episode 76: Pamela Cooper-White, part 2, bridging the divide

Episode 76: Pamela Cooper-White, part two

Like a football game, or a basketball game, we’re trying to outline our podcast into four quarter. After checking in with each other, we begin by continuing our conversation from the last episode regarding Christian Nationalism. There are numerous resources mentioned in this conversation, especially scholars who are producing new research on Christian nationalism. Notably, these scholars represent the fields of politics, history, and social science. There is information below abut how to follow them. Also, some key quotes from some of their amazing work.

In the second and third quarters, we hear the second half of Craig’s conversation with Dr. Pamela Cooper-White.

By the time we get to the fourth quarter, the hot topics have cooled and we do our muddled review of the Super Bowl.

Our next episodes in this series will be with Drew Strait, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Anabaptist Mennonite Theological Seminary.

Key scholars to follow and their Twitter handles

Samuel Perry @profsamperry

Philip Gorski @GorskiPhilip

Kristen Du Mez @kkdumez

Kathleen Belew @kathleen_belew

Andrew Whitehead @ndrewwhitehead

Bradley Onishi @BradleyOnishi

Matthew Taylor @TaylorMatthewD

Jamar Tisby @JemarTisby

Angela Denker @angela_denker 

Jamar Tisby’s definition: “White Christian Nationalism is an ethnocultural ideology that uses Christian symbolism to create a permission structure for the acquisition of political power and social control.”

Stephen Wolfe: a recent manifesto written as a defense and a directive for White Christian Nationalism. The Gospel Coalition provided a helpful review of Wolfe’s book in which these Wolfe quotes were noted.

Christian nationalism is, “a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.” For example:

Wolfe says a mark of nationalism is that “each people group has a right to be for itself” (118), and that “no nation (properly conceived) is composed of two or more ethnicities” (135), and that our “instinct to conduct everyday life among similar people is natural, and being natural, it is for your good” (142), and that “to exclude an out-group is to recognize a universal good for man” (145), and that “spiritual unity is inadequate for formal ecclesial unity” (200), and that “the most suitable condition for a group of people to successfully pursue the complete good is one of cultural similarity” (201).

Whitehead and Perry: speak of CN as “Christianity co-opted in the service of ethno-national power and separation” and “Christian nationalism is a cultural framework–a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems–that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civil life”” (Taking America Back for God)

Key categories of types of people: Accommodators and Ambassadors were both characterized as being “supportive” of “Christian nationalism” while Resisters and Rejecters “opposed” Christian nationalism.

Also see the latest research from PRRI https://www.prri.org/research/a-christian-nation-understanding-the-threat-of-christian-nationalism-to-american-democracy-and-culture/

Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home,

“White power should be recognized as something broader than the Klan, encompassing a wider range of ideologies and operating simultaneously in public and underground. Such an understanding is vital lest we erroneously equate white power with covert violence and thereby ignore its significant inroads into mainstream society, which hardly came under cover of night.”

 Code words: Mating calls, Dog Whistles, Triggers (Samuel Perry)

Music played in this episode is from Thrice, A Better Bridge, and Jackie DeShannon, What the World Needs Now