Critics of organized religion are quick to point out the violence inspired by theology through the ages. “What has been a source of greater death and destruction than religious conflict?” they ask.
The answer? — nationalism.
Worse than either is the two working together.
Religious wars have produced a drop of blood compared to the oceans shed in ethnic national conflicts.
The struggle between Muslims and Christians for control of Spain killed approximately 7 million people from 718 to 1492.
Between 1095 and 1291, Christian crusades to conquer the holy land killed an estimated 1 million people.
The wars between Protestants and Catholics during the 16th and 17th centuries caused between 5.5 million to 18.5 million deaths.
Most of these conflicts had political and/or economic as well as religious causes. Many modern conflicts that appeared to be sectarian were about something else. The Bosnian war, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian struggle have more to do with land and political power than religion.
In their Encyclopedia of Wars, Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod classified only 123 of the 1,763 wars they studied as religious.
World War II, the most nationalistic war in human history, killed more people in six years (70-85 million), than all Europe’s religious wars since the eighth century combined.
Why is nationalism so deadly? It divides the world into “them” and “us,” making no distinction between military and civilian, man and woman, adult and child. Civilians accounted for more than 80 percent of the Allied deaths during World War II, many of them murdered in deliberate genocides perpetrated by Germany and Japan.
Religious institutions have, at times, proven equally capable of such brutality, but they usually have members who challenge such behavior, prophetic voices willing to speak truth to power.
But what happens when religious institutions not only fail to challenge the abuses of the secular state but actively support it? Nationalist campaigns become divinely ordained crusades.
Most Protestant churches in Nazi Germany either remained neutral or supported the regime. In the 1933 Concordat, the Catholic church made a devil’s bargain, renouncing political activity in return for guaranteed freedom of worship and protection of parochial schools. It had struck a similar deal with Mussolini in the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
The Serbian Orthodox Church has long supported Serbian Nationalism, including the seizure of land in Bosnia and Croatia. Today it encourages Serb irredentism in Kosovo. The Russian Orthodox Church supports Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Fortunately, the United States has never had an official religion (although some individual states did). However, it faces a growing threat from evangelicals who have thrown in their lot with the MAGA movement. For them, “Make America Great Again” means make America Christian again.
A May 2022 University of Maryland poll revealed that 61 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of independents favored “officially declaring the United States to be a Christian nation.”
Evangelicals were a crucial part of Donald Trump’s base in 2016 and 2020. He and his Republican opponents are wooing them again. They credit Trump’s appointment of three conservative supreme court judges with ending free access to abortion and hope that if reelected, he will roll back LGBTQ rights.
Nowhere is the unhealthy alliance of religion and politics more blatantly manifest than in the “ReAwaken America Tour” wending its way across the country.
Retired general and Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn launched the movement in the aftermath of the failed Jan. 6 insurrection. At one gathering, Flynn declared, “there is a spiritual war and there is a political war” going on in the United States.
The “ReAwaken” road show holds conferences in cities around the country touting a bizarre blend of QAnon conspiracy theories, political rhetoric and revivalism. Events feature Trump-supporting speakers like Eric Trump, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former Trump advisor Roger Stone, as well as Flynn. Vendors hawk expensive merchandise while others distribute literature featuring “research recommendations” including “Alex Jones’s InfoWars, a John Birch Society speech and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious, century-old antisemitic hoax,” according to NPR. Speakers repeat the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election and promote QAnon conspiracy theories. Attendees can even get a full immersion baptism.
The ReAwaken America Tour is the latest manifestation of Christian Nationalism. Christian nationalists believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and must return to being one, governed according to their conservative religious principles.
Many of its adherents go further, embracing “American exceptionalism.” They see the United States as a nation blessed by God, provided it remains true to its Christian identity and provides an example to the rest of the world.
Christian nationalists advocate for school prayer, state funding for religious education and abortion bans. Its adherents have been supporting politicians like Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor, who summed up her platform as such: “Jesus, Guns, & Babies.”
Like much of far-right extremism, Christian nationalism manifests itself pervasively as an ideological movement rather than as an organization, although members of many designated extremist groups espouse its beliefs.
Christian nationalists figured prominently in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Some could be identified by the “Deus Vult” (“God wills it) symbol displayed on their signs and flags.
The red cross on white background was supposedly introduced by Pope Urban III when he called for the first crusade in 1095.
A prominent photo from the Jan. 6 riots features a man with a different version of the Crusader cross on his shirt.
Contrary to what the movement claims, the framers of the Constitution were not evangelical Christians.
Drafters of the Bill of Rights created the disestablishment clause of the First Amendment for a good reason. To avoid the intolerance and bloodshed caused by established churches in Europe they mandated that “Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion.”
Most Christian nationalists realize they cannot get Christianity declared the national religion, so they pursue an equally pernicious agenda: legislating their narrow version of Christian morality at the state and local level and using the courts to support that agenda.
Everyone who wants to live in a tolerant, pluralistic society, but especially those of us who claim to be progressive Christians must oppose them at every turn.
Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”