Reclaim the flag.
Reclaim Christianity.
Republicans have done a good job of claiming ownership of the symbols of traditional American identity. Democratic thought leaders fuss over whether the U.S. has been racist in its treatment of Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Catholics, and Jews. They question whether the U.S. has been imperialist in its foreign policy. The result is that Democrats come across as somehow disloyal and unpatriotic. Republicans have been the flag wavers. America is good and strong and Number One! This has been complicated lately by the GOP attack on our institutions of justice. Yet somehow Republicans both wave the flag and demand we abolish the FBI. They claimed the symbol, if not the institutions.
Something similar has happened with Christianity. The big energy in American Protestantism is in Evangelical churches. They aren't selling piety or humility or anything like the Christianity I learned in my youth. They are selling certitude, strength, and salvation: Christ with a sword. Christ is Number One!
I leave to Christians the job of re-claiming Christianity, but I have worked to reclaim the American flag from association with the political right. During the era of Vietnam War protests I displayed the American flag in my dorm room. We were the patriots. I welcomed seeing American Muslims displaying the American flag after 9-11. They are Americans. Of course they display the flag.
A reader of this blog attended an event I held at my house in support of Joe Yetter, a candidate for Congress challenging Cliff Bentz, the Republican incumbent. Bentz voted to throw out the electoral votes of a state that voted for Biden so they could be replaced with Trump’s “alternative” electors. I consider voting to overthrow elections to be disqualifying for holding a position of public trust. Bonnie Bergstrom attended that gathering. She taught remedial reading to children and then led workshops where she taught fellow teachers to do the same work. She retired and moved to Medford, Oregon.
Guest Post by Bonnie Bergstrom.
About a month ago I attended a fundraiser for Joe Yetter. Joe is running for Congress in Oregon's District 2. I was very impressed with his priorities and what he would try to do for our District if elected. But the thing that stayed with me was his urging us to reclaim the American flag from the right. That the liberals in this country are actually the patriots and therefore the ones who need to be displaying the flag as a symbol of that patriotism.
I would like to propose, in the same vein, those liberals who happen also to be Christian, work to reclaim Christianity from the right. It seems that they are trying to take us closer and closer to being a theocratic state. We can look at Iran and Afghanistan, among others, to see how well that would work out. I recommend a book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet, or watch the Netflix series based on the book. You will learn about the fundamentalist basis of their ties to Putin and the Russian Orthodox church among other things. The merging of religious fundamentalism and fascism is a dangerous trend around the world, and in the U.S.
I resent that the folks like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and those who admire him, have co-opted Christianity as an excuse for their unChristian views. If these people actually read and pondered the actual words of Christ, they would hopefully notice that He says nothing about a Christian "culture" and in fact instructs His followers to go out and preach the gospel (the good news) to every creature. As far as the anti-immigration connection to Christianity, you will actually find hundreds of statements in both the Old and New Testaments that very directly compel us to care for the stranger. The one about the traditional family? That is most blatantly ignorant about what is in the Bible. Good luck trying to find something you could call a traditional family there! I am a non-evangelical lifelong Christian who is very familiar with the contents of the Bible. I often find it helpful to respond to those who think they are supporting their illiberal views with their religion to show me exactly where Jesus said the words or ideas they are parroting. They can't.
For those who wish to get active in the effort to resist fundamentalist Christians' drive toward fascism in this country, there is no better place to start than the campaign called Christians Against Christian Nationalism. Founded in 2019, it has an impressive list of endorsers, including the presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the largest Lutheran synod). The complete list is on the website, https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/. Its statement is there and a way to get one's own congregation to support the campaign.
Thank you for posting, Peter and Bonnie. Well said! We have to keep telling the truth and working to protect the country we love from succumbing to fascism. The Nazis coopted the Lutheran church in Germany, Putin has the Eastern Orthodox church in Russia, and Trumpers have tried to take over American evangelicals; yet there are many more Christians who are fighting back. Here's a piece I wrote about patriotism for the 4th of July:
https://csrenewal.medium.com/celebrate-america-save-our-democracy-712bc401712c