Fritz Lampe: We Belong 11, Christian Nationalism as a Cultural Phenomenon
Part I: Cn through the lens of anthropology
Ted writes. When a few weeks ago the Old Professors Association (OPA) published “We Belong, Not to Ourselves, But to Christ,” I criticized the document. Oh yes, “We Belong” exhibits the courage and clarity we saw in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. Yet, I contended that if “We Belong” were an arrow it might miss the target.
What’s the target? The primary target, in my opinion, ought to be corruption and cruelty perpetrated by the US government. Because the crisis is so urgent, the public theologian dare not waste arrowheads on anything less important.
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But “We Belong,” unfortunately, misses the target by aiming instead at Christian Nationalism. My critique brought a barrage of arrows fired my way by Duane Larson.
Here in Substack, Fritz Lampe will lift his longbow and draw his arrow into position to shoot the gap. Actually, four arrows. One for each of four column posts.
Meet Fritz Lampe
Frederick (Fritz) Lampe (PhD, Syracuse) is an applied cultural anthropologist who studies, researches, and writes about religion and the role it plays in shaping social ideas and practices. Ordained as a Lutheran pastor, his interest in the culture-religious dynamic emerged when serving as Lutheran Chaplain at the University of Technology in Papua New Guinea followed by ten years in Alaska, and then doctoral research in East Africa. Retired from Northern Arizona University, he enjoys life in the Colorado foothills
Fritz writes. I am pleased to contribute to the conversation about Christian nationalism (hereafter referred to as Cn).[1] Readers should be familiar with the different theological rationale conversation between Duane Larson and Ted Peters about Cn as well as those with deep connections to marginalized theological and economic communities as represented by Brenda Denzler and Larry Ball in previous columns.
What follows are preliminary thoughts about Cn as a cultural phenomenon which, in turn reflect fundamental theological issues. It is not lost on me that what some refer to as ideological differences are fundamentally theological issues. I will be using anthropological perspectives drawn from my own work as well as other social scientists. With this in mind I will focus on the cultural elements of Cn as a Christian movement before offering some thoughts on ways to engage with it.
Christian Nationalism through the lens of anthropology
I was introduced to anthropology while attending an orientation course for Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Protestant personnel in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s. An anthropologically trained Jesuit priest’s introduction to culture helped me understand things I was encountering in my work with Lutheran students at the University of Technology in Lae.
This experience launched me into wanting to understand religious movements from a cultural perspective, including coursework at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and Fairbanks, and to Syracuse University where I completed my doctoral studies. I ultimately became an applied anthropologist focusing on religion, with a particular interest in the ways people experience the world beyond the tangible physical realm and the ways those experiences shape daily lives.
Over four column posts I will introduce the anthropological perspective and apply it to Cn, consider the complexities of the socio-historical context relative to the current moment, and conclude by exploring the challenges it presents.
Part I – Cn as a Cultural Phenomenon
I begin by positing that Cn is not an organized movement. Rather, Cn is an amalgamation of individuals and groups subscribing to specific socio-religious ideas. Those that identify with Cn often reframe fundamental precepts that have been celebrated in recent years; precepts emphasizing and elevating cultural, ethnic, religious, and gendered differences. While an argument can be made for approaching Cn theologically, my interest is in approaching it using socio-cultural frameworks.
My assumption is that few readers will have taken any anthropology courses, and so we must begin with basics.[2] Anthropology, the study of humans, is a holistic discipline that seeks to understand social phenomena as culturally constructed, including religion. These constructs emerge, exist, and change over time through human agency, as it is experienced and expressed in different ways.
Context Matters
Paying attention to cultural context is important for anthropologists. In the classroom I regularly invoked the phrase “context matters.” Context includes recognizing that religion interacts with other social elements including: power; economic access; gender; race; the environment; and authority. These are the very things fundamental to Ted Peters’ Voice of Public Theology (Peters, 2023). Think of each of these as interconnected where each element is in relationship to and influences the other. A change to one will cause movement to and result in changes to the others as well. Religious movements are fully enmeshed with many other social elements.
Any group differentiates itself from others is through We:They or Us:Them dichotomies. People use language, skin color, economic status, education, religious ideas and practice, and purity codes to separate themselves from others. A group’s identity – social cohesion — emerges when these distinctions suggest that the “we” are set apart from the “they” who are inferior, misguided, naïve, and simply wrong.
Religious movements have long used the collective “we” to separate themselves from others. Terms such as “heretical,” “sinful,” and “evil,” have been used by some Christian movements to describe outsiders. Such terms are accompanied by the claim that insiders alone are chosen by God. They alone know God’s will. And they alone are called to do God’s work in the world. In this case, many people that align themselves with Cn believe their call is to realign politically, socially, and morally with what they believe to be the desire of God, and in doing so to restore the United States as one nation under God.
As the social cohesion of Cn develops, adherents draw upon stories of identity and origin, “traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems” (Whitehead and Perry 2020, 10).[3] All cultural systems, including religious movements, share these things. Conflict erupts within these systems when sub-groups disagree about these traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems. While symbols like the cross and Bible are shared with other Christian movements, value systems, narratives, and traditions appear to be understood and promoted differently by people aligned with Cn.
For Cn, the symbols, value systems, traditions, and narratives reflect a way of being in the world that is God’s will. Christian nationalism draws from historical references when advocating the United States as a “city on a hill,” promoting American exceptionalism, and Manifest Destiny (Van Engen, 2020).
These references result in denigrating “they,” people who don’t look like, think like, or have the privilege and opportunities bestowed on them by God. Associating the arrival of civilization with early European settlers (“Pilgrims,” according to Daniel Webster) instituted “coherent principles of both civil and religious life” (Van Engen 2020, 116). As inheritors of the principles and practices instilled with the storied landing at Plymouth Rock, so the story goes, Cn is committed to fulfilling the mandate given by God.
Christian Nationalism and the State of Israel
Central for some Cn adherents is support for the national state of Israel. Reading Genesis 12:3 literally, “’I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,’” some in Cn are committed to the modern state of Israel as key to fulfilling prophecies about the end times (Chetty 2014, 303). Some Christian Zionists view the establishment of Israel in 1948 as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies necessary to initiate the apocalypse when Jesus returns. This commitment to Israel is complicated by antisemitic rhetoric used by others who regard Jews as a minority group and, as non-Christians, and therefore “pose a threat to Christian supremacy just as any other outgroup would” (Dennen and Djupe 2023, 299).
One Nation Under God
In general, those advocating for Cn idealize and advocate for “a fusion of Christianity with American Civil life,” a reinstallation of One Nation Under God (Whitehead and Perry 2020, 10) contra those grounded in other formulations of what it means to be faithful. This fusion seeks stable ground in imagined traditions of the past with the US as a vessel being used by the divine. Christian nationalism asserts that moral foundations established by God should be grounded in social Christian orders.
Proponents of Cn insist on binary categorizing humans exclusively as male:female (per Genesis 1-2). This denies commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It outlaws reproductive rights. It calls for and subduing earth. It labels immigrants of non-European descent dangerous and dirty, calling for their removal. It silences those challenging divinely mandated authority, mandating prayer and using the Bible to teach God’s will and work in public schools while removing literature deemed contra to these norms.
In the next column post I will introduce research on Cn as well as some of the current events influencing and informing its current manifestations.
Endnotes
[1] The decision to not capitalize ‘nationalism’ in ‘Cn’ and, instead, use a lower case ‘n’ follows standards established in dictionaries as well as the protocols used by anthropologists.
[2] Anthropology, with its four sub-fields; cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and physical/biological anthropology seeks to document, track, and understand human identities and experiences from the distant past to the present.
[3] But what makes something religious? Good question. For the sake of limited space, religious movements include stories of identity and origin, notions of and interactions with the non-human realm, ethical and moral purity codes, specialists able to interact with entities beyond the human realm, and a collective sense of social cohesion.
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