The Stop Christian Nationalism web site has a message for Christian Nationalists: “Your messiah was not an American citizen and didn’t speak English.”
You’d think that this would not be a controversial statement, but given the religious zealotry that’s been growing in the United States over the last several years, the essentially American character of Jesus is not out of the range of mainline Christian belief.
Some progressive Christians like to characterize Christian Nationalism as a kind of blasphemy, but Christian Nationalism is actually at the very theological center of American Christianity. The majority of American Christians voted for Donald Trump, twice. Stop Christian Nationalism notes that a recent survey by the Pew Research Center “found that 79 percent of Americans Christians believe that the Christian bible should shape the law in the United States of America. That is Christian Nationalism. 79 percent of American Christians are Christian Nationalists.”
Jesus isn’t an historical person. Jesus is a character that changes with the times, and in present American Christianity, Jesus is a Trump supporter.
Perhaps the real blasphemy is to pretend that American Christianity has nothing at all to do with Christian Nationalism.
