Christian Nationalists Have A Terrible Plan for Your Life
Deja vu all over again in Uganda, part three
This is the third and final part of a series relating Christian nationalism to the legislative program in Uganda against sexual minorities. In the first two articles (available here and here), I describe the work of Sharon Slater in Uganda. Slater encourages African leaders to support the heterosexual family by attacking all other families. She says she doesn’t want LGBTQ people to suffer violence, but she doesn’t discourage criminalization of consenting relationships either. To “pro-family” advocates like Slater, violence isn’t violence when the state administers it.
Slater appeals to natural law in the sense that she advocates for the natural family and against anything “unnatural.’ Christian nation Uganda resonates with such thinking and advocates for the anti-gay bill on religious grounds. As noted in the second part of my series, Christian nationalism leads to winners and losers. If you are a member of the winning groups, you are privileged in society; if not, then you suffer various losses. In Uganda, LGBTQ people stand to suffer loss of everything. Even though they aren’t bothering anyone, they violate the majority idea of the common good and so they lose.
In some nations where Islamic nationalism is practiced, the losers are both sexual and religious minorities. In other words, there are winners and losers, and the dominant group will have some criteria to decide who wins and who loses.
In 2011, I asked Sharon Slater if she supported the right of Islamic nations to criminalize religions other than Islam in the same manner as she approves of Christian nations who penalize consenting same-sex relations. Here is what I wrote then and how she answered:
On this point, Slater made a distinction between religion and sexuality. “It may seem contradictory but it’s not.” To support this position, Slater quoted from the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 29 (2):
“In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society.”
For Slater, regulating private sexual conduct is permitted because, in her mind, it meets the just requirements of morality, public order, and general welfare. Even though, in Uganda, the law will now hold LGBTQ people to different standards than straights, Slater sees their law as falling within the U.N. framework. In her mind, gays don't contribute to good public order.
To me, it still seems contradictory. But more about that in a moment.
First, let me consider how some Christian nationalists might agree with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. For instance, let’s briefly examine Stephen Wolfe’s proposal for a Christian state in his recent book, The Case for Christian Nationalism.
In it, Wolfe states that non-Christians, heretics, and Christian dissenters may come under civil penalty, including prison, banishment, or death. He doesn’t spend much time on sexual minorities, but I can only imagine what he would do with them. In any case, the point is that a Christian state as envisioned by a leading voice in Christian nationalism would take civil action against people who do not believe in line with the state version of Christianity, whatever that would be at the time.
Now let’s examine the rationale for the punishment. Note that it is not to make people believe. Wolfe doesn’t believe a person can be forced to believe “properly.” Heretics, non-Christians, and dissenting Christians should be punished because they are threats to good public order.
Sharon Slater might say she wouldn’t fear a Christian nationalism in the U.S. because she thinks of herself as a Christian. However, Reformed Christians do not think of Mormons as Christians, and she would either be considered a non-Christian or a heretic. Either way, she would not be winner in a Christian nationalist regime. Here is what Wolfe says about non-Christians in Christian nationalist state:
Only Christians can be expected to take an interest in conserving the explicit Christian character and ends of these institutions and of society. Furthermore, non-Christians may exercise natural rights insofar that their exercise coheres with the common good, and the common good includes the Christian religion. (p. 392)
Non-Christians would not have the same rights as Christians in a Christian nationalist state, religiously speaking, because the common good (hear echoes of the U.N. Declaration?) includes Christianity only.
Given that Mormons claim to restore Christianity, they might also be considered heretics by a Reformed Christian state. This would be worse. Wolfe writes:
The Reformed position on civil action against heretics is not akin to crusading, or to some divinely commanded holy war, or to an inquisition. It is based on practical considerations of public harm caused by public error and on the limitations of civil action for spiritual reformation. Only the sword of the Spirit reforms hearts. The civil sword can act against heretics but not as an instrument of vertical divine justice upon the enemies of God; rather it acts as a means to safeguard the souls of those under the magistrate’s care. (p. 390).
In other words, the state doesn’t act to punish the bad guys or to change their minds, but instead to protect the Christian souls — the Christian public good.
According to Wolfe, the Christian state may exclude a host of characters in order to keep good public order.
Christian nationalism will exclude at least the following from acceptable opinion and action: (1) political atheism, (2) subversion of public Christianity, (3) opposition to Christian morality, (4) heretical teaching, and (5) the political and social influence of non-Christian religion and its adherents. (pp. 384-385)
Wolfe spends many pages documenting approval of the Reformers for harsh measures in dealing with all of these offenders, including prison, banishment, or capital punishment (especially for “arch-heretics”). He says those measures would be open to a modern Christian state as well. In short, Ms. Slater wants to make a distinction between religion and sexuality, but she would be outvoted in a Christian nationalist state.
In 2009, many evangelicals understood this. I rarely had to make the case that we needed to protect hated minorities, because we too could become hated minorities. Many evangelicals didn’t want the coercive power of the state coming down hard on a minority group, because evangelicals didn’t like the idea of the state coming down on them. You know, the Golden Rule.
Now, many evangelicals want to be the state coming down hard on everybody they don’t like. Instead of preserving individual freedom, evangelicals want to legislate their version of Christianity. Josh Abbotoy, with the group American Reformer, recently tweeted that America needs a “Protestant Franco.”
I could go on about that, talk about national conservatism and more, but I hope I have made the point I started out to make: the public good is in the eyes of many beholders. We do not need a Protestant — or any other kind — Franco. Pursuing individual freedom is messy and will allow some people to do things I don’t like or agree with, but erring on the side of freedom is the way of the Constitution and the founders. To disagree with Sharon Slater, it is contradictory to single out one area of conscience for protection and arbitrarily condemn another area just because you don't like it. There is no national religion, but there is a national conversation about what our laws should be and we shouldn’t be excluded based on who we are, what we believe about God, or who we love.
All quotes from Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism. Canon Press taken from the 2023 Kindle Edition.
Great article!
Slater and Wolfe both sound like clowns to me. It is possible that this Slater person would not be afraid of Wolfe's Christian tyranny not because she underestimates interdenominational animus, but because there are a little less than 400,000 adherents of his religious brand of choice (PCA) and 6.7 million Mormons in the US at last count.
It gives me great satisfaction that content like this gets barely any amplification or engagement compared to organizations like the Daily Wire which report and comment on real news which affects people rather than wasting bandwidth worrying about the bogeyman of religious nationalism in the U.S. which has something called the First Amendment and virtually no “reformed Christians” trying to take over the government.
But keep writing; I love reading academic bloggers.
Thanks, fixed.