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Writing for The Federalist, Thomas Kelly says, "Last weekend, Rob Reiner’s new documentary, 'God & Country,' debuted in theaters nationwide. The movie, which attempts to explain why Christian nationalism is a threat to democracy, uses a number of politically progressive self-identified Christians to attack politically conservative Christians. This line of attack — that Christian nationalism makes bad Christians — has been pushed by leftists and corporate media for some time now, and there is perhaps no one better at pushing the popular (but dishonest) narrative than sociologist Andrew Whitehead."
"Whitehead," he says, "a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, is one of a cluster of aspiring public intellectuals and academics who cite a current or past affiliation with conservative evangelical Christianity to legitimize their arguments against that religion and subculture."
Be informed, not misled.
As a spiritual Christian revival sweeps across our college and university campuses, deception lurks in the shadows.
Kelly says, "In Whitehead's latest book, American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church, which was released toward the end of 2023, Whitehead takes aim at political and theological views he labels Christian nationalism. He confidently asserts that his beliefs “about the harmful nature of Christian nationalism [are grounded] in empirical, scholarly research” and that Christian nationalism makes its adherents bad Christians who struggle to serve Christians of different ethnicities and nationalities.
Whitehead is not a nobody; he is an influential academic. His earlier work boasts accolades in academia, and Whitehead is busy promoting his thesis in corporate media outlets such as Time magazine. His book boasts blurbs from progressive Christian influencers like Jemar Tisby and Beth Allison Barr. Whitehead is even getting favorable coverage from generally reasonable Christian YouTube channels such as Inspiring Philosophy. Despite the flaws of his work, Whitehead’s arguments have found an audience.
There's a lot of information in his article that debunks the current narrative about so-called "Christian Nationalists" and the truth about the matter, including this:
"Whitehead writes that in 2021, “the unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children were uncovered near a Christian boarding school in Saskatchewan, Canada. The graves contained close to eight hundred remains.” Whitehead argues that conservative Christians in the United States might follow a similar path, committing atrocities in the name of Christ."
However, there never was a mass grave found in Saskatchewan. The leader of the Cowessess First Nation, a Canadian indigenous nation near the residential school’s supposed mass grave, explicitly rejects the existence of a mass grave but does believe that ground-penetrating radar found potentially hundreds of unmarked graves. These potential unmarked graves may represent the rediscovery of an old Roman Catholic cemetery maintained by a religious order.
Whitehead's claims have set in motion an ongoing attack on the Catholics by those who took Whitehead's claims as truthful.
Kelly says, "Whitehead continues to use this false claim to promote his argument and even chooses to disseminate it further by publishing an excerpt of his book that begins with this falsehood in Red Letter Christians, a leftist Christian website."
While lying about mass graves is probably the worst thing Whitehead does in his book, the most embarrassing part is his reliance on his own bad research, largely drawing from a book Whitehead wrote with sociologist Samuel Perry, whose website characterizes him as “among the nation’s leading experts on conservative Christianity and American politics.”
Another example by Kelly:
Whitehead thinks that black Christians generally have good political opinions and white Christians generally have bad political opinions. This is not a surprising opinion for a progressive to hold — the two groups do have big political differences! But racial political differences are nothing novel to hear about or publish about, so Whitehead chooses to argue that “Christian nationalism” causes different political beliefs among different groups.
In fact, Whitehead is insistent on this point. He argues that Christian nationalism “makes us bad Christians” from the start of the book. Throughout the book, he starts adding more and more bad things that Christian nationalism supposedly causes. Then toward the end of the book, while he argues that Christian nationalism causes racism, he finally admits there’s no good evidence that Christian nationalism causes anything, writing that people who say that all this research is founded on mere correlations are right —“[t]his is true—many of these studies cannot (and do not) say that Christian nationalism ’causes’ one to be racist. … It does not matter whether Christian nationalism encourages us to become racist or whether those with racist beliefs are drawn toward Christian nationalism.”
Takeaway
Kelly concludes: "I doubt the left-leaning audience for this book stays up wondering whether it’s OK for Christians sometimes to criticize the United States."
It’s a string of rhetorical questions meant to persuade the reader that the book — one that lies about mass graves and is based on shoddy research — is the result of careful scholarship and moral reflection rather than a partisan hack job. The only people who could take this book seriously are the people who want to be fooled by it.
I'll be talking more about "Christian Nationalism" today on the radio. Please join me. Here's how.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Bold Be Prayerful.