The Power Worshippers, Part 1 — What I’m reading
Katherine Stewart is an investigative journalist and author. Her book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloombury Publishing, 2019) is a great read, though frightening. She details some of the many attempts to impose Christian Nationalism in the USA. The dark money funding, the attempts to use churches for political ends, and the ways in which the ultra-rich and wanna-be-powerful convince ordinary folks to act in ways that are against their own real interests—it is all described in this book, and backed up by lots of direct evidence from Stewart’s own reporting.
The attempt by Christian Nationalists to take over the country isn’t a conspiracy theory, it is an actual conspiracy, out there in the open if we would pay more attention.
Christian Nationalism is a kind of religious extremism that is seeking to impose a very narrow (and many people would say unChristian) vision of “morality” on the entire country. We see this prominently in the case of religious extremists who want to impose their views about abortion on everyone else. But that’s just one example, there are many more: making same sex marriage and interracial marriage illegal, undermining public education, making Christianity the only acceptable religion, requiring religious loyalty tests for public office, taking over the courts, banning books they disagree with, writing legislation from explicitly Christian Nationalist positions, making it more difficult for people to vote, oppressing dissent, and using churches to promote political ends.
If you think this sounds like the kind of religious extremism and theocracy that we are used to hearing about from Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabi, and other religiously oppressive regimes—or the European Middle Ages—you are right, it does.
It is all a direct violation of the First Amendment’s ideal of the separation of church and state. It will do real damage to real people, to the country, to the cause of freedom, and to democracy—it IS doing real damage, and it will do a lot more if we don’t fight against it.
In a subsequent post, I emphasize an especially important point about Christian Nationalism.
