The recent murder of the conservative political activist Charlie Kirk and subsequent events hit the American psyche at a very vulnerable point. The social media posts laid bare the brokenness of our society and further exacerbated the deep divide it suffers from at the intersection of religion and politics. This divide has been simmering for a long time, dating back to the eras of Emancipation and Reconstruction, or even further back to the nation's inception. Every time this internal division raised its ugly head, rather than confronting the issue and resolving it, the country's top leadership sidestepped the problem by focusing the country’s attention on the enemy from without. While Obama's presidency was a triumph of the better angels of our nature coming together, it also served as the last straw that uncorked a Pandora’s Box of America’s original sin of white supremacy. Our divide became more pronounced and sustained.
In the aftermath of the Kirk murder, it pained me to see some of my church friends and former parishioners writing and sharing posts on social media from opposing points of view, each with great conviction, and accusing the opposing side of hypocrisy while taking them down. Even more difficult for me to comprehend was the division present among my own identity group, the Christian immigrants from India. For a change, I stayed on the sidelines, not agreeing or offering any counterarguments. It did not mean I had no thoughts, opinions, or convictions. It simply meant that debating, especially online, is not the most effective way to persuade someone to your line of thinking or to tamp down the fierceness of the storm. However, for many, Charlie Kirk was a masterful debater himself. Silencing of him at the hands of a 22-year-old assassin, and the voices critical of him and the white Christian Nationalist ideology he championed by the Federal Communications Commission, show our society's intolerance to diversity of thoughts and ideas, a far cry from earlier times. I wish our society would recognize the seriousness of the divide and the enmity it breeds. It is not a time for debate or rhetoric, as it leads to violence, mayhem, and annihilation. Let us, as a society, try to understand one another through dialogue.
I mourn the loss of the 1970s and 1980s when America was at its best, somewhat chastised and chasened for its global overreach in Vietnam and later in Iran, and repentant of its ’60s political assassinations and Watergate Scandal at home, and when politics was not a zero-sum game. It was during this time that I had the privilege of coming to the United States from India to study in the deep South and later chose to become a citizen, as part of the less restrictive immigration laws passed under the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s. This was a pivotal moment in our nation's life, a time when foreigners were warmly welcomed, a time when one could envision a pluralistic American population in diverse hues living, working, and contributing to the welfare of all. The pluralism concept, E Pluribus Unum, ‘out of many one,’ adopted as the motto of our nation at its founding, was taking shape in the country. Many college towns had host families who, in addition to helping new students from overseas acclimate to their new surroundings, introduced them to an America that is open, friendly, engaging, innovative, and a pluralistic, democratic society. My host family in the deep South introduced me to a diverse America, where people of all identities were equally valued and cherished. Even after fifty years, I am still in a relationship with the members of my host family in the South.
In contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, today’s America is fearful and suspicious of foreigners, immigrants, and people of different hues than white, despite their contributions and achievements to the nation. Those who are opposed to the pluralistic vision for the country, being nativistic and racist, now blame the non-whites as the sole cause of all the ills of society. Their nativistic ire is even more directed against the native born non-whites. In a scarcity mindset, they believe that non-whites are replacing whites with what is solely entitled to them. What was once considered an aberrant and abhorrent view in the pluralistic society of the 1970s and 1980s is now debated on college campuses and popularized as the norm. The ideology of white nationalism, with its unabashed call to return to the days of white privilege and supremacy, helped elect conservatives to power. As a priest in the Episcopal Church, I find it even more jarring to note that a significant segment of Christians fully endorses this ideology of white nationalism, which holds the view that all other races are subordinate and subservient to the white race.
Unfortunately, lacking critical thinking and awareness, some of my Christian brothers and sisters who came to these shores from India have also wholeheartedly accepted the ideology of White Christian Nationalism. I find it difficult to comprehend their lack of awareness that they were able to immigrate to the United States only because of the policies enacted by socially progressive legislators with a pluralistic vision for the country. Moreover, back in India, these people would oppose a particular political party's ideology of Hindu nationalism. I wonder whether they realize that their support for white Christian nationalism would undermine their own citizenship status in their adopted country.
Once the genie is out, there is no putting it back without either letting it do damage to our everyday lives, civility, and socio-cultural ethic, or by jointly and urgently calling on the better angels of our nature to repair and restore us to a united nation. In times like these, we typically look to the country's top leadership for guidance on the way forward. However, the top leadership, which came to power on the platform of white Christian nationalism, is also busy systematically dismantling all the programs and policies made earlier by the people of pluralistic vision, and is more aggressively promoting the vision of White Christian Nationalism, as someone who is divinely charged to bring it about.
The Humpty Dumpty notion of progress the nation had achieved in the areas of social and economic justice, the environment, racial equality, and goodwill among the community of nations is toppled, and putting it back together again as it was is very unlikely. Whatever gains the progressives made in making the United States a pluralistic society, a commonwealth, though a partisan but majority view, have always been resented by the opposing side, but have not been entirely rejected as they are now. Our nation is incredibly divided and is undergoing terrible trauma. We need to mourn and lament for our country, and call on the better angels of our nature to dig ourselves out of the mire and bog.
I often wonder how people come to hold certain views about themselves and others, and how they develop animosity toward those who think and believe differently from them. We differ from one another in our beliefs, backgrounds, and perspectives, including our religious, racial, and ethnic identities, as well as our gender and political views. While these differences, most of which are inherent to our birth, help form our individual identities, they also inadvertently divide us. Most of us carry multiple identities and introduce ourselves to others in hyphenated terms like I am a South-Asian-Indian-Syrian-Christian-Anglican-Episcopalian-American-male. I could further identify myself in terms of my political and theological views, and so on. All these provisional identities are essential as we negotiate our place in the intersection between ourselves and society. When societies celebrate the diversity of their tribes, everybody thrives. Conversely, when societies begin to devalue certain tribes by giving superiority to others, they often disintegrate into chaos and mayhem.
As we speak, the rise of White Christian nationalism, with its view that the white race is superior to other races, finding a niche under the current administration in the intersection of politics and religion, is clearly what is tearing our society apart. The root of white Christian nationalism can be traced back to the Doctrine of Discovery. https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2016-09/doctrine-discovery, established in 1452 by the full weight of the church and Papal authority, which claims that European civilization and Western Christianity are superior to all other cultures, races, and religions. This bogus and un-Christian claim made by the church gave Western colonial invaders the license to establish dominance over different cultures and races in the world. Only as recently as March 31, 2023, the church repudiated and rescinded the Doctrine of Discovery, dating back to 1452. Though invoking the Christian mandate to respect the dignity of every human being, Pope Francis made this historic statement, the damage done by Western Colonialism over the last five hundred years to the human race, especially the non-white races in the world, is unfathomable. And the legacy and the mindset of colonialism persist today, especially in the United States, in the ideology of White Christian Nationalism. The adherents of White Christian nationalism believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation for its white inhabitants.
When you think of your identity as the most superior and then fuse that identity with that of the nation state you belong to, the world will end up with something like Nazism, Zionism, Hindutva, or White Christian Nationalism. As a country, we are currently facing strong headwinds from White Christian Nationalism against the concept of an integrated nation where all the nation’s diversity of identities, whether religious, social, cultural, political, ethnic, sexual, or gender, are equally honored and valued. White Christian Nationalism is a form of idolatry. It is based on a lie that the color of one’s skin measures the worth of a person. This notion is also far from the Biblical understanding of Christian faith. Paul in Galatians discusses how human beings, despite their differences in provisional identities — whether religious, political, economic, social, or gender — become one in Christ. Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In other words, you can’t be a White Christian Nationalist and a follower of Jesus Christ.
On the Sunday following Charlie Kirk's murder and while the controversy it created was at its peak and the people’s emotions were raw and palpable, my rector at St. Paul’s Church, Walnut Creek, CA, handed out to the congregation a two-page leaflet called The Dignity Index. It calls for respecting the dignity of every human being, as in one of the five promises Episcopalians make at the time of their baptism into the church, “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” It is a tall order to ask when our tribal identities are defined by assigning value to specific characteristics that make us different from others. The Dignity Index leaflet illustrates the levels of attitudes people have towards others who are different from them. At the bottom rung of the ladder of attitudes are those people who think of people whom they consider as their enemies, like, “They’re not even human. It’s our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.” And at the top rung of the ladder, people think of others, as “Each one of us is born with inherent worth, so we treat everyone with dignity - no matter what.” We wouldn’t be able to think of each other as being born with inherent worth as long as we hold on to our identity too rigidly and tightly, and consider all other identities as inferior and wanting.
To see how White Christian Nationalism is not only un-Christian but also anti-Christian, we need to revisit the origins of the Christian Church and genuinely understand the meaning of what Peter and Paul meant when they stated that “God is no respecter of persons” (Romans 2:11ff. and Acts 10:34ff.). The realm of God Jesus envisioned and preached was not a nation-state. It was all-inclusive. The most often cited verse in the Bible, especially by the fundamentalist Christians, who wholeheartedly support the ideology of White Christian Nationalism, is, “God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” The better angels of our nature, informed by actual Christian values and righteousness, not those of Christian Nationalism or white patriarchal supremacy, which do not respect the dignity of every human being, will once again help us rebuild our society in the right way. It will be a victory for the human race and God’s creation, whom God loves so much. We need to get there, however difficult the path may be. We need to get rid of the colonial mindset, which perpetuates the false notion that white European patriarchy is the ideal identity that God foreordained to rule over the human race. We need to ask ourselves: in whose theological imagination do we live? Do we live under the corrupted notion of European Christianity of the fifteenth century, which satisfied their greed for extracting wealth from the unexplored parts of the world? Today’s white Christian nationalism in the United States is the legacy of European colonialism, which is neither Christian nor the ideal that the Realm of God envisions.https://medium.com/@koshymathews/which-christianity-will-we-choose-8700035200b3
