episide 77: Drew Strait and the Poilitcal Idolatry of Christian Nationalism, Pt 1
First Quarter
Christian Nationalism and the Perfect Storm
Some of the resources mentioned:
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/groups?f%5B0%5D=field_ideology%3A183
Marcia Pally, Twitter @marcia_pally author of White Evangelicals and Right-Wing PopulismPRRI: Understanding the Threat of White Christian Nationalism
Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Second and Third Quarter
Dr. Drew Strait, Twitter: @DrewStrait Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Theological Seminary.
“The church is behind the ball in constructing resistance and developing strategic peacebuilding.”
“Whiteness is the gravitational center of Christian nationalism.”
“I’m not primarily coming at this to save democracy…but to re-inscribe the church with the life a teachings of Jesus, and to recognize and acknowledge that white Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to the church’s public witness.”
Drew presents a solid three-part theological working definition of Christian nationalism:
“A movement wherein theological imagination is co-opted by state power…where a ethno-racial identity becomes more important than one’s baptismal identity in Christ; a view that sees militarized kingdoms of this world rather the unarmed multicultural church as the primary context for bearing witness to Jesus and the kingdom of God, it is a perversion of Jesus’ way of peace that ends up endorsing state violence, police brutality, and personal armament as expressions of Christian discipleship.”
Fourth Quarter
We banter about revival for the perspective of a sarcastic Lutheran (Nadia Bolz Weber) and a poet (Jessica Ice), while also taking time to consider shut-put world records (Ryan Crouser) and the Banshees of Inisherin. Wow! We can diversify.
