Rob Reiner, Heidi Przybyla and the smear of ‘Christian nationalism’

It seems like everyone is talking these days about Rob Reiner’s hitjob movie against the religious right. It makes “Christian nationalists” into the bogeyman. Although I travel in the circles of Christian conservatives, I have yet to meet anyone who has actually yet seen Reiner’s movie. But I have seen a trailer for it.

The thesis of the movie is that “Christian nationalists” are bad and are trying to take over the nation and turn it into something we were never intended to be.

Commentator Heidi Przbyla of Politico even told a panel on MSNBC that anyone who believes our rights are derived from God is a “Christian nationalist.”

She said, “The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different, is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God.”

Furthermore, in a tweet, Przbyla wrote: “While there are different wings of Christian Nationalism, they are bound by their belief that our rights come from God.”

And what’s wrong with that? Is that not exactly what the founding fathers and the settlers of America have said, as well as American leaders?

The essence of the American experiment is self-rule under God.

One famous American said, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Who was this sneaky American trying to impose Christian nationalism on an unsuspecting populace? It was Thomas Jefferson. Those words are chiseled in stone at the memorial in Washington, D.C. dedicated to his memory.

Another man said that we must remember the beliefs of this nation’s founders: “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

Who said that — D. James Kennedy?

No, actually, that was John F. Kennedy. That’s a quote from his Inaugural Address in 1961.        

One American had the temerity to actually assert that America and belief in God go hand-in-hand. He declared, “Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers saw it, and thus, with God's help, it will continue to be.”

Who was that? Jerry Falwell? No, that was President Dwight D. Eisenhower.             

One famous American said that what we need so desperately today is a spiritual revival. Here are his own words: “No greater thing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion — a revival that would sweep through the homes of the Nation and stir the hearts of men and women of all faiths to a reassertion of their belief in God and their dedication to His will for themselves and for their world.”

Was this a recent message from Franklin Graham or his late father, Billy Graham?

No, this was a comment from that icon of the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  

One famous American observed that without God’s help, a nation will not be blessed.

This is how he worded it: “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”

The very last part of that quote is from Psalm 33. And the speaker’s hearers knew that because most of them were Biblically literate, as was he.

In this quote, this Christian nationalist (by the new definition) is saying that a nation is blessed only when it belongs to the God of the Bible.

Who was it? Those are words from President Abraham Lincoln, calling on the nation to fast and pray and ask for God’s mercy.

The only way the elite class can get away with trying to impose state-sanctioned atheism on a land that was secured on the foundation of God-given rights is when we the people forget that God is indeed the source of our rights, not the government. Or when they become so fearful of a made-up label like “Christian nationalism” that they go mute in the face of a little name-calling.