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Janet Mefferd

Debunking Janet Mefferd’s Unhinged Rant Against Christian Nationalism

Janet Mefferd was arguably a force for good in the discernment world back in the day, but these days she is rather unhinged. For some odd reason, Christian Post ran her rant against Christian Nationalism which is both laughable and self-contradictory. The anti-Christian Nationalists are not sending their best and it reads like a sloppy press release from Michael O’Fallon.

The article titled New Christian nationalism is, in fact, a ‘woke right is a continuation of the strategy to label Christian Nationalism as woke for opposing previous stages of liberalism. It’s an ironic strategy that is not working in the public square, and this article exemplifies why.

Some of what this crowd promotes is commendable, such as opposition to abortion, attacks on the family and LGBT ideology, and biblical positions that Christians largely support.

But scratch the surface of the Christian morality speeches and the picture grows darker. Although the factual details are too voluminous to list here, this movement as a whole is gaining a well-earned reputation for politically intolerant authoritarianism, white nationalism/Kinism, hostility toward Jewish people and Israel, and advocacy against the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of free speech, a woman’s right to vote — and even religious liberty (except for themselves).

The scary buzzwords are thrown around including Social Justice terms like antisemitism and liberal causes such as women’s suffrage. She then dives into the fruits of Christian Nationalism.

1. Identity Politics. The woke left stresses political activities that focus on the concerns of particular groups divided by identity, such as race or sex. The woke right also does this, basing its propositions for America almost solely on the concerns of white American Christians — particularly males.

Janet Mefferd is too old not to see how identity politics is inescapable. All politics is identity politics, as we can in the days of Julius Caesar or the Delian League. This is what being in a Republic creates. We pretended that we could have politics that appealed only to ideals which was ultimately corrupted by corporatist ambitions, only to lose a sense of identity as to what it means to be an American in the first place. More thinkers on the right are waking people up to this fact whether on team Evangelical Dark Web or Jon Harris in a recent column. Janet Mefferd is attempting to operate above the rules of politics, and it has and will continue to fail.

On the woke right, the “motte” is stating Christian moral concerns. The Christian nationalist “bailey” is the proposal to put heretics to death or install a “Christian Franco” (a popular rallying cry on Christian nationalist social media). It is largely kept out of view. But when it’s put forward and there’s pushback, its leaders beat a hasty retreat to cries for “Christian morality.”

Next, Janet Mefferd accuses Christian Nationalists of doing a Motte and Bailey fallacy. Fallacy or not, it’s an effective rhetorical device, especially when pondering ideas outside of the Overton Window (socially acceptable discourse.) There is a prudential factor at play which Mefferd ignores, as well as a practicality. She conflates idealism with prudential proposals.

3. The oppressor vs. oppressed Model. Here, the woke left may state (and often does) that the oppressor is the white male, while the oppressed are ethnic minorities. For the woke right, the oppressor is the non-Christian woke left vs. the oppressed white American Christians, mainly males. In both cases, the solution is to reverse the oppressor and the oppressed via a payback-motivated power scheme.

I don’t know how you argue that government policies show sinful partiality against White men. Or how does one argue that we are not under oppression? The Founding Fathers declared independence over far fewer grievances. Correctly identifying the group largely responsible for the oppression and the lone bulwark fighting moral insanity in America is not by any means woke.

4. A disdain for God-given freedoms. The woke left has no problem “saving democracy” through Big Tech censorship of conservatives or the suppression of legitimate news stories. But the Christian nationalists of the woke right also have argued against freedoms under their utopian political scheme, including stripping the vote from women and banning atheists from holding public office.

It’s hilarious that Mefferd invokes “God-given freedoms” to advocate for policies our Founding Fathers never instituted. They did not believe in universal suffrage. Nor did the states allow atheists to hold public office. Heer criticisms against Christian Nationalists are better directed against the signors of the Declaration of Independence.

5. Antisemitism. Radicals from the woke left have put their disdain for Jewish people and the nation of Israel on full display recently in the shocking pro-Hamas protests on college campuses. But antisemitism is also increasingly on prominent display from the woke right.

Online, Torba criticizes “the antichrist Jewish nation-state called Israel” and has created a Hitler AI chatbot on Gab, without Christian nationalist repudiation. Dozens of pro-Christian nationalism accounts on the same site regularly make antisemitic remarks. Blake Callens, author of the excellent book (which I endorsed), The Case Against Christian Nationalism, also revealed extensive evidence that a church in Wilson’s CREC denomination is rife with white nationalists.

Andrew Torba created chatbots of various historical figures from all sorts of perspectives. And users created them too. Is she too afraid to quote a saucy Torba post for risk of being too based for her keyboard? Mefferd cites the astroturfed Blake Callens before jumping the subject completely. She concludes the article by quoting Ronald Reagan. Christian Post should be embarrassed that they published this boomercon lunacy.

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One Response

  1. In terms of Christian Nationalism yeah, I’m no fan of any version of Christian Nationalism. I’m in the camp of Christian Anarchism, the compromise position that I can see is micro-nations for every 100K people there is a city state this applies globally. This principle applies to all 200 some countries, we need 2,000 countries at a minimum. Sorry, USA fans and Israel fans and Palestine fans Ukraine fans Russia fans, your countries would be breaking up into many pieces.

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