Holy War

Why some nationalists are treating foreign policy as a Christian litmus test.

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210
Tucker Carlson speaks at the Turning Point Action conference on July 15, 2023, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

If you believe in “America First,” you shouldn’t need some other reason to oppose U.S. intervention abroad.

Your rationale is right there in the label. We should stop spending taxpayer money on weapons for Israel and Ukraine and start spending it on problems afflicting our own people, like the border crisis. America first!

Pretty simple. So why have some of the right’s most prominent America-First-ers begun adding a religious angle to their isolationist arguments?

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This very much checks out. 2015-present has been Pat Buchanan’s revenge. Paleocons have taken over the party and turned it into a conspiratorial mash of isolationism, confederate nostalgia, and strongman worship. Tucker just saw the writing on the wall and realized there was a disaffected Buchananite faction he could get rich off of. One definition of a paleocon is a socially conservative former Democrat who wants to “conserve” racism and antisemitism.

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  2. Colby

    At the church of Alex Jones, all tithe donations above $1k receive a Trump Bible and a bottle of Trump water.

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  3. Sandra Plate

    “Prominent evangelical Trump allies like Albert Mohler are also unhappy with him.”
    I may be mistaken, but I listen to Albert Mohler’s “The Briefing: a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview” regularly and he is no ally of Trump.

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    1. Packmd4

      Eh, it all depends on what you mean by ally. Would Mohler prefer someone besides Trump? Sure. Hitler probably would have preferred someone more competent than Mussolini but they were still allies working towards the same goal. At best Mohler is anti-anti-Trump. He voted for him in 2020 after vowing he would never vote for Trump in 2016 and I guarantee you after some complaining he will tell people to vote Trump again in 2024 or else they aren't true Christians.

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  4. Dawn of Destruction

    "If Trump pays no electoral penalty for functionally abandoning the pro-life cause, that’ll be a strong clue."

    IDK. If we have—functionally—two pro-abortion candidates, there isn't much scope for registering displeasure on the issue.

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  5. Indisguise

    If you go thru the Bible and tally the things Jesus said. You see reference to adultery. Admonitions to help the poor. Hypoctrites. You don't see much about embryology. He never mentions gays at all that is all in the Old testament.

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    1. Rawkki54

      Romans 1:24-27 is hardly Old Testament.

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  6. Dougrhon

    I think Nick is over-analyzing it. The truth about Tucker Carlson is that he is a grifter who has decided that his ticket to ongoing relevancy is to channel the ghost of Father Coughlin in the 21st century. There is no way he believes any of this crap. Back in the pre Trump times, Carlson was an interesting conservative opinion journalist who would bring lefties onto his show and challenge and debate them. Now he brings on Jew haters to spout lies about Israel without challenging them at all. Having been removed from popular media entirely this is how he stays in the game. It's disgusting.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Jerrymasters7vwp

    George Weigel summarizes the danger---and highlights the existential risks of the West's (well, the US') wobbly response---of the ROC's unholy alliance with Czar Putin in "When Ideology and Blasphemy Meet," just posted (4/10/24) in First Things. Think Europe's response to the author of Mein Kampf.

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  8. TDD

    One thing that I do not think was clear enough from this article, though I realize it could be inferred from portions, is that the anti-abortion stance is not a base tenet of Christianity. This article seems to accept as a given that Christians are historically and invariably "pro-life." There is plenty of information out there that shows the right-wing fundamentalist Christians did not become rabidly "pro-life" until around 1978, and before the mid-1960s even the Catholic Church was not such a one-issue-focused sect of Christianity.

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    1. Sandra Plate

      All bible believing Christians are necessarily pro-life because human beings are made in the image of God, thereby deserving dignity and protection of their lives. “Pro-life” is not just anti-abortion. It is also anti-euthanasia, anti-eugenics, and anti- anything else that would end life. As for abortion, the Bible states that unborn humans are also humans deserving of dignity and protection. It is not a topic in gray areas. And it is not something a true Christian can support for any reason.

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      1. Rawkki54

        " As for abortion, the Bible states that unborn humans are also humans..." Chapter and verse, please.

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      2. Avatar photo
        Kmregan7

        Catholics certainly are- but the Bible is hardly clear about abortion..seems to barely say anything and when it does it’s specific (talking about a specific prophet); or pro-choice (if no more harm come then a miscarriage then it’s a fine but if the woman died, it’s eye for an eye)
        If it were so important, then you’d think it would be blatantly clear but what is more likely is that abortion was treated (like childbearing and menstruation and the rest) as the domain of women and probably prohibited more after quickening….

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        1. Sandra Plate

          Proper exegesis would reject an “argument from silence.”
          Plus, God actually gives very specific instructions for childbearing and menstruation. Check out Leviticus.
          The Bible considers the child in the womb as alive (“quickening” doesn’t cover it) and a child.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Driven away by the bigots

            You want to go back to Gods very specific instructions for childbearing and menstruation? Should we also go back to women being treated like chattel? To slavery? Do you wear clothes that blend more than one kind of fiber? Stop talking out of your ass and get real.

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          2. Avatar photo
            Driven away by the bigots

            Yes, let's take our cues in the 21st century on childbearing and menstruation from (checks notes) a 3,500 year old document by anonymous stone age desert dwellers. Sounds reasonable.

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      3. ARW

        Catholic writer Gary Wills disagrees with you.
        "This new cult of the fetus was not observed in the long history of the bishops’ own church. When my wife and I were in England in the 1960s, her doctor there said she was at severe risk of a miscarriage and consigned her to immobility in bed. I did not know what my Catholic Church prescribed about treatment of a miscarried baby, if that should occur. I went to John Henry Newman’s Oratory fathers, where I had been attending Mass, and asked what I should do in that event. They looked puzzled and said the hospital should handle that."

        https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/opinion/biden-bishops-communion-abortion.html

        The cult of the fetus is relatively recent and has the sole purpose of controlling women (indeed, controlling people generally).

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        1. Sandra Plate

          It’s dishonest to state that people who are fighting for the lives of other humans merely want to control others— unless you mean control them from killing. Generally in a society, people want to control others from killing, stealing, and other behavior that injures others.

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      4. TDD

        I agree all Christians should be pro-life in the generic sense, but one does not have to adhere to the draconian perspectives of the "pro-life" movement of the last 50 years to be a Christian. The Bible does not state anywhere that "unborn humans are also humans deserving of dignity and protection." The Bible (in Matthew 7) does say "[d]o not judge, or you too will be judged" and "[y]ou hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." Jesus literally never talked about pregnancy and certainly not about abortion. In His time, fathers could kill wives and children who committed certain forms of disobedience, so I do not think ending a pregnancy before viability (quickening) was a big issue. Lastly, even if He would not support abortion itself (which is at least probable), He certainly would not support the cruel way the "pro-life" movement in America wants to impose its will over others' dominion and the cruel way it treats people who disagree in general. (FWIW - "anti- anything else that would end life" Does this mean that people who produce or support products or chemicals that kill thousands of people a year cannot be Christians? Your simultaneous overbreadth and oversimplification is impressively myopic.)

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        1. Sandra Plate

          This is not only for TDD, but also Kmregan7 and ARW. I get that it’s difficult to understand a biblical concept when one doesn’t have a background in Christian history and has a modern secular worldview. The Bible in its entirety does speak often of the value of human life and the imperative to sacrifice one’s life for others, rather than sacrifice an unborn child because they’re inconvenient. Additionally, there are multiple verses about what the Bible views as the detestable practice of sacrificing children—which is what abortion is: the sacrifice of one’s unborn child. (Lev 18:21, 20:2-5, Deut 12:31; 18:20, 2Ki 23:10, 2Ki 16:3, Jer 7:31 to name a few)

          And please refrain from saying the fetus isn’t a child until it’s born— when a woman becomes pregnant, she and her partner don’t say “Guess what, Mom and Dad? We have a fetus!!! Let’s start planning a fetus shower!!!” Every honest person knows that, unassaulted, there will be a baby in 9 months. Americans are simply in a cult of self-centered wickedness, where an individual’s desires are the highest priority.

          Lastly: Matthew 7’s “do not judge” is not a prohibition against judging, as that’s a secularized gloss of the verse. It’s part of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus is actually designating how his followers should behave, thus others could actually judge other followers in order to help them and encourage them. In context, it means don’t judge UNRIGHTEOUSLY. Jesus actually commanded: “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” (John 7:24). This shows Jesus wants us to judge, but we must judge righteously. The Law of Moses says: “In righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:16). So it would be great if people stopped with the “don’t judge” nonsense.

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          1. TDD

            I’ll just say - you have no idea how many pregnancies spontaneously abort (the actual term) between conception and 0, 12, or 16 weeks. They are not in any way guaranteed children. Plus, you represented that you were quoting the Bible which I pointed out was not in the Bible. I have been a Bible reading Christian my entire life. I do not need you preaching at me.

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  9. Packmd4

    I'll believe Al Mohler etc. will do anything substantial besides meekly complain when I see it. I fully expect them to be back saying Biden is a mortal threat to Christianity and that Christians have to vote Republican to be faithful by the early fall.

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  10. Jbdeese

    This is great analysis but for me Jon Stewart crystallized the dynamic in the simplest and purest explanation of the baseline tribes that give American Christian Nationalists the impulse to cozy up with those that the previous generations of right wing republican's would find abhorrent. He explained that Rather than the democracy vs communism framework that unified our civic framework at least loosely in past has been superseded by woke vs unwoke. In this new paradigm, these are the two camps/tribes. So the American Christian Nationalists as the high priests of the unwoke camp in our country are happy to cozy up to the high priests of the unwoke abroad. Classical liberalism/democracy/et all are now in the unwoke heretical camp and must be stopped. God help us if the unwoke authoritarians have their way.

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    1. BPhillips

      Doesn't that seem weird though? It seems like the "woke" ideology (by most definitions anyway) is pretty closely aligned with basic Christian teachings? I'm baffled why Christians are upset with "woke" ideology. DeSantis himself described woke as "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them".

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      1. Jbdeese

        I’m with you. It’s a sad mess.

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