Christianity and Country: Will the Christian Taliban Prevail in '24?

America's Christian nationalists are no less sick and extremist than the 9/11 hijackers

Photo by Aidan Bartos on Unsplash

Over the July 4th weekend in 2001, I was at a Philly’s game in Philadelphia with my family. When the game ended, fans were invited onto the field and permitted to watch the fireworks show. Lying on the cushy artificial turf and staring up at the dark sky, the lights were dimmed; we watched for 20 minutes as burst after burst commemorated our nation’s commitment to freedom.

My father looked over and said to my girlfriend from Russia, “It is stuff like this that makes America so great. Regardless of who you are, that flag unifies us to love this amazing country.” She smiled and agreed. 

“In Russia, it is always so much more official. This is just families and baseball. Wow!” Her child-like enthusiasm stole my heart. At that moment, America was indeed unified despite all of our problems. Many will challenge our nation’s commitment to freedom, and I, too, would be one of the first to argue that we struggle to always be “about freedom.” 

However, there is a small, hidden gem in our society that few recognize as having a significant democratizing power unless they have lived abroad. It is the local community college. In the way some kids struggle in high school, community college gives them a second chance. 

In Europe and Russia, if a student gets bad grades in high school, the system offers him little choice. The student either goes to a vocational school and learns skills that can be used immediately in the workforce or doesn’t go anywhere. There is no chance to go to a college or university. There is, of course, a reason for this, and it comes down to money. The government pays for the students in those other countries, so it protects its investment.

For all of the benefits of this system, there is one major concealed negative: It does not offer choice. It turns a 17-year-old into a cog in the machine even before their brain is fully developed. The United States, for good and bad, as we have seen with the student loan crisis, lets kids explore, fail, and recover all before they are 30. Europeans and Russians are, in many ways, coddled by the system, leaving them less adaptable and even more prone to the ills of “groupthink,” which makes them more susceptible to fascism.

One of the most essential pillars for the establishment of fascism is the existence of a robust and patriarchal state. “Papa” must lurk somewhere in the shadows, framing society with a “father knows best” approach. Citizens of the United States frown on any kind of government assistance. 

Everything I wrote above, unfortunately, can now be regarded as history. 9/11 changed everything. Osama bin Laden’s genius was not that he was able to persuade so many to follow him to their deaths but that he saw just how weak American society was becoming. He saw it losing the power of secularism and becoming too fond of its view of religion — which is an unforgiving Christianity that elevates white people above all others. In many ways, bin Laden was less a terrorist and more an anthropologist. 

Having been allied with the United States during the push-back against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, bin Laden saw firsthand how the United States was blindly loyal to a vision that America was supposed to put an end to evil where it showed its ugly head. He saw a secular fanaticism that made the United States an efficient policeman in a world thriving thanks to bipolarity. America was the religion. The existence of the Soviet Union was good for the United States because it was a clear counter to what the United States was and wasn’t. “You choose” was the approach in Washington, and then America would decide whether it needed to make adjustments. When you realized how un-friendly Moscow could be, America would come to your assistance.

9/11 was an unimaginable blow to the idea of “Fortress America.” Safely set behind a wall called the Atlantic Ocean and secure in our knowledge that neither Canada nor Mexico would ever attack us, Americans lived blissfully ignorant of other countries and cultures all around, as is the case in Europe and many other parts of the world. Drive 10 hours in the U.S., and you are still in the U.S. Drive 10 hours from Austria, and you pass through as many as four or five different countries with entirely different cultures.

On the eve of 9/11, the right-wing in the United States was heating up its rhetoric. Wrapping themselves in Reagan, the fringe elements of the party commenced to push Christian values through the Republican Party. While it was a potentially potent mix, the majority of Republicans didn’t buy into the budding Christian fascism, but they loved the “Reagan angle.” What most Republicans then and now don’t realize is that Reagan was one of the least religious presidents we ever had, even less so than Trump. Trump hadn’t been to church in decades before he became president, and he had no conception of prayer or worship. 

When those planes flew into the towers, the Pentagon, and then the field in Pennsylvania, every American, for a brief moment, struggled to understand how people could so hate us that they would willfully fly planes into buildings. Americans decided it was time to punish anyone and everyone somehow related to that culture. We invaded Afghanistan. 

The Christian right, however, became more obsessed with something else. They wondered, out loud and behind closed doors, how bin Laden got so many people so unthinkingly loyal to his cause that they were willing to commit such acts. The Christian right was envious. They were amazed at the bravery of the 9/11 terrorists. Of course, if you ask a Christian fascist if they consider those 9/11 terrorists brave, they will tell you no. Nonetheless, they found that commitment to a cause, one for which they were ready to give their lives, powerful — and enviable. 

Bin Laden mistakenly thought the United States would collapse once attacked in such a brazen way. His miscalculation led to two decades of sorrow in Afghanistan and Iraq. His mistake destabilized the world. And yet, bin Laden still may be proven right. Without 9/11, the fascist movement known as Christian nationalism would never have been more than just a fringe. Christian nationalists support Trump and his promise of authoritarianism wholeheartedly. They regard January 6th as a great day in American history. 

America may still fall, and when we collectively ask within the sanctity of our homes, fearful of being overheard by strangers, “How did this come about?” Let me remind you: 9/11 and militarism, the death and sorrow, and the effects of 27 years of unbridled right-wing propaganda on Fox News led our nation to this consequence. 

We have a choice. All Americans, the secularists among us, must come out and stop the nonsense by wasting votes on Jill Stein — who celebrates that her candidacy led to Trump! — and other third-party candidates. We need to vote for Joe Biden, and then we will deal with his successor later. We cannot let America proceed down this road to fascism. 

Then, we must go after all the quasi-religious organizations claiming tax-exempt status. Let’s make them pay for their hatred of America.

Amen!