The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism by Carter Heyward

Author:Carter Heyward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Seventh Sin

Violence

This sin shoots and slices its way through the other sins, giving each its ruthless, bloody shape in history. In truth, to even present violence as a deadly sin in America, one fully (if often apologetically) supported by Christianity, is redundant in the context of everything else we’ve been considering. No one paying attention in America or in American churches could fail to notice that our national culture centers around a pride strengthened over time by the fondness of many white Christian American men (and some women) for wars, guns, conquests, police and military readiness, and scapegoating—whether onto Jews, Muslims, or people of other nations, cultures, or religious traditions; Native Americans; Black people and other racial-ethnic populations; women (especially successful professional women and feminists); LGBTQ people; and all “others” deemed alien, unpatriotic, or dangerous to the white Christian “all-American way.” American patriotism, Christian faith, and our deeply human but morally problematic inclination to scapegoat—blame someone else and punish them—have long gone hand in hand not only in lionizing those who have died in war but moreover in sanitizing the wars themselves. We are taught that American wars are fought “with God on our side,”1 in the words of legendary songwriter and folk singer Bob Dylan.

The fact that America began losing its wars in the last half of the twentieth century no doubt has contributed to our collective sense of malaise and our loss of a reliable identity as a great nation. Today Americans are as angry and bickering among ourselves as we have been since the 1850s’ buildup to the Civil War. In the wake of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the pointless wars in Iraq, American anger is boiling over. Furious white Christian men take their fury out on their Black, brown, female, and queer neighbors as well as on Jews and Muslims, Asians and Haitians. Those American Christians who are angriest believe the Big Lie that their man had the 2020 election stolen from him. A palpable energy for violence has been ignited in our gun-packing culture in which many white Americans seem poised to fight as hundreds did on January 6, 2021, wielding American, Gadsden, and thin-blue-line flags to beat up police and others trying to protect the Capitol and its inhabitants.

There is no greater threat to the health and well-being of Americans today than the epidemic of gun violence that takes the lives of dozens of us every day. Even as I write, a fifteen-year-old boy in Michigan has been charged with killing four of his high school classmates and wounding seven others. His parents have been arrested and charged with manslaughter. They bought him the gun and taught him to shoot it and, for whatever reason, they chose to look the other way when school authorities signaled to them that the boy seemed likely to pose a real danger.

Especially since the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, the attachment of many conservative American Christians to their “Second Amendment rights” has intensified—despite

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