New Book Alert- The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
A new book written by sociologists explains how white Christian Nationalism is undermining democracy and pushing us further toward authoritarianism.
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We don’t often know precisely when we’re living through a history-making moment, but on a few occasions we realize the significance of what is happening in real time and it becomes an unforgettable landmark in the journey of our lives.
January 6, 2021 was one of those moments that you knew was historic even as you watched it unfold. A mob of protesters invaded the U.S. Capitol building on a mission to overturn a lawful presidential election.
On that day the United States came perilously close to losing a hallmark of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.
If you paid attention to the photos and videos that day, you would have seen Christian symbolism on display: crosses, pictures of a European-looking Jesus, prayers in Jesus name.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: White Christian Nationalism is the biggest threat to democracy in the United States today.
We ignore it at our peril.
Thankfully we have an excellent new resource to under white Christian Nationalism, The Flag + the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry.
Gorski is a professor at Yale and you may remember Perry as a co-author of Taking America Back for God. In this new book, the authors look specifically at the ways white Christian Nationalism seeks to undermine the power of the vote and institute an authoritarian political structure ostensibly premised on the Christian religion.
From the description
Gorski and Perry show white Christian nationalism and white Christian individualism motivate the anti-democratic, authoritarian, and violent impulses on display in our current political moment. The future of American democracy, they argue, will depend on whether a broad spectrum of Americans--stretching from democratic socialists to classical liberals--can unite in a popular front to combat the threat to liberal democracy posed by white Christian nationalism.
Here’s a look at the table of contents. As you can see, it’s super quick read. No reason not to grab it and devour in a weekend or so.
I was honored to write the foreword for the book.
BUY: The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
What I think is really fascinating in the current CRT vs White Christian Nationalism culture war is, what I find to be, a crystal clear example of the Horseshoe Theory in real time. I try to listen to a lot of people on both sides of this current conversation and find that I can take many of the loudest voices and simply switch out the terms (CRT or WCN) and they are immediately making the other side's point. They are saying the exact same things. It's a pretty wild exercise. Typically, the loudest voices (or most magnified by our society) in the arena are closest to the extremes and, in turn, closest to each other.
Additionally, everyone's personal bias leads them to quickly dismiss the lies and danger on their side of battle line and accentuate the danger on the other side. So fickle we are.
Once I saw it, I cannot unsee it.