Choose Neighborliness Over White Christian Nationalism

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christofascism in America with the promotion of increased militarism and aggressive nationalism. 

A form of tyrannical government, the first lesson from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny— “Do not obey in advance”— is being taught on the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte and Raleigh. Residents are choosing neighborliness over white Christian nationalism, which, ironically, thwarts the movement’s attempt at returning to a “Christian nation.”

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given,” Snyder wrote. “A citizen who adapts to this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Americans are protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to increased deportation raids that treat their neighborhoods like occupied zones. Video recordings of residents engaging in direct action to block ICE agents or protect their neighbors from apprehension have been shared widely on the internet. 

“Deportation raids are not new, but what we see in terms of scale and severity is very new, and it requires a whole new response from us regular people, as citizens, as neighbors,” Jill Garvey, a co-director of States at the Core, said during the first nationwide virtual “ICE WATCH” training session. States at the Core, a pro-democracy group, “is a partner that fills in resource gaps for community leaders and organizers across the country who are facing everything from white nationalist rallies to school board takeovers to political violence.”

These raids are also marked by scapegoating, the disregard of civil liberties, the separation and detention of families, as well as the suppression of dissent. All are markers of fascism.

From chants of “build the wall” to neighbors using their bodies as human shields to protect immigrants from ICE agents, the Trump administration has come a long way in its anti-immigrant rhetoric. Still, experts were right when they said Americans would pay for it. 

In this current hyper-divisive political climate, many are feeling compelled to bear witness against authoritarianism, social hierarchy and nativism, all of which are fueled by anti-intellectualism. Do you read me?

While Friedrich Nietzsche was critical of “love of neighbor” and considered it a sign of weakness, symptomatic of poor self-love and thus, self-hatred even, Jesus taught just the opposite. Consequently, I implore you, Christians racialized as white, to choose neighborliness over white Christian nationalism. Because you are not fighting for your “survival”; instead, you are defending the American empire.

“One only needs to read Paul’s call for submission to earthly authorities in Romans 13:1-7 to know that he was not planning a palace coup to replace Nero with the nearest senator who would make Christianity legal or even promote it to a privileged position within the empire,” N.T. Wright wrote in Jesus and the Powers. He continued, “Paul’s kingdom-charged gospel was embedded in the Jewish tradition of YHWH’s contest against the powers and pantheon in the pagan world. To declare that Jesus is Lord was to imply that Caesar is not.”

Caesar or Jesus, Herod or Jesus, Trump or Jesus, only one can be chosen and called Lord. Only one is trying to avoid “knocking on death’s door.” Only one is going door to door looking for housing during this season of Advent, dependent on the kindness of would-be neighbors.

Christianity started as anti-imperialist and subversive, with the “kingdom of God” used as a critique of “earthly kingdoms.” Today, the religion is intertwined with imperial aims and seeks to be closely associated with state power.

Though formerly understood and practiced as resistance to the empire, evidenced by the persecution, arrest, and martyrdom of Jesus’s followers, Christianity has long relented to the empire. But to move in lockstep with its leaders is not synonymous with following in the footsteps of Jesus, who is a fugitive in the belly of Mary and on the run.

Would you let his family in? Or would you turn them in? This is a testing of your faith and of who you are, really.

“Most of our societal failures are rooted in failing to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Jim Wallis concluded in The False White Gospel. “There can be no ‘others’ and the ‘othering’ of people different from us. Whenever we hear and see such language, we must stand up to it.”

In other words, bear witness. Eddie Glaude described it as “the love battle to save the soul of America” in the foreword to Wallis’s book. 

Glaude was inspired by the words of James Baldwin, who said, “I conceive of God, in fact as a means of liberation and not a means to control others. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is growing up.”

This love is a mark of maturity, “the going towards,” Baldwin said. Good neighbor or political pawn, you know the difference. Make a choice.