Christian Nationalism continues to pose challenges for everyone trying to understand and address its social, political, and religious influences. One ongoing debate about Christian Nationalism involves the degree to which actual theological content informs Christian Nationalist ideas. Are Christian Nationalist agendas primarily driven by cultural and political forces or are they based on theological understandings that undergird and amplify the cultural influences?
This panel addresses questions about the theological ideas and habits of mind that contribute to Christian Nationalist agendas. Bryan Ellrod examines the theodicy of Christian Nationalism in “Visions of the End at the Texas-Mexico Line: Crises of Sovereignty and Theodicy in Department of Homeland Security v. Texas.” Jared Stacey provides insight into rhetorical uses of hell as a place of violence in “Fight Like Hell: Generating A Praxis of Non-Violence By Contesting White Evangelical Doctrines of Hell As A Site of Violence on January 6.” Mutale Nkonde concludes the panel with a look at how online rhetoric frames theology and ideology in “Hate.com: How The Online Christian Identity Movement Inspires Offline Violence.”
Drawing on Jon P. Gunnemann’s monograph, *The Moral Meaning of Revolution*, this paper reads White Christian Nationalist responses to Department of Homeland Security v. Texas as a revision of the movement’s theodicy. I begin with an analysis of the court documents that reconstructs the crisis of sovereignty underlying the case. Next, I turn to White Christian Nationalist commentary on the case to draw out this crisis’s theological significance. Here, I contend that although this commentary leaves intact nativist diagnoses of the problem of evil, it relocates the messianic power which is to overcome this evil, espousing state sovereignty over and against federal sovereignty, “America” over and against the “United States.” I conclude by warning that the violence this contest produces will nevertheless be born principally by the migrant bodies it presses to the geographic, political, and theological margins - not by the bodies politic at odds in the courtroom.
This paper examines how evangelical doctrines of hell and the demonic, embedded in conspiracy theories and expressed in prayer, fostered Christian extremist violence on January 6. By this approach, the paper aims to contest the doctrine of hell, common to white evangleicalism, as a rogue theological element with political import towards violence. By this theological approach, the paper challenges accounts of evangelical identity in the US which are organized by the claim it has abandoned theology for partisanship. More essentially, this analysis of hell as a site for violence on January 6 foregrounds a constructive reorientation towards non-violent praxis. By engaging the evangelical apocalyptic theology of Philip Ziegler, the paper offers a theological constellation of Christ, Church, and the Last Day, into which rogue doctrinal elements of hell become reoriented. This reorientation generates a praxis of non-violence, countermanding assumptive evangelical claims to enact divine judgment in social & political worlds.
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old, unemployed, self-identified white supremacist shot and killed nine Black people as they finished bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Epispiocal Church (AME) which is colloquially known as Mother Emanuel (King, 2017) in Charleston, South Carolina (Robles, 2015) . In his online manifesto Roof claimed his pathway to radicalization was Google, the world’s most popular online search platform (Hersher, 2017). Then during his interview with police officers after the killings Roof said never met another white supremacist in real life. His radicalization had taken place entirely in online environments (Piccolini, 2018). A claim that points to how algorithms have become the delivery system for religious white supremacist content and therefore become complicit in advancing the white extremist hegemonic project (Daniels, 2009). This paper explores how artificial intelligence and religious extremism are shaping and reshaping race relations in the United States.