member of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. Her pastor, also a political ally, describes her as a quiet “doer of the word,” whom he contrasted with those who proclaim “a whole lot of hallelujah but not much do-aloojah.”)
Kamala Harris’ religious background aside, DuMez sees in Trump’s particular brand of white Christian nationalism a threat to America’s heritage of religious pluralism. She told Fadel of NPR, “many Christians see Christian nationalism as a threat not just to Americans generally but as a threat to authentic Christian faith as well.”
DuMez explained how Trump’s talk of “anti-Christian bias” and Democrats “com[ing] after Christians all over the country” intersects with with an authoritarian streak in some churches:
You have to understand that within conservative Christian spaces, there has long been the argument that Christians are persecuted, that the religious liberty of Christians is under threat and that that needs to be remedied. Now, to understand how that can make sense when the majority of Americans do hold Christian beliefs, it’s important to note that when they talk about threats to religious liberty, many conservative Christians have a fairly expansive notion of what that entails. They want the religious liberty not just to practice their own beliefs, but also they think that to be faithful as Christians means to reshape society and even to impose those beliefs on fellow Americans. And when they are not able to do that, that seems like a restriction on their religious liberties.
And that tendency toward authoritarianism intersects, in turn, with some of the tenents of Christian nationalism.:
What’s different about Christian nationalism is this sense of privilege that the country itself must reflect particular Christian values. They present histories — largely mythical histories of the founding era that suggests that the Constitution was, even some will go as far as to say, inspired by God and that the Constitution reflects biblical values. […] You can see certainly a Christian nationalist agenda embedded in [Project 2025 and Trump’s stated agenda]. Yes, it entails anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ laws. But it goes far beyond that. It also shares the anti-immigration platform – things like a broader antiwoke agenda and reshaping American public education.
In her NewYear’s Eve essay, DuMez addressed that broader agenda and pledged to be part of the opposition (along with completing a book she put on the back burner last year for the Faith and Democracy tour). Citing a 2023 article, “How Oppositions Fight Back,” by Laura Gamboa of the University of Utah, whose scholarly focus is not on religion but on regime change, the erosion of democracy and voting behavior in Latin America, DuMez said:
In the Journal of Democracy (July 2023), Gamboa describes how the erosion of democracy is different from much of what we witnessed in the twentieth century. Rather than military coups, authoritarianism now arrives via free and fair elections. Authoritarian leaders then “use and abuse institutions and institutional reforms to undermine checks and balances, hinder free and fair elections, and thwart political rights and civil liberties.” This often happens in a piecemeal way. “Slow-motion democratic breakdown is often thought of as an invisible, and hence formidable, enemy, but it can also be a blessing in disguise. Because the erosion of democracy happens gradually, opposition forces have ample time and opportunity to fight back.”
“What concerns me (one of many things) is the paralysis that seems to have gripped ‘the resistance’,” DuMez said in the Substack essay. “I get it, I’m feeling it too. And that feeling of powerlessness only adds to the collective despair.”
But, she concluded, Gamboa’s article offers a way out — “there’s plenty of work to do.”
Rebuilding Jericho: The lecture tour
Actually, the work began well before the election.
In October and November, Du Mez joined sociologist Robert Jones of PRRI (an acronym for the Public Religion Research Institute) and historians Diana Butler Bass and Jemar Tisby on the mainline Protestant lecture circuit. Alarmed by Trump’s divisive, militant rhetoric, they put together a “Faith and Democracy” speaking tour to promote “pluralism instead of Christian nationalism, equality rather than hierarchy, truth rather than propaganda, and love and compassion rather than power and fear.”
The speaking tour grew out of a mixed-media video/podcast and a Substack magazine The Convocation, to which they contribute. In an introductory podcast in May 2024, they announced:
We are each scholars (three historians and one sociologist) who write about religion and its intersection with culture, history, and politics in America. We also each take our own Christian faith seriously and are deeply concerned about the future of both democracy and Christianity in the U.S.
Now they contribute stories to The Convocation Substack, and they have an ongoing podcast they call the Convocation Unscripted, for which they typically get together on Zoom. They seem to be imporvising it as they go along, but they seem t be in it for the long haul. (The most recent one dropped Jan. 11.) Other links are available on the podcast’s YouTube about page.
Last year’s “Faith and Democracy” tour brought all four together for face-to-face appearances in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. In November at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, the one post-election event on the circuit, DuMez returned to the theme of white Christian nationalism:
If you actually look at who are the targets of Christian nationalists, more often than not it’s their fellow Christians who are saying, No. I am a believer. And I am going to stand and put myself between you and more vulnerable populations.
To this, added Rick Pidcock, who wrote up the event for Baptist News Global:
Nonauthoritarian Christians are considered threats because they question the dominant narrative of the Christians who are climbing the rubble and claiming ownership of their Jericho. These Christians deconstruct authoritarian understandings of the Bible, society, history, justice and love.
(PIdcock’s reference is to “white Christian nationalists [who] have considered Native Americans, Black people, women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anyone who won’t submit to them to be the Canaanites of the book of Joshua. And on Nov. 5, the walls of our Jericho came tumbling down.” The biblical conquest of Jericho is a common metaphor for Trump’s MAGA movement and the Jan. 6 insurrection.)
Shortly before the Nov. 5 election, Mitch Randall, CEO of Good Faith Media, another Baptist publication, interviewed Du Mez at a similar event at Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tempe, Ariz. His take is worth quoting at length:
Du Mez offered a vulnerable and honest personal assessment of her feelings at this point in the election cycle. She admitted to being tired of the constant barrage of political conversations and partisan vitriol.
However, even after confessing her weariness, she commented, “For those of us who see what’s happening … it’s a long haul. And there is no promised victory at the end. There is no end. There’s no end.”
“And it’s so tempting to check out,” she continued. “It’s so tempting to pass the baton or just put your head down … And in a democracy, we all have to step up. And those of us who see what’s happening, it’s up to us to open other people’s eyes.” [Link and ellipsis in the original.]
Randall of Good Faith Media also had an interesting takeaway from his interview with Jones at Tempe:
[…] Jones does have hope, recalling a Jewish proverb from the Midrash: “You are not responsible to finish the work, but neither can you desist from it.”
Jones said: “The election is not really the beginning or end of anything. It is an event. There will be life beyond it. And we will all have responsibilities to pick up and make our country the best thing it can be.” [Link in the original.]
Not only was Jones pre-election hunch prophetic, in ways he probably couldn’t have predicted in October; he quoted one of my favorite passages of scripture — often combined with a quotation from the prophet Michan in a paraphrase of a Talmudic scholar known as Rabbi Tarfon (I’ve blogged about him HERE and HERE): Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
So when a Christian Reformed Calvinist (Du Mez), a Southern Baptist (Jones), a Methodist-turned-Episcopalian (like Butler), and a conservative Presbyterian with roots in the Black church (Tisby) get together on a joint appeal for freedom of religion in a pluralistic democracy, they’re going to appeal to an ecumenically minded Anglo-Catholic Zen Lutheran (a high-church Luther-o-palian for short) like me. Especially when they quote Rabbi Tarfon!
And it doesn’t hurt that the ELCA Advocacy statement declares: “The ELCA is committed to the common good — not for the good of Christians first — and to working with and learning from others” and quotes ELCA’s Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton:
Christian Nationalism identifies a human-made government with God’s will and seeks privilege specifically for Christians, and many times only white Christians. Lutherans teach that government should be held accountable to God, but never dictated as God’s will. We must remain committed to strengthening the public space as a just place for all who seek peaceful governance, regardless of religion or worldview, and we will defend the full participation of all in our religiously diverse society.
To all of which I can only say, OK, guys, count me in.
Links and Citations
Kristin DuMez, “Christmas in a time of Christian nationalism,” Connections, Substack, Dec. 22, 2024 https://kristindumez.substack.com/p/christmas-in-a-time-of-christian.
_________, “Resolute,” Connections, Substack, Dec 31, 2024 https://kristindumez.substack.com/p/resolute.
Ruth Graham and Clyde McGrady, “Kamala Harris’ faith, in and outside the Black church,” New York Times, rpt. Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 22, 2024 https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/10/22/kamala-harris-her-multifaith-ties/.
Steve Harrison, “Trump promises to root out ‘anti-Christian bias’ at Concord faith event,” WUNC, Oct. 21, 2024 https://www.wunc.org/2024-10-21/trump-promises-to-root-out-anti-christian-bias-at-concord-faith-leaders-event.
Richard Lardner and Dake Kang, “Thousands of Trump Bibles were printed in China as he campaigned against trade practices,” PBS, Oct. 8, 2024https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-of-trump-bibles-were-printed-in-china-as-he-campaigned-against-trade-practices
Rick Pidcock, “Dispirited Christians must prepare to stand in the gap, historians urge,” Baptist News Global, Nov. 2-, 2024 https://baptistnews.com/article/dispirited-christians-must-prepare-to-stand-in-the-gap-historians-urge/.
Mitch Randall, “Researchers, Historians and Theologians Host Faith and Democracy Tour,” Good Faith Media, Oct. 25, 2024 https://goodfaithmedia.org/researchers-historians-and-theologians-host-faith-and-democracy-tour/#.
“We Are Christians Against Christian Nationalism,” Evangelical Lutheran Church in America https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/wearechristiansagainstchristiannationalism.pdf.
[Uplinked Jan, 12, 2025]
Ordinary Time 
Well done.
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