Without A Real Future: The Christian Nationalist Takeover

After decades of denial, or, at best, insistence that the movement would remain on the unthreatening fringe, Christian Nationalism is now generally recognized as an existential threat to democracy. Books fill the New Release shelves documenting the rise and exposing the goals of the theocratic coup in a seemingly futile effort to generate a resistance against it beyond the production of ever more inside looks at its sinister masters, machinations, and delusional, anger-fueled support. While the goal of the Christian Nationalists is often presented as fairly clear — the establishment of a Bible-based Christian Nation — the way in which this is envisioned to be implemented and administered is anything but clear. “Bible-based Christian Nation” is far from a well-defined agenda. There is apparently clear consensus among the theocrats regarding the most surface Culture War obsessions over gender politics, gay rights, and abortion, but even on these topics it is often unclear, individually, whether the Christian Nationalist advocates for a rollback of civil rights protections, or the implementation of new, oppressive, targeted measures against specific communities. Among them, there is clearly a diversity ranging a spectrum from merely regressive to brutally draconian. 

The fight to overturn Roe v Wade seemed entirely straightforward, but the Dobbs ruling has resulted in the surfacing of new divisions among anti-abortion crusaders as some would allow for certain exceptions (ie abortions allowed in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancy complications) while others would not. And now, as the horrific reality and human cost of abortion prohibition comes to be understood in states where it is now banned, the anti-abortion position is increasingly even more unpopular, leading a number of politicians who once fought to appeal to anti-abortion zealots to strike a more moderate tone and focus on other Culture War topics where the real world has not yet forced a confrontation with nuance. In this, it is clear that, unsurprisingly, Christian Nationalism, for some politicians, is more a path to power than a set of unshakable deeply-held religious beliefs. They will still reflect a cultural consensus if doing otherwise threatens their ability to get elected. In fact, the prioritization of power over principle seems so obvious among some of the political leaders Christian Nationalists have most heavily supported that one should not be entirely surprised to see them throw all the religious bullshit aside once they arrive at a place of comfort in a monopoly of power.

Some believers may care about that lack of true attachment to their faith, but others do not, believing that it will always be at least convenient for politicians who come to power through appeals to religion to maintain the peace through religion as well, giving special privileges to their churches and viewpoints. It is also quite possible, however, that once having secured a dictatorship, their dictator will find it more strategic to maintain more of an appearance of maintaining the status quo, the appearance of maintaining some semblance of democratic norms, while focusing their efforts at disabling any political opposition and establishing a kleptocratic hierarchy. If the imposition of strict “Bible-based” moral regulations is believed to be the most effective route to social compliance, it will surely be used, but if order is better maintained by not provoking religious divisions, the religiously unattached political opportunist is unlikely to become the new Constantine the Christian Nationalists seek. 

This is why the question of implementation and administration is relevant, even while it may seem a superfluous question on the surface. Christian Nationalists are currently rallying to the destruction of institutions and to politicians who openly attempt a bypass of any checks and balances (like Oklahoma superintendent Ryan Walters who took the liberty of unilaterally mandating bibles in all OK public schools, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a completely braindead little fuck who announced that, if president, he would simply dissolve agencies like the IRS without discussing whether or not he had an alternative plan for collecting taxes or financing the government). Christian Nationalists have not proposed an alternative system of government, opting instead to pretend that they are merely restoring a previous model of American governance, even while attempting to hijack and destroy American institutions. As Muirhead and Rosenblum in their book ‘Ungoverning’ (Princeton University Press, 2024) with the dissolution of the Administrative State we are not left with more freedom, but its opposite: rule by personal will. And in an autocracy, even one that began with authentic political convictions, utopian visions have a habit of fading into mere advertising slogans that act only as pretexts for maintaining total control. And when abortion is illegal and sodomy laws reinstated, Christian Nationalists will be left to face actual doctrinal sectarian divisions, and the reality of totalitarian rule where, once they are forced to mind their own fucking business and quit worrying about the lives of others, they will find that their own lives are much the worse off.