Anti-Christian nationalist campaign led by former pastor who warned Church about 'whiteness'

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter
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A nonpartisan campaign led by a former female pastor who has warned against churches being centered around "white cultural norms" is taking on Christian nationalism in North Texas.

Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN), a left-leaning coalition of interdenominational Christian leaders, announced its first local organization effort in North Texas to warn against the "dangers" of an ideology that it calls the "single biggest threat to religious freedom today in the United States."

 

Lisa Jacob, CACN's new North Texas Organizer, told The Dallas Morning News her role — which officially started in November — will be to inform residents about Christian nationalism, an ideology she defined as "a convergence of religious and national identities in such a way that to be Christian is to engage politically in a very narrow way, and to be American is to uphold Christian values and Christian identity."

A Pew Research study released in 2014 found that the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has the largest Christian population by percentage of any large U.S. metro area and is home to three of the 25 largest megachurches in America.

Part of the 35-year-old's work includes "mobilizing concerned residents to speak and vote against bills that may threaten protections for religious minorities," she told the newspaper.

"The threat of Christian nationalism is large in our region, but it's a place that we've had strong existing partnerships as well," Jacob was quoted as saying.

A former pastor at Gateway Community Church in Austin and Irving Bible Church, Jacob will reportedly focus on advocating against a newly enacted state law that allows public schools to allow volunteer or employed chaplains to offer counseling support to students in conjunction with school counselors.

CACN is an effort of the progressive Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit led by executive director Amanda Tyler.

An Indian-American and first-generation Texan, Jacob's pastoral teachings are laced with social justice themes, including a study on Acts 6 in which she urged her listeners to "do an audit of what you consume" to better "pursue equity and justice."

"Who are the authors that you're reading? What are the movies that you're watching, the podcast that you're listening to?" asked Jacob. "Are they all led by voices who sound like yours? Are they all led by people who look like you, who think like you, who experience the world like you?

"Or are they instead led by those who are in the margins of our society? What would it look like to press into the discomfort of listening to voices who think, act and look differently than us?"

The former pastor shared her perspective on race in the Church in a 2020 podcast in which she suggested Christians should do more to "pursue multi-ethnicity as a Church."

"How are we seeing the actual gifts that people of color bring into the community in a way that's not centered around whiteness and not centered around white cultural norms?" she asked. "Seeing our deficit with those voices being brought to the table."

While definitions of what Christian nationalism is can vary, some Christian conservatives have argued that the recent explosion in the use of "Christian nationalism," especially in the press, is essentially a "boogie man" argument concocted by political opponents. 

A Pew Research poll released in 2022 found that 31% of respondents said they don't know what Christian nationalism means, while 21% of respondents who don't think the country should be a Christian nation said Christian nationalism is defined by negative attributes like "bigotry, authoritarianism, white supremacy." The poll found that 45% of Americans think the U.S. should be a "Christian nation," while 51% disagreed.

In comments criticizing a 2022 Denver Post article, Jeff Hunt, director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, believes those using the Christian nationalism label are trying to "attach it to every conservative out there that holds historically conservative positions."

"So they basically create this big scary boogie man, slapped Christian nationalism on it, and then, in the case of the Denver Post, basically say every conservative out there is a Christian nationalist," Hunt said. "Seriously, they say that Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, Kari Lake, all of them are Christian nationalists."

BJC's Tyler, in a 2020 piece published in Medium, insisted that Christianity "has been used to perpetuate racial subjugation for generations and has contributed greatly to the trauma and pain in our streets right now" during the violent and deadly George Floyd riots in which 30 Americans were killed and numerous homes and businesses were torched. 

In a BJC video titled "A national conversation on white supremacy and American Christianity," Tyler warned that Christianity in the U.S. has been "white too long" and linked true religious freedom with "adding more diverse voices."

"Just as American Christianity has been white too long, so has our American concept of religious freedom," said Tyler. "Adding more diverse voices to our study of an advocacy for religious freedom will only strengthen our support for it."

In testimony before a House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on the topic of "confronting white supremacy" in December 2022, Tyler called Christian nationalism a "gross distortion of the Christian faith."

Tyler said Americans who embrace Christian nationalism are more likely to exhibit certain types of behaviors, including holding "anti-immigrant views" and believing "that men are better suited for all leadership roles while women are better suited to care for children and the home."

When asked about these and other comments made by CACN leadership, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, communications director at BJC and a spokesperson for the CACN campaign, told The Christian Post the group believes Christian nationalism "often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation."

"Christian nationalism has surged at different points in American history," Graves-Fitzsimmons told CP via email Wednesday. "Every generation of Americans is entrusted with defending and extending religious freedom for all. The single biggest threat to religious freedom today in the United States is Christian nationalism."

For CACN, one of the benchmarks of a Christian nationalist is any Christian who believes the "federal government should advocate Christian values" — a definition that some might see as overly broad and incriminating of a plurality, if not a majority, of American Christians. 

Not so, according to Graves-Fitzsimmons, who said CACN believes "it's the responsibility of Christians to advocate for Christian values, not the government."

"Christians, like all Americans, should be free to advocate for our values," he said. "Government aid does not help Christianity; it will actually harm our Christian witness."

When asked why CACN partners with and promotes authors like Robert P. Jones, Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, who have written books specifically targeting the political positions of white Evangelicals, Graves-Fitzsimmons denied any suggestion that the group is anti-Christian in its views.

"Attempts to portray our work as somehow anti-Christian or targeting any specific branch of Christianity are not credible," he insisted. "We welcome all Christians who affirm our statement to join us in this work."

In addition to its foray into North Texas, Tyler and CACN are also involved in the upcoming "God & Country," a new documentary by progressive activist and filmmaker Rob Reiner that explores the purported rise of Christian nationalism as "not only a danger to our country but to Christianity itself." 

Tyler, whose BJC is behind CACN, was reportedly slated to moderate a panel with Reiner and other producers of the film. The film also features interviews with former Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore, liberal Christian leader Rev. Willie Barber and writer David French. 

In an earlier interview, Dr. Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, urged American Christians, regardless of their political persuasion, not to allow the political left to define how they see the U.S.

According to Land, the left-leaning media uses the hot-button phrase "Christian nationalism" as a pejorative term that serves to undermine the fundamental relationship between Christians and this nation as defined in the U.S. Constitution. 

"I'm not a Christian nationalist," asserted Land, president emeritus and adjunct professor of theology and ethics at Southern Evangelical Seminary and executive editor of The Christian Post.

"To be a patriotic American does not make you a Christian nationalist. To believe God has played a unique role in our history, or that America is a unique nation, does not make us Christian nationalists," he added. "Pejoratively, they want to tie Christian nationalism to racism and to prejudice, and I reject those labels."

Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post and the author of BACKWARDS DAD: a children's book for grownups. He can be reached at: [email protected].

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