6 books on Christian nationalism that explain how we got a second Trump term
It's not the only reason, but it is a reason
In the coming weeks and months, you’ll likely read many, many thought pieces on Donald Trump’s victory. Many of them will have an element of truth. For example, I appreciate this article about how right-wing media dominates conversations and propels misinformation, driving the narrative in all forms of the media spectrum.
Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.
There’s no single reason for Trump’s return, however. Numerous factors converged. And so we must include the relentless, generations-long push of Christian nationalism.
These six books have helped inform me about the history and dangers of Christian nationalists. We can never overlook this ever-present danger, as it sits at the foundation of so much of the right-wing agenda, which is going to translate to horrific policies in the coming years.
Women have already lost their right to federally-protected bodily autonomy. So much more is at stake.
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The notion of “lost masculinity” has been discussed for over a decade. Young boys are falling behind. Incel communities are causing an online fervor. We need men to be men again.
Innumerable talking heads discuss the loss of “masculinity,” though as with Trump’s victory, it’s impossible to distill this to a single issue. That said, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez offers an insightful glimpse into muscular Christianity through the figure of John Wayne—the man’s man imprinted in the Boomer psyche of Americana.
What that means for the white evangelical cohort Du Mez studies is a return to Leave It To Beaver heterosexual gender roles, bypassing sexual abuse within and outside of the church due to abstract moralism (“god’s will”), and the constant yearning for a past that never existed—a hallmark of American listlessness.
More than economic anxieties, it was a threatened loss of status—particularly racial status—that influenced the vote of white evangelicals, and whites more generally.
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America — Kevin M Kruse
The creation of the Moral Majority in 1979 makes a convenient starting point to the 50+ year struggle to overturn Roe v Wade, but everything has precedent. Historian Keven M Kruse points to the intentional linking of Christianity and capitalism in New Deal America, which demonized “government overreach” and spoke of the “necessity of freedom.” Sound familiar?
The “Christian nation” ethos that has dictated conservative values for nearly a century was bought and paid for by corporate interests. Kruse’s in-depth history explains just how that happened.
In 1954, Congress followed Eisenhower’s lead, adding the phrase “under God” to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance. A similar phrase, “In God We Trust,” was added to a postage stamp for the first time in 1954 and then to paper money the next year; in 1956, it became the nation’s official motto. During the Eisenhower era Americans were told, time and time again, that the nation not only should be a Christian nation but also that it had always been one.
Red State Christians: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves Behind — Angela Denker
As a Lutheran pastor, Angela Denker understands Christianity quite well. As a social activist and journalist committed to the charitable teachings of her faith, she wanted to know how her fellow Christians could vote for a man that embodied none of her faith’s principles.
So she set out on the road to talk with Christians in red states. Her book is an empathic look into their world, though not one that is uncritical. She takes her fellow faithful Americans at their word. She also has words of her own.
Listen to Angela on Conspirituality 84
Instead of backing traditional Christian social support for people in need and accepting the stranger, Christians taught in churches that embrace Christian Nationalism will instead back the American military and American strength. If you question [the idea of Christian Nationalism], it makes them question their whole faith. their entire faith is built on being a proud American. If you take that away from them, it shakes their whole faith.
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America — Frances Fitzgerald
This is THE book for understanding the American evangelical movement. I’ve rarely read a 740-page book that kept me enamored throughout. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald lays out the entire history of this brand of faith, from the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries through Billy Graham right up to Trump.
If you want the full story of this movement, this is your book.
In their eagerness to save souls, the revivalists introduced vernacular preaching styles, de-emphasized religious instruction, and brought a populist, anti-intellectual strain into American Protestantism. Then, as most of them saw it, America was a Christian—read Protestant—nation.
The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism — Katherine Stewart
The basis for Rob Reiner’s documentary, God & Country, journalist Katherine Stewart has been covering the religious right for nearly 20 years. In this wildly informative work, she shows how this movement has chipped away at public education, the hospital system, and nearly every tentacle of politics.
Whereas FitzGerald gives you the history, Stewart opens your eyes to the many dangers ahead—and the long, concerted effort to get here.
Listen to Katherine on Conspirituality 194
Today it makes more sense to regard the Republican party as a host vehicle for a radical movement that denies that the other party has any legitimate claim to political power.
Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America — Talia Lavin
Journalist Talia Lavin writes masterful sentences that leave haunting images in your mind, like
All indicia point toward a second crowning of MAGA’s florid Cyrus becoming an orgy of wish fulfillment for the Christian right.
Wild Faith was published shortly before the crown was again bestowed, but here we are. She opens broad, showing the intersections the Christian right has taken into American consciousness and legal code. Where she ends up—a craven power grab that leaves women and children battered and bruised in the name of their god—warns us of the formidable beast in plain sight.
And why it needs to be slain.
Their freedom is the unfreedom of others, and they know it. They revel in it. There is no such thing as hypocrisy in a holy war.