Capitalism, Politics, and Christian Nationalism

From America’s Providential History

At the end of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, Bradley Onishi details the American Redoubt movement, a movement that calls upon white Christian nationalists to build enclaves where they can control politics and culture, thus enacting dominion over society. As Onishi told Religion News Service, he knows about “100 church people of high school friends” from his home in Southern California who have left for Redoubt communities in Idaho and other states such as Montana and Wyoming. The goal for many people in this movement, as Onishi puts it, “is to prepare for the next civil war and to rebuild this country in their own image, which is theocratic.” This “rebuilding” has long been a thread in Christian nationalism, which Onishi traces throughout his book. It can be seen, as well, in history textbooks such as America’s Providential History, which I have been looking at over the past few posts.

For Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell, Christians have a “scriptural duty” to engage in politics and to usher in God’s law on earth and in the United States. To support this, they provide an erroneous quote from James Madison:

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon…