Christian Nationalism and “Incognegro”

Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s Incognegro focuses on constructions of race and the ways that whites use these constructions in order to maintain power or to even hopefully achieve power. The graphic novel does not detail the intersections between white supremacy and the church, but there are at least two brief moments that cause readers to think about these intersections. Today, I want to focus on these moments, all of which encompass only three small panels within the book. However, these moments drive home the ways that Christian nationalism and the construction of religion serves to maintain control and power.

These moments play into larger discussions I have been having recently, specifically in response to white evangelicals’ and Christian Nationalists’ attacks on Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. Recently, the presidents of the Southern Baptist seminaries recommitted themselves to the Baptist Faith and Message, and by extension, as Jemar Tisby notes, “whiteness.” Tisby argues that Christian Nationalism is “the greatest threat to Christianity in the United States.”

Christian Nationalism is an interwoven network wrapping Christianity tightly in the robes of patriotism, embracing the nation just as much, if not more so, than the Christian faith. Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead define Christian Nationalism as “an ideology that idealizes…