Interview With Author Bradley Onishi On What Created The Religious Right
Bradley Onishi
Christian nationalism became a buzzword after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as some saw religious symbolism displayed at the attempted coup. Some people have written books and op-eds both for and against Christian nationalism. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has even said the Republican Party should be the party of Christian nationalism. Some on the left have accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of having a Christian nationalist policy agenda due to his positions on transgender issues and abortion.
Religious studies scholar Bradley Onishi traces the modern history of Christian nationalism and how it relates to current events in his new book “Prepping for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next.” He starts with how a select group of Supreme Court cases led to the creation of the modern religious right and how they moved to support right-wing populist leaders. Onishi connects this history to the Donald Trump presidency and the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021.
Prepping for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next by Bradley Ornihi
Onishi co-hosts the podcast “Straight, White, American Jesus” and is a frequent opinion writer. Religion Unplugged contributor Kenneth E. Frantz interviewed Onishi over the phone about a variety of topics ranging from his new book to the future of Christian nationalism.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kenneth E. Frantz: “Prepping For War” traces, I guess, the more recent history of Christian nationalism throughout the past few decades. Why did you decide to write on that topic, and what makes it important?
Bradly Onishi: Christian nationalism is a lot older than 1960, but I wanted to give people a kind of modern history that would allow them to see how elements from, you know, their lived memory of the past few generations have really contributed to the current situation in the United States. I thought that they could draw a throughline from the 1960s all the way to the Trump presidency and Jan. 6. It seems important right now because Christian nationalism is a threat to our democracy. Christian nationalist forces were a central part of the Jan. 6 insurrection and continue to be stalwarts for candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis who have either proposed or would like to implement what I take to be anti-democratic forms of governance and policy.
Frantz: Throughout this history you point to several Supreme Court cases that really spurred the movement on. You, along with other scholars, point to racial integration and school as part of the religious right. Would you mind talking about like the legal history and why we should take that legal history into account when talking about Christian nationalism?
Onishi: In the early 1960s, you have two court cases, Engel v. Vitale and Abington Township v. Schempp. These two court cases are really kind of decisive in removing Christian prayer and other forms of religious practice from public school curricula so that teachers or principals could not guide students in prayer or require them to read the Bible for Christian devotion. This was really interpreted by many conservative White Christians as taking God out of the schools and removing the Christian values from the American public square. That was then coupled with reactions to the Brown v. Board decision of 1954, which famously integrated schools across the country, especially in the South. And many White Christians created segregation academies, as Randall Balmer calls them, as a part of their churches. And when they were threatened with losing their tax-exempt status as a result of having a segregation policy at these schools, they claimed that the government was attacking their faith, attacking Christians and the church. And so you had a whole legal storm in the ’60s and bleeding into the ’70s surrounding the claims of victimization on the part of conservative white Christians in the country.
Frantz: You make sure you're talking about White Christian nationalism instead of just Christian nationalism, writ large. So would you mind elaborating on why the racial distinction is an important one to make?
Onishi: White Christian nationalists are really outliers in the ways that they understand the country. This is clear on their views on immigration, on policing, on voting rights and so on. And I would just add that White Christian nationalists, they just tell a different story about the country than other Christians — and that includes Black Christians who could be considered Black Christian nationalists. And so the story they're telling and the identity they're forming, the way that they are understanding themselves within the context of American history and an American future are really distinct from other groups. That includes an overwhelming amount of Asian American evangelicals, Asian American Christians, Asian American charismatics. So the White is really important. It's not added there out of novelty or in order to stir controversy. It’s really a decisive part of this whole discussion.
Frantz: And you also like talk about sexuality and gender and connect that back to race. You talk about purity culture, hetero-masculinity and strong men, and I talk about that and how it connects also to the racial component.
Onishi: My co-host of “Straight White American Jesus,” Dan Miller, has a great book called “Queer Democracy.” In that book, he really uses the metaphor of the national body to do great analysis on the United States. The metaphor of the body is basically the idea that every nation has an understanding of its national body. What does it look like? What would it look like if it took human form? My argument would be that White Christian nationalists view the American body as a straight White, native-born, English-speaking Christian patriarchal body. When any other elements are introduced, they are seen as irritants at best — perhaps behind-the-scenes factors that can contribute but should not be seen or understood to be having an executive function. If they don't accept that role, then they're seen as invaders or diseases or viruses or something else. So my argument would be that along with race, the White Christian nationalist wants to keep the American body free of any elements of queerness, of bodies that do not submit to patriarchal conceptions of gender, marriage, so on. And bodies that are in some way mixed or as they would call it, impure. I think that metaphor helps us connect the dots among gender, sexuality and race.
Frantz: You bring up John Wayne, but you also bring up Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Then you talk about Goldwater and other strong men candidates and how even though they may not have been the most devout, they embodied more of the Christian nationalist virtues, but would you mind talking about the strong man component?
Onishi: If we continue with the body metaphor, there’s a sense that in order to keep the American body intact the way that the White Christian nationalist wants it, you have to have a strong man who will protect it. So if the American body is threatened from the outside by invaders or threatened from the inside by interlopers, you need a strong man who will either protect the United States and its national body from external menace or internal threat. And so the strong man is really important to the Christian nationalist. And someone like Jimmy Carter, who is a devout Christian, or someone like Pence or someone who has all of the markers of Christian virtue may lack the most important one. And that is willingness to be brutal and, at times, violent and, at times, a barbaric strong man who will bully all of the enemies of the Christian nationalists and all of those that would introduce impurities or invaders into its national body. This is why Trump or Barry Goldwater or John Wayne or even Vladimir Putin might be the kind of ideal man or ideal form of masculinity in the White Christian nationalist imagination.
Frantz: Your book is an attempt to draw a throughline from the 1960s to the attempted coup of the 2020 election on Jan. 6th, 2021. Would you mind elaborating?
Onishi: I would say that there's a real sense among White Christian nationalists that they are the rightful heirs of the country and the real Americans. And there is a sense among them that since the 1960s, the country has been slipping from their grasp. Rights and representation have been given to historically marginalized groups such as Black Americans. Women have entered the workforce in mass. There have been numerous queer liberation movements immigration reform and so on and so forth. So in their mind, the country continues to be given over to those that don’t deserve it and are not the “real Americans.” As that rhetoric has accelerated over the last six, seven years, you've seen the metaphors of warfare, the demand for bloody swords and muddy boots and really a sense of impending apocalypse for the country if they don't stand up and do something. And so if you trace the history and then examine, as we've done in “White American Jesus,” charismatic revival fury … you will see the through line in terms of the violent rhetoric, the encouragement to not allow the country to be stolen, and the idea that it is your country and no one else’s.
Frantz: You talk about these ideas as extremes and starting off on the fringes, but the idea is being picked up by mainstream politicians and mainstream media outlets, Fox and others. That does seem to be a major motif in your book. Would you mind like elaborating on why that's important to point out?
Onishi: One of the reasons I started with the 1960s is you have this idea in Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech in 1964 that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice — the idea that extremism would be needed to take back your country. It never went away. And so if we traced the history from Goldwater to Paul Weyrich and Morton Blackwell into figures like Reagan — even James Dobson, who said that young people are the foot soldiers in the second Civil War — you can see that extremism becomes a motif that is celebrated and normalized such that by the time we get to the Trump presidency … what would've been considered beyond the pale decades ago is now simply the norm of the GOP.
Frantz: The people who would’ve been considered more mainstream just a couple of decades ago have been shut out of certain aspects of the conservative movement in many ways. Would you talk about how that might fit into your overall narrative?
Onishi: I think we can see the evidence in the fact that Liz Cheney was essentially ousted from her seat and the Republican Party. And … this is really crucial. It was not based even on her changing policy positions. It was based on the change in one position. Mitt Romney is another example. I would give you the example of John McCain, who was Barack Obama’s opponent in his first presidential race. It’s very hard to see John McCain playing a prominent role in today’s Republican Party. And yet he was the presidential nominee just a couple of cycles ago. I think we can really see how any chance … of moderation has gone by the wayside. And any attempt at it was largely unsuccessful. I would argue the last Republican president who attempted such a path was actually Dwight Eisenhower, who talks all about the middle way, and in the wake of his presidency the GOP-nominated Barry Goldwater. There is a history here of pushing the extreme to the center and running with it.
Frantz: A theme in this seems to be strong men, and you see a lot of Christian nationalists looking to strong men abroad, like Orban or Putin, and you talk about this a little in your book. So would you mind discussing what's going on there?
Onishi: Protection by a strong man, we also think about the fact that voting is often not on the side of the GOP, that they've lost so many presidential elections in terms of the popular vote in the last three decades. They have started to look to figures like Putin and Orban as models of governance. Both of those leaders identify as Christian nationalist leaders. They talk about protecting the spiritual heritage and family values and Christian history of their nations, but they do so without the hindrance of Congress and, in Putin's case, without the hindrance of having to worry about if the Supreme Court says something is in the constitution. They can just do what they want without fear of retribution. In Orban’s case it’s constitutional democracy, but it’s in an illiberal way, as many commentators have noticed. The point is that sounds really good to the White Christian nationalists in the United States, because if we have that kind of model, they argue then the country could be put back in order very quickly, and there would be no need to wait for voting for laws to be passed, etc. So if they have to martyr democracy to save the nation, they will do that.
Frantz: And also going with Sohrab Ahmari, Rod Deher and Patrick Deneen, you write about mostly evangelicals in the books, but those people are Catholics or Eastern Orthodox, so they’re not evangelicals. Do you mind talking about how this movement might be being picked up upon by nonevangelicals?
Onishi: White Christian nationalism is not limited to evangelicalism. The way I think about it is if you draw a big circle and label that circle White Christian nationalism and then draw circles inside of it, the biggest circle will be White evangelicals. But a majority of White Catholics voted for Donald Trump twice. Many ex-evangelicals are drawn to traditional or anti-modern forms of Catholicism and/or various strands or strains of orthodoxy because they find in those traditions a sense of hierarchy, a sense of patriarchy and the kinds of political thought that is adaptable to the war that we've been discussing. It makes perfect sense that someone like Deher would be a leading voice on this and be in many ways enamored with Orban because Christian nationalists of all denominations are interested in patriarchy, hierarchy and, in some cases, getting rid of democracy so that they can be in charge.
Frantz: You talk about conspiracy theories: the Big Lie or QAnon. How do those like connect to like the topic of Christian nationalism?
Onishi: In the case of White Christian nationalists, conspiracy theories are helpful because they are a way to reassert their authority and legitimacy to determine what is real and actual and true. This is a group of people who feel as if they have the right to the country and that they are the real Americans by extension. They feel like they’re the real Americans who can tell you what is real and true and actual. So when they show up with conspiracy theories, and they're not distorted by evidence or data, in many cases, it doesn't matter. What matters is they are the ones with the authority to determine what it is considered to be accepted in the public square. And so conspiracy views in this instance, I think, are somewhat of a revenge fantasy to say that we want to go back to a time when we had control of the American public square without question, without challenge and without someone trying to always remind us of the pesky need for evidence data and so on to back up our claims.
Frantz: What do you think is next for a White Christian nationalist?
Onishi: I think we're already seeing the iterations of this in Florida. Ron DeSantis is taking incredibly right-wing approaches to COVID vaccines, to education from universities to kindergarten, to policies on migration. We’re already seeing what the next iteration of the White Christian nationalist policy agenda could be because Florida is the laboratory. I think there’s also little fires everywhere that have popped up. People forget that somebody took out a power grid in North Carolina to prevent drag queen story hour, that there were men with automatic weapons sitting outside motor drop boxes in Arizona. There was an attempted Patriot front attack in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, that included members of local White Christian nationalist churches. These are all things that are happening now. And so I think those need to be the ways we think about what happens next.
Kenneth E. Frantz is a freelance writer who has written for ReligionUnplugged, Sojourners, Real Clear Religion, and Religion and Politics. Twitter: @KennethEFrantz.