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Regina de Heer: Do you know what Christian nationalism is?

Jennae: Sorry?

Regina de Heer: Do you know what Christian nationalism is? Have you ever heard that term?

Jennae: I haven't, Maybe, no I have no idea.

Nzinga: Christian, I don't know what that is.

Darwin: No, not exactly. It sounds familiar, but I wouldn't be able to say what it is.

Tabitha: Christian Nationalism, I don't think I've heard those 2 words together before.

Grace: I grew up in a Christian household. I would consider myself an ex-evangelical. I've done a little bit of research into it.

Regina de Heer: Could you define it?

Grace: I think Christian nationalism is just the projection of their own beliefs and understandings about how they think things should go, and that's how it should be in society as well, and also just enforcing their own ideas into a political, but also social sphere where it doesn't belong.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes from America, I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. Christian Nationalism is indeed one of those phrases where it feels like a lot of us are becoming familiar with it much too late. It's really only since the January 6th insurrection, that's when people who don't already study these things took note because there was so much seemingly out-of-place rhetoric about Christ during that violent attack on the capital building.

We'll talk in a minute about the actual definition of Christian nationalism, but to give you some context on why it's important as we head into the midterms, a recent poll commissioned by a political magazine found 61% of Republican voters support the idea of declaring the United States a Christian nation. In the hotly contested governor's race in Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano, has openly championed this idea. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, has been using rhetoric lately that's widely associated with the Christian Nationalist movement.

Of course, the always provocative Georgia Congress membered, Marjorie Taylor Green, has even embraced the label itself. My first guest tonight is an evangelical Christian pastor who is horrified by this trend and who is right now on a national tour offering, among other things, trainings for people who want to learn about Christian nationalism and how to counter it from the position of a person of faith.

Doug Pagitt is the author of 10 books on Christianity and Spirituality most recently Outdoing Jesus: 7 Ways to Live Out the Promise of Greater Than. He was the founding pastor of Solomon's Porch Ministry in Minneapolis. His current tour is part of his work as executive director of the Group Vote Common Good, which aims to engage people of faith in civic life. Doug, thanks for coming to the show to talk about your work.

Doug Pagitt: Hey, Kai, thanks. I really appreciate being here, and I'm really proud of this show, so congratulations.

Kai Wright: Thank you. You heard some of the conversations our producer had when she went out on the streets last week to ask people about Christian nationalism. Do you think people generally know what this is at this point?

Doug Pagitt: Yes, I think that those audio pieces I heard sounded like the good old days when we didn't have to worry about Christian nationalism and we could all say, "I don't know, maybe that's the thing people study when they wonder about the founding of the country. Maybe it's just a movement inside of some small religious groups." Frankly, that's the way I thought about it 4 or 5 years ago, I would say to other pastors, "Hey, look, Christian nationalism is real, but it's fringy and it's not something we need to spend a lot of time worrying about. Maybe you don't have to spend a Sunday talking about it or read a bunch of books about it, so don't get too wound up." I was totally wrong.

I think a lot of pastors like me who looked past it back then allowed for people who were going to be pushing hard to support notions of Christian nationalism to have a runway over the last 5 years. As you said, during the January 6th insurrection that geiser came above ground and we started to see all of the people who are supportive of the idea that government of the United States should first and foremost think like Christian people, should take care of Christian ideas and then should use violence if need be to enforce the ideas of those Christian people. It's really just quite a deeply, deeply troubling notion to my sensibility as an evangelical and a pastor, but also just as an American.

Kai Wright: Can you just spell it out though, what is then for people who are like, "I hear you, but I never actually heard of it." What is the term? What does it mean to you?

Doug Pagitt: Yes, it's a difficult term because it's a term that grabs 3 or 4 different streams of thought that all come together. Look, the reason this matters is because it influences our government. It influences our laws. Nobody's going around saying to individual people, "You should just think differently about the history of the United States," but when people start to make arguments that our laws of the country need to be seen through the lens of Christianity, because of the founding of the country as they would argue, then that's when we get concerns.

There's a question about the founding of the country. More importantly, there's a question about should the government be doing the work of Christianity in its law-making and in its intentions. As hard as it is to believe, there are people who believe that that's what it should do because they believe that morality and Christianity are inseparably linked. They believe that that's the cause of the church or of Christianity and also the cause of the government.

Kai Wright: As I said, you're on a tour right now, where you're going from city to city, you're doing a bunch of things. Amongst the things you're offering is this training. Who is the training for and what are those people asking for when they show up? What do they want from you?

Doug Pagitt: We're traveling in this big bus that has written on it, Faith, Hope, and Love, not Insurrections and Christian Nationalism. Who would've thought you'd have to put that sentence together ever, but especially on the side of a bus? What people are asking is, "Did I miss something? What's gone on? Why is Christian nationalism so alive and well in the United States? Then what can I do about it? How do I respond to someone when I hear them say things that sound like they want the government to be doing the work of Christianity,"

As you said in the peer research poll? That 61% of a subset of fellow citizens believe that preference should be given to Christianity in the country and its setting of its laws and in the enforcement of its laws. What people are trying to figure out for many of them is, what is it and can I do anything about it? For a lot of faith leaders, pastors, and people that run Christian ministries, they're trying to catch up. They're trying to find out if this is something that truly is a threat.

In some ways, it feels an awful lot like the early days of 2020 with the Covid virus. Remember when we weren't sure what to call it and people called it Corona or the Rona and didn't know how far it would spread, and is this something that's going to really impact all of us? It has that feeling, we're not sure what to call it. We're not sure how widespread it is, but it sure seems dangerous. We know that because of the people that you mentioned, and also as we've done our own surveys on social media asking people, Are you seeing signs of Christian nationalism in people running for office?

That's really where our concern is, are people running for office because they'll use their power of elected office? We had people from more than 200, I think 207 cities around the country, identify people who are going to be on their ballot, who have said some version of something that makes them think that these people are supportive of Christian nationalist ideas when it comes to their role as an elected official.

Kai Wright: You said earlier that 4 or 5 years ago you would've been in the category of saying, "Oh yes, listen, fellow clergy, don't get too worried about this." What is it that made you stand up and say, "Wait a minute, this is out of hand, I got to do something?"

Doug Pagitt: Well, during the Trump administration, we saw the rise not only of white nationalism in the United States but an increasing amount of rhetoric that used Christianity in the Trump administration. When Jeff Sessions, then the Attorney General came out and justified in a public statement, the separation of children from their parents at the United States in Mexico border, because of the book of Romans, chapter 12, he said, says that we should obey the laws of the government or feel the wrath of God. That was deeply concerning.

It was also a message to Christian nationalists that it was their time to come out. There were a lot of messages being sent. Often, the State Department under Mike Pompeo was starting to talk in ways that many of us who cognize the power of Christian nationalism, we saw it coming out in State Department policies and in positions that were being taken. Then we saw it in the Supreme Court, and we saw it happening with the regulations and rulings that were being judged by the Supreme Court. The rationalization for why they were ruling the way they were started to sound again, so much like it.

Those of us who paid attention to Christian nationalism and thought it was, I don't know, more like the chickenpox or poliovirus, as we have it under control, have realized, "No, we don't have it under control and it's now being pushed." Then the insurrection was a time where it was clearly spreading as a political attribute and not as something that people are trying to keep undercover.

Kai Wright: A lot of which is to say, you took note when it started working, when the movement started working, when people, when government started to say these things. Maggie on YouTube says, "As an evangelical, I find this whole movement is a new religion that has little to do with the Christianity and the Bible I know, had to separate from a few old friends."

We'll get into some of that after a break here shortly, but before we go to break, in the couple of minutes we've got, I do want to ask you this idea that it's a new religion, that it's not associated with the evangelism that Maggie knew. Did this bubble up from congregants or was this something that was pushed by the clergy?

Doug Pagitt: Look, Christian nationalism is a leader-led movement. It's not coming up from the grassroots. In fact, reason people like me as an evangelical pastor and a lot of pastors know about it, is because we've been speaking and preaching against it for years. People have been very aware of it. What happened was a number of organizations, well-funded, often on the religious right, often on the conservative right, well-funded religious organizations began to move and operate in the positions of power within our local state and federal government.

That's where it's coming from. This is a very well-funded movement. Part of the reason we're out on the road is we're trying to raise awareness to people from those who study this that this is not happening by accident. This isn't a general people movement popping up, which is why folks will often say like, "I don't even know what they're talking about.

What are they getting at?" It's because there's a group of people who don't use this term. They don't often come out as representative Marjorie Taylor Green does, and say, "I am a proud Christian nationalist." They're just starting to do that in recent weeks and months, but it's been going on for a number of years in a very well-funded effort.

Frankly, a lot of Democrats don't want to talk about religion and politics at all. That's one of the issues that comes out that these people who oppose these kinds of things don't want to be out there as if they're trying to oppose Christianity in America. No one's telling people not to be Christians. We're saying, we don't think our government should be doing the actions of Christianity in their acts of the government.

Kai Wright: We'll talk about that a little more in a minute. I'm talking with Doug Pagitt. He's an evangelical Christian pastor, author, and activist who is right now on a national tour in which he's offering, among other things, trainings on how to challenge the rise of Christian nationalism from a faith-based perspective.

We can take your calls. If you are Christian and your faith shapes your politics, I would love to know how so what's that mean for you? I'm Kai Wright. This is Notes from America. Stay with us.

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Vanessa Handy: Hey, it's Vanessa Handy. I'm the new intern for Notes from America, and I am so excited to be here. As you probably know, we just expanded our show with a national launch. Now we're talking with and listening to more people in more places. We're taking live calls from folks in places like the Twin Cities and Ohio. We're also tapping into communities like this week, we'll hear from people of faith.

We love getting voice memos from you, and they're crucial to how we make our show. We want to make that easier for you. We have a new way for you to send us voice messages faster than ever. You can record and send us messages right from our show's website, notesfromamerica.org. Just click the green button. Of course, you can still send us voicemails or just any messages via our email notes@wnyc.org. Thanks. We're excited to hear from you.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes From America with Kai Wright. That's me, and I am joined this week by a pastor, author, and activist Doug Pagitt. We are talking about the rise of Christian nationalism and how people of faith, and in particular Christians who do not think that movement reflects their faith, can speak up.

We can take your calls. If you're Christian and your faith shapes your politics, let me know how. Before the break, Doug, you alluded to this truism, you alluded to the silence about this in some circles. There's this truism of course that if you want to keep things civil if you want to keep the peace, you don't talk politics, you don't talk religion, that is frankly rude to do so, and I gather you think that's part of the problem? That's how Christian nationalism grew so large.

Doug Pagitt: I do think that that's part of the problem. We've struggled in our country from its founding with the question of what's the role of religion in our civic life. The early founders as soon as they finished the constitution and got under the amendments, number one is trying to figure out what are we going to do about religion in our civic life. It's a really good conversation. We should work hard to have better ways to talk about this. I lament that we think, "Don't talk about religion and politics." It's having no talk rules in a family or in a relationship. As soon as you tell people what you can't talk about, very little good is going to come from that.

We would do much better if we could find positive ways to talk about it and positive ways to hear each other. I'm not one of those Christians who thinks that Christians are silenced in our society, but there's a lot of people who do think that, and so we have to talk about it. There's a lot of ways we talk about it and we're not very well equipped in our society, in our churches, or in our civic life to deal with this issue that's a perennial issue in the American psyche.

Kai Wright: Related to that, let me ask you this. You're on the tour, you're talking to people of faith, everybody, but people, if they in particular about how they can engage civic life better. What about people who listen to that and think the last thing we need is anybody bringing any more faith into their politics? Where do you fall on that? How do we process that?

Doug Pagitt: I do think that that's a problem. I think we should work harder to not have the blending of faith in politics as deeply as we do. I come down on that side. We give a lot of preference in our society to faith leaders and a lot of preference to Christian faith leaders in particular. There's things we do. Some people don't know that we have chaplains in the Senate and we have chaplains in our government that often come from a Christian religious perspective.

Now, there's reasons for all that, but we should just know that that's dangerous territory to be in. If we're going to be in those dangerous conversations and have those dangerous positions, then we should figure out a way to be careful about it. There's people who are very thoughtful about this. I'm not suggesting at all, we need more faith in our politics. What I'm saying is we need more people in our politics and we need people to be talking about all of the things that matter to them and finding new ways to move forward. Frankly, it hasn't gone well, our way of including people and what we'll talk about in our politics.

A lot of people feel like they want to talk about a lot of things that we can't really figure out how to talk about in our society. We should be better at talking about all of them, but I'm not at all advocating that we should have more religion in our politics. I'm advocating that we find more ways to talk about these issues so that we have more people who feel comfortable participating in the civic life of this country. The United States is a very big and complicated place, and it's going to take all of us to have our voices be heard.

Kai Wright: I hear that. Let's hear some of those voices. Let's go to John in Massillon Ohio. John, welcome to the show.

John: Hi, been a Christian since I was 13 years old and I moved to Toledo, Ohio. Lived there for 25 years. Around the time the 2016 came in and the whole Trump-American nationalism came into the church, every time I would try to say, "Hey, look, we're losing focus. We need to be focusing on the gospel, on the love of Christ," I would get shut out. My wife and I were essentially run out of this church and we wound up moving down towards Canton and we've had to church shop just to find people that aren't preaching Christian nationalism.

Kai Wright: John, was that new? Did you feel like that was a change for you?

John: Yes. Evangelical church tend to be conservative. My wife and I are very low-liberal. We stand on solid Christian doctrine, but we're not hateful. We don't hate people because of who they are, what they do, what they love. Our goal is to share the gospel.

If somebody finds it attractive, then we can talk about it, somebody asked my opinion, they're going to talk about it, but if you violated the basically Christian nationalism line, you were marginalized. I suddenly wasn't allowed to teach classes. We came down here and we had, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Kai Wright: I'm going to leave it there for you for a second, John, just because we've got a ton of callers and I want to give Doug a chance to respond to that. You were nodding like that sounded very familiar, Doug.

Doug Pagitt: It's very familiar. It's part of the reason we're traveling and doing this work and getting out and inviting people to know that there's others who think about it as well. Not only is John's story true for people who attend church, it's also true for people who've been pastors in churches. We know many pastors who, as John put it, have been run out of their churches because they wouldn't go along with the Christian nationalism perspective. Again, this is not coming just from the congregants. This is coming from organizations who are spending their tax-free dollars that they raise to push for Christian nationalism. It's easy to follow the money and it's easy to follow the pattern, but it's also just has great impact on churches all over the country.

Kai Wright: Let's go to Maggie in Long Valley, New Jersey. Maggie, welcome to the show.

Maggie: Thank you for taking my call. I'm so glad that you're having this conversation tonight because I think very similar to what the last caller said and what the overall conversation has been about tonight, I too have experienced that within my faith community. I was raised as a Roman Catholic in a parish that was very heavily rooted in community service and public service. We saw, especially in the last couple of years, and definitely in 2020, a lot of the people that I had been serving alongside and working with to build a community, I saw that they definitely did not feel the same way that I felt.

Our family, we felt like we were almost ostracized for our continued belief in building our community. We lost our faith community because of it, because we weren't going to allow its Christian nationalism to take-- At least we felt that way and we lost our community. Now we're hesitant to rejoin another faith community if we're just going to be met with another environment where people feel that way and they're not rooted in community service. How do you recommend somebody to step back into it?

Kai Wright: Yes. What do you think, Doug?

Doug Pagitt: My advice is continue to tell your story because you will find other people nodding along when you tell your story. Maybe you're feeling that right now, that you're saying, "I'm so glad we're talking about this." That's the feeling people have is, "Could we just talk about this so we can get out the truth and tell the truth about what's going on?" People are losing their churches, and I think this is a great point. It's not just an evangelical churches. Evangelical churches deserve the blame for a lot of this work, but it's true in Catholic churches and in mainline Protestant churches all over the country. Great fear about talking about this and talking about these issues.

Kai Wright: Let's go to Mike in Maplewood New Jersey. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike: Yes. Hello. Thank you for discussing this topic. I think it's really important. I have a question regarding the relationship between white nationalism and Christian nationalism, especially in regards to racism and antisemitism.

Kai Wright: What is the, how are they tied? Let me add to Mike's question, Doug, because last week we did a show on conspiracy theories and the big lie now and how it's rooted in the original anti-Obama conspiracy theories. Is this too rooted in that moment?

Doug Pagitt: It is. The roots of white nationalism cannot be separated in this country from white Christian nationalism. That's just historically true. One of the groups many people know about it are the Southern Baptists. Now, the Southern Baptists, some of them are very good on this particular issue, but they're southern because they broke from the Northern Baptists over slavery. White Christian nationalism has been a movement in the United States on its own front. It has blended and joined in with other Christian nationalism movements to create--

It's almost like when you look under your desk and you see all those cords tangled up under there and you can't tell which one starts and where it goes, but they're all seem to be plugged into the same outlet. That's the way Christian nationalism looks and feels to me in the United States. It's hard to follow any string, but you can see that they're all rooted inside the same power source, which is trying to make Christianity not only more prevalent in the United States but more connected to the power of government for leaders to make this happen.

It's not just in the United States. The same people are making that happen in the United States are working all over the world. It's a global movement of Christian nationalism around the world. In the United States, the power of the white Christian nationalism is the original origination of the idea of Christian nationalism in the United States.

Kai Wright: We have a number of calls that I'm going to try to bunch into one that are essentially from Jewish Americans who say, "I feel deeply targeted by all of this." Certainly, many of the conspiracy theories again, tie back into antisemitism. How core is that to the Christian task force movement? Are these two separate things or is it actually just an anti-Semitic movement?

Doug Pagitt: There are many Christian nationalists who have anti-Semitic narratives. There are some who shockingly are very pro-Israel. This becomes really confusing to people. They see things where somebody is really pushing for the nation of Israel. They'll have a church that has an Israeli flag hanging in it, but they're using that narrative in a very particular way to bring about their Christian nationalism in the world. It gets really complicated, but part of the reason we're out doing this work is we also fear for our Jewish brothers and sisters in this country.

White Christian nationalists who are willing to be violent target Jewish communities and Muslim communities. That's part of the reason we're so concerned. We're not concerned because we're afraid that Christians in America are not going to have enough power or too much. We're afraid that the government is going to be used and individuals are going to be motivated to harm those communities. We can all name the circumstances and situations in which those communities are targeted. Those are very real concerns, and that's partly why we're trying to raise a siren call about this because there are people whose lives are really under threat. It's a very difficult time for people from Muslim and Jewish communities.

Kai Wright: Just to throw out a couple of comments we're getting on YouTube, Ray says, "I'm a pastor. Faith shapes my politics by pushing me to care for and uplift others. Isaiah 58 centers social justice. The Black church has traditionally focused on social issues." I also grew up in the Black church and this difficulty of figuring out how to talk about our faith within civic life without making our faith about other people. The Black church has many problems, don't get me wrong, but that wasn't one of them in my experience. Maybe this is an obvious question, but how much is this a white conversation?

Doug Pagitt: Oh, it's very much rooted in white churches. Part of the reason, some people are confused. They see Black churches talking about biblical narratives and then calling for justice in the world. They say to themselves, "That's all we're doing. We want to name a Bible passage and then tell a government to utilize that Bible passage for the motivation." One of the differences is that, historically, these Black communities have not had the levers of power in our government. They weren't asking for the government to make those dreams of God, that they heard about in the scripture a reality. They were working in their church congregations and community life to make that a reality.

When white churches use the levers of power from their white privileged place, that's why it looks and feels different. That's why race because race is always an issue in the United States. When people conflate what they're hearing in a Black church for people who don't have the historic access to power in the same way, and they see that happening in white churches where people have access to that power, it doesn't ring the same. It's not the same story that's being told.

When people of positions of power want to baptize their power in religion and in Christianity is different than when someone turns to their faith for the solace and for the motivation to keep moving for goodness. Those are coming from really two different places and should be seen as two really distinct movements.

Kai Wright: I do want to, before we get too short on time, talk about solutions here because that was the whole point, is you're drive. You're around the country trying to train people on how they can engage. I cited that statistic about 61% of Republican voters say that they would support declaring the United States a Christian nation. Is that a bit of a flattening stat? Are there distinctions to be made within that number that help us think about solutions?

Doug Pagitt: There are. That's a really insightful question. When you ask people a second, third, and fourth question about what the implication of that would mean, they start to moderate and change their answer. When they say, "Oh, then that would mean that other religions would have less of a voice." They say, "Oh no, I don't want that." That's what that would cause and they think about it and they say, "Oh yes okay, I guess you're right. Maybe we don't want it to be that." This is part of the problem where we have surveys of notions that people have in their minds that they haven't really thought about and talked about.

Then these same groups and power movements of leaders take those notions and play on them. What they're doing is utilizing this sense that people in America want America to be good. That's why our group's called Vote Common Good. They want it to be good, and they think that good equals God, and they think God equals Christianity. They say, "Yes, I think we should be a good country if-" You say more to them and they're like, "No, I don't mean that." You start describing white Christian nationalists actually think, and they pull away from that idea. Some education is necessary.

Kai Wright: What does that mean to the number of callers and tweeters and YouTubers we've had who said, "I was in a church, this thing happened and I felt chased out." For that person in that moment, what does that mean? What should they take from what you've just said in terms of what they should do?

Doug Pagitt: Very often. I can't name everybody's story, but very often the stories I've heard, people will say it wasn't exactly clear why it was being run out. Again, they can't talk about it. As soon as they bring it up, they're silenced. We heard that story earlier, someone said, "Pretty soon I wasn't put in a position of power." The most important thing we can do in a democracy is speak up. If you're in a church, or you're in a community or a group of friends, start naming these things, and don't allow people to utilize the power of these notions without actually claiming them.

Part of this is getting it out in the open, and then we have to get good at talking about it. Boy, there's a lot of people who don't know our history. Just in a training we did the other day, someone said, "Well, I thought you had to say your oath of office with your hand on a Bible if you're an elected official." We had a whole conversation in the room about whether that's true or not. It's not true. No, it's not.

Kai Wright: I was about to ask. I'm not sure.

Doug Pagitt: There's some things that people don't know, you don't have to have any book of faith. My congressional representative, Ilhan Omar, used a Koran for her book. Then there's Christians who go around saying, she's not actually a sworn-in representative in the House of Representatives, because she didn't use the Bible. Some of this is information, we do have to get that out, and then we also need to invite people to think differently about it. We can't just suppose that people are going to know more. Most of us don't really know our own history and we certainly don't know our laws. We don't want to have to feel like we're being lawyers about all of this, it's partly of what's just exhausting about it. It feels like, boy, the last 5, 7, 10, 20 years have just been politically exhausting and here we go again.

Kai Wright: We'll have to leave it there. Doug Padgett is a pastor, activist, and author. He's Executive Director of the group Vote Common Good, which aims to engage people of faith and civic life. Doug, thanks for this time.

Doug Padgett: Well, thank you so much.

Kai Wright: Thanks to everyone who called. If we did not get to you, there were many of you, so we definitely didn't get to you all. You can now leave us a note directly on our website. Go to notesfromamerica.org and you'll see a button allowing you to record a voice note for us. Notes From America is a production of WNYC studios. We are live each week, but you can also follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

We are on both Instagram and Twitter @noteswithkai, that's notes with K-A-I. Our live engineer is Matthew Mirando. The music and mixing by Jared Paul. Our team also includes Regina de Heer, Karen Frillmann, Vanessa Handy, Rahima Nasa, Kousha Navidar, and Lindsey Foster Thomas, and I am Kai Wright. Thanks for spending this time with us. I'll talk to you next week.

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