Leftist media in fear of the rise of Trump and 'Christian nationalism'

In Australia, like many throughout the world, we were shocked to witness the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.  The attempted assassination didn’t necessarily come as any surprise considering the radical left have been demonising Mr Trump for some time now.  However, it is still shocking to see rhetoric turn into violent action.  There remain many unanswered questions regarding the event and we will watch with interest to see if they are fully investigated. 

In the meantime, what was also predictable was the response by the leftist media who claim that Christian nationalism will become a worsening problem between now and the US election.  Soon after the attempt on Mr Trump’s life, USA Today ran with the headline: “Failed Trump assassination attempt may embolden supporters who seem him as chosen by God”.  In the article itself, one paragraph read: “The messaging could embolden Christian nationalist discourse that the former president and his allies have used to portray Trump as a Messiah-like figure on the campaign trail.”  Later in the same article, Dennis Jacobson, founding pastor of MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope) said that privileging Christianity would “destroy our multicultural democracy and kill the dream of a beloved community for which so many people are striving.”  He further said that, “If white Christian nationalism prevails, you may soon know what it’s like to live in an authoritarian society.” 

For a number of years now, what we have seen throughout Western nations and their media conglomerates is the use of language to introduce a three-step program to demonise, mobilise and marginalise.  They demonise Christianity in order to mobilise opponents to it in the hopes of marginalising those who are the salt and light of the nations in which they live, therefore diminishing their impact throughout their communities.  Although you may be tempted to believe this is a recent strategy, it is actually taken from the Communist playbook.  In 1943, Communist party headquarters sent a directive to their American followers which read this:  “When certain obstructionists become too irritating, label them after suitable buildups as fascist or Nazi or anti-Semitic and use the prestige of anti-fascist and tolerance organisations to discredit them. In the public mind, constantly associate those who oppose us with those names which already have a bad smell.  The association will after enough repetition become fact in the public mind.” 

You see, the salt and light of Christianity has stung the darkened eyes of the Communists, the Marxists, the atheists and the secular humanists and they are doing whatever they can to rinse it out – even using fabrication and violence to do it.  One commentator claimed that Christian nationalism was the “gasping, dying breath of the older generation in America that is afraid that Christians are going to be replaced.”  As GK Chesterton famously put it: “At least five times the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs.  In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died”.  Or, as he also stated, “Christianity has died many times and risen again: for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” 

The hope amongst politicians and the media is that by equating Christians with fanatics and conspiracy theorists, Christians will be sidelined from participating in the political process in their respective nations.  So, by utilising the term “Christian nationalism”, they want to imply that Christian political engagement is somehow nefarious, subversive and violent.  As a result of this strategy, many Christians then shrink back from their faith or, worse, soften their convictions and beliefs to appear non-threatening.  Now more than ever, we need to be speaking the truth in love.  Because let me remind you that the State is not there to shape our understanding of who we are or how we are to behave in this world – we have the Word of God and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to do that for us.  In many ways, what the wicked in our society are doing is trying to push Christianity out of the public square in order to protect the new religion which has been established in Western nations:  a religion based on secular humanism. 

You see, Christians have been fooled into believing the lie that there should be neutrality in the public square.  That is simply a tactic to keep believers out of it.  But, despite the views of the secular world, it is not wrong to stand for Christian truth in public.  Yet, many believers have simply accepted it is wrong because the government has told us so.  A Polish author I came across had some wonderful insight, because he has lived under both communism and liberalism.  Although they are vastly different in principle, they offer the same endgame – they wish to make secularism triumphant.  In fact, he rightly pointed out that whilst Communists implemented their aims with savage brutality, liberal democrats have achieved the same almost without any effort, simply by allowing people to drift along with a culture which has handed itself over to the debased mind of mankind.  Within this framework, he pointed to the fact that many have inspired a culture with “a strong antireligious bias in which a priest must be either a liberal challenging the church or a disgusting villain.”

As Archbishop Fulton J Sheen once rightly remarked:  “A religion that doesn’t interfere with the secular order will soon discover that the secular order will not refrain from interfering with it.”  The State has been extremely adept at seemingly protecting religious liberty while simultaneously undermining our faith with its army of social power, most often unleashed through the power of media (particularly social media).  In fact, the State’s claim that it must uphold diversity and neutrality provides perfect cover for its insidious goal to undermine and control the mind and activities of Christians.  In so doing, what the State really demands is that Christians operating in civil life must adopt either a secularist or non-threatening religious posture.  Because what the State wants is to ensure that Christianity is either rendered harmless to it or that it can be harnessed by it in order to be helpful to the State’s goals. 

Socialists and globalists are leveraging bitterness towards patriotism and nationalism to advance their own agenda by convincing the secular world that Christianity is intolerant of global ideas.  They have turned our principles of love for God and respect for country into something that is shameful, wrong and dangerous all so that they are able to convince the population that the globalist/socialist agenda is the right way forward and that Christian principles have no place in ruling government. 

Western nations are moving into a dangerous and unstable phase.  In the days, weeks and months ahead, believers must be fervent in prayer, zealous for God’s truth and steadfast in faith.  1 Corinthians 16:13 is an appropriate closing exhortation: Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.  Let all that you do be done with love.