Navigating the Bizarro World of the Christian Left, Pt. 3
Meanwhile, back on the planet Htrae, Bizarro is EVEN MORE CONCERNED about Christian Nationalism
Introduction: The Bizarro Code of the Christian Left
Previously on Navigating the Bizarro World of the Christian Left, we saw how the Christian left gets everything backwards. Like residents of the planet Htrae (Earth spelled backwards), the left lives by the Bizarro code: “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!”
“Clark has told me about Bizarro. How he speaks in opposites. Makes the Joker seem sane…” -Batman
The Anti-Christian Nationalism Crusade
Last time we saw how evangelical (exvangelical?) sociology and history professors have taken up the cause of anti-Christian nationalism. Most American Christians obviously want their understanding of the faith to inform the nation’s politics and culture. But, in order to make this natural desire seem dangerous when it comes from conservative Christians, our very smart professors have invented an EMPIRICALLY SUPPORTED DEFINITION© specifically crafted to make the conservative Christian’s desire to have Christianity inform our laws and governance seem especially nefarious.
According to them, when the Christian left explicitly argues for the close fusion of their particular expression of Christianity with social and political life in the United States, they are merely being faithful to their religious convictions. Leftists cannot be Christian nationalists by definition. SCIENCE (“empirically supported”) reveals to us that only the religious right can be Christian nationalists. And by “nationalists,” we mean “Nazis.”
Kristin Du Mez and the Resistance
For insight on what to do about these Christian Nazis, I mean, nationalists, we turn to Kristin Du Mez, Professor of History at Calvin University. As we saw last time with Andrew Whitehead, Du Mez, a historian of gender, faith, and politics, is also very concerned about Christian nationalism.
Judging from her postings on the subject, you could say she’s in an absolute panic.
Du Mez attended a local Hands Off protest this weekend because now is the time to SHOW UP. Because “we need all the things right now.” Show up for what? We need all the things for what? The fascist in the White House, of course. “What we’re facing right now isn’t going to be defeated by keyboard warriors.” So, she showed up in solidarity with other leftists in defiance of the Big Fascist.
At least Du Mez is taking the claims of the anti-Christian nationalists seriously. I mean, if literal Nazis have taken over the country, it’s all hands on deck for the RESISTANCE. As an aside, I realize anti-CNs don’t often use the word “Nazis” in their writings and interviews because it’s so obviously inflammatory. However, “Nazi” is accurate shorthand for their constant accusations of fascism, authoritarianism, and comparisons to the Holocaust.
Echoes of History and Moral Panic
“Having studied the Holocaust and historical memory, it’s haunting to be living through a period where cruelty and dehumanization is being normalized in real time.” -Du Mez
“Historians and other scholars of authoritarianism have been attuned to the warning signs for years now. They know what these things mean.” -Du Mez
“What can I do practically as a citizen, apart from vote and call my representative, to help preserve American democracy against Trump’s assault against our institutions and truth itself?” -Pete Wehner expressing what is on “many of our minds,” according to Du Mez.
We get it. We know what you mean. When you say, “Christian nationalists,” you are saying “Nazis.”
Bizarro World is in a full-on panic right now. Having convinced themselves that Donald Trump is our Big Hitler and Christian nationalists are his Brownshirts? SS?, they, of course, are the Resistance. They’re the plucky underdogs banding together to show up, to act, to speak out and counter the lies, and protest the Holocaust-esque dehumanizing acts of the Christian Nazis.
Bizarro World Christians are living out a moral panic of their own making.
Cooking the Books: The Christian Left’s Double Standard
Again, the Bizarro World Christians of the Christian left have cooked the books from the start with the mythology and creative definitions they invented. For the Christian left, their political activism is rooted in Jesus’s command to love our neighbors. It’s seeking the good and prosperity of the city. It’s caring for those on the margins as Jesus did. It’s about faithful presence. It’s working toward biblical justice.
Now this may come as a shock to the Christian left but those Nazis, those Right Wingers, those White Christian Nationalists, the Moral Majority, the conservative Christians, whatever contemptuous phrase you want to call us…we believe we are pursuing those high-minded ends as well. But the anti-CNs use their carefully crafted “empirically supported definitions” to rig their game against us.
Their efforts are about love. Ours are merely about power. Their actions are biblical but ours are merely political. They are faithful. We are idolatrous.
The Historical Villains of Christian Nationalism
According to Du Mez, the Christian Nazis didn’t simply “hijack” religion. No, “this language runs the risk of absolving religious figures.” Christian nationalists like, you know, Bill Bright, were “political from the start.” They invested decades of “deliberate political and religious work” to pave the way for “the current rise of Christian Nationalism and the embrace of Trump.” The Nazis like Bright, Criswell, and Patterson who have gone before us paved the way for the Big Nazi today, Donald Trump.
So, what is the Resistance to do?
“To understand biblical authoritarianism and certainly how to counter it, we have to understand this history, how this system came to be, and how it has been ruthlessly enforced. Now, as then, there are powerful alliances between pastors, political leaders, and wealthy businessmen to ensure that the system endures unchallenged or, at the very least, that those who dare to challenge it will pay a price. … We must also recognize that we are up against enormous odds. This has been true for the past five decades or more, and increasingly so in recent years, recent months, and even recent weeks.” -Du Mez
Bizarro World Logic: Power and Odds Reversed
Remember the Bizarro code: “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!”
When we remember this Bizarro code of the Christian left, we can begin to make sense of their senseless statements. In Bizarro World, authoritarianism is only on the right. In Bizarro World, they are the ones up against enormous odds even though the left has captured every major institution in the nation. From education, media, arts, news, entertainment, medicine, the administrative state, to tech giants, charitable organizations, publishers, and more, the left has long been dominant across all the significantly influential institutions of American society.
Only Christian leftists with a “theater kid” mentality imagining themselves live-action role playing as the underground resistance in 1930’s Germany could convince themselves that they are the ones up against enormous odds. The institutional dominance of the left is what has provided these professors with their newspaper and magazine bylines, their publishing contracts, their professorships, and their media appearances.
Conclusion: A Crisis of Truth in Bizarro World
We’ll close Pt. 3 with one final statement that could only come from Bizarro World.
Honestly, in recent weeks, this utter abandonment of even pretending to care about the truth has been one of the things wearing me down most. I don’t know how to engage in a space that has zero regard for truth. How do we as citizens participate in a democracy when disinformation is so prevalent, and when so many seem so willing to believe the lies and ignore the reality that is right in front of us? When so many are willing to abandon all values to choose their side, every single time? -Du Mez
Same, girl, same. I barely know how to engage the Christian left when they have such little regard for the truth. The disinformation is so prevalent on the left we can only make sense of it by looking at it through Bizarro World lenses.
When the anti-Christian nationalists of the pretend Resistance voted for Kamala Harris and all the other Democrats down the ballot, they were attempting to accumulate POWER in order to enact an agenda they believed represented THEIR VERSION OF CHRISTIANITY. They voted to increase the political power of a party that consistently demonstrates it has no problem with AUTHORITARIANISM to achieve their ends. A party that has long shredded the Constitution and TRAMPLED ON INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES.
The Christian left is a part of a movement that openly engages in cruelty, shameless deceit, censorship, barbarism, injustice, and defiantly casts off the bounds of reality. The policies of the left don’t work, and, in fact, they make life worse for the poor, unhoused, hungry, the stranger, and the most vulnerable. Not only do the anti-Christian nationalists of the Christian left grasp for political power in the name of obedience to Christ, but they also use that power to make things worse for the “least of these” they claim to love.
Like Batman said, Bizarro makes the Joker seem sane.
Tune in next time when we’ll hear Bizarro Christian exclaim, “It time for me to do what me have been doing. And that time is every day.”