I was raised a Christian Nationalist before that was a term.
We called it “postmillennialism” or “reconstructionism”. Some people called it “theonomy”. Others called it dominionism.
The idea is that the church (meaning the organization and the hierarchy, NOT the people) will gradually influence and take over all of the spheres of the world and make it all bend the knee to “Jesus”. God’s law (the Ten Commandments) would become the law of the land, as interpreted by the book of Exodus and Leviticus, through the insightful dominance of the preacher of choice at the moment.
That’s an oversimplification, but that is the root.
This also was 60 years ago. It now has lost any of the grace it used to have, and has been hijacked completely by hatred and contempt, as well as the vilest sorts of behavior – incest, pornography, murder, brawling, reviling – all those things that the Bible actually warned us would happen when we substitute power and money for grace and humility.
But I digress.
We were warned as children to guard what went into our minds. My father was deathly afraid of sex and forbad us to watch shows or listen to music that might mention sex. I believe that he truly believed that if he kept his sons away from every mention of sex that they would stay away from it as well. It didn’t work, of course.
But it did twist us all up pretty good.
How often did we hear “guard your hearts” or “garbage in, garbage out”?
Don’t love the world or things that are in the world.
The funny thing is, that they were right. They just didn’t understand what the garbage was.
For fifty years, the evangelical right has filled their minds with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Phyllis Schlafly, Elisabeth Elliott, Bill Gothard, James Dobson and the myriad of conferences that we endured as children.
My father, so deathly afraid of sex that he dubbed “The Love Boat” a “jiggle show” and refused to let us watch it, started singing along to Rush Limbaugh singing “my ding-a-ling” in his stupid attempt to mock Madelaine Albright.
And that was when I started thinking. It does matter what we put into our minds. The evangelical right has been fed a steady and unrelenting diet of contempt, lies, arrogance and hate.
When I broke free, I started seeing it, but it was carefully hidden under a “righteous” veneer.
Perhaps you wonder how your friend from school, who was so kind and generous, is now cheering ICE and their cruelty. Perhaps your former pastor continues to assert that Trump, the most vile human imaginable, is “God’s Man”. Or your scientific minded friend has “done his own research” (ie, watched a youtube video, or saw it on Fox) and is now espousing the most crackpot ideas.
How did that happen? It has been hammered from the pulpits, joked about around the table, talked about at “fellowship meals”, fed with a steady diet of Fox News and every afternoon with Rush Limbaugh.
Libtards are evil devil worshipers, Wanting healthcare for all is communist and we aint russians, Jesus hates commies. Brown people descended from Ham and are under a curse. Women are too emotional to make rational arguments.
To vote Democrat is to turn your back on the Bible, on the church, on your family, and your whole community. It was understood.
Lots of historians have spoken about how we got to this place. But what are we going to do about it?
But now it is being exposed for what it is. After 50 years of choosing hate and lies, many are stuck there and can’t find their way to love and freedom. They will follow Orange Pustule to the grave. They will lose farms and go broke paying 7 dollar diesel to keep imaginary immigrants from eating their imaginary pets, and keep imaginary transgender athletes out of sports, while tens of thousands are slaughtered over seas, or are locked in torture chambers here at home.
That is what exposure does. It reveals the ugly that was always there. It is why Christians call God “light”. He exposes.
But then he also calls us to make our decisions based on that.
What will we choose?
My Only Comfort 