Welcome to Douglas Wilson's Blog and May Blog, presented by Canon Press.

A brief scattershot primer on Christian nationalism, Monday, September 12, 2022.

We should begin with the recognition that naming is warfare.

In any cultural collision, each group wants to name the other one, and each group wants

to prevent the other group from taking that name and turning it around to be used in

a less pejorative sense or even in a positive sense.

Methodists in Puritan were originally names that were taunts from outside those communities,

but which were soon enough rendered innocuous.

In our day, the mudgobbing that calls conservative Christian's names like white supremacist,

or theofascist, or religious extremist, are so overdone that they are easily answered

and then dismissed.

Or so out there that they can simply be answered with a cheerful role of the eyes.

But another taunt they are now using, Christian nationalist, can be easily caught and thrown

right back to them.

I am a Christian, and I do love my nation.

Now what?

I am a Christian, and I am not a globalist.

I am a Christian, and I am not a tribalist.

I am a Christian, and I have to live somewhere.

What shall we call that?

The one possible toxin in the phrase Christian nationalism is found in that pesky suffix

ism.

...