After reading Michelle Goldberg's excellent book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, I started thinking about the goals of the Christian nationalist movement.
What do they want? If they could modify the American landscape to suit their desires, what would it look like? What do their current political efforts and the statements of their leaders tell us about their plans for America?
Goals of Christian Nationalists
So, what do Christian nationalists hope to accomplish? You may disagree but the following should give you an idea:
Replace the Constitution with the bible as the ultimate legal authority and basis for all U.S. law.
Criminalize homosexual behavior.
Criminalize abortion and implement severe penalties for persons who perform abortions.
Permit (and even encourage) prayer in the schools.
Replace public welfare with faith-based assistance, the receipt of which may be contingent on conversion to Christianity.
Eliminate judicial independence, making the judiciary directly responsible to the public and/or the other branches of government.
A revisionist history will be developed in which America is imagined as being founded as a Christian nation.
In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military retirees pledging to seize the nation in Christ's name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country's social problems.
With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America.
Review
"An important work of investigative journalism." ― Anna Godbersen, Esquire "Goldberg's book will be recognized as the definitive guide to how a relatively tiny group of intellectuals, politicians, and conservative religionists positioned themselves to take over America. This stuff is no joke." ― Tony Normal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Regardless of where you fall on the moderate-to-progressive political scale, this well-written chronicle of civil liberties under siege by holy rollers will undoubtedly scare the bejesus out of you." ― David Fear, Time Out
Michelle Goldberg, a senior political reporter for Salon.com, has been covering the intersection of politics and ideology for years. Before the 2004 election, and during the ensuing months when many Americans were trying to understand how an administration marked by cronyism, disregard for the national budget, and poorly disguised self-interest had been reinstated, Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism-the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers-is threatening the foundations of democracy.
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No one took Hitler seriously. They saw him as a lunatic ranting and raving! These Christian's are serious in their visions and efforts to Christianize the US. Don't ever make the mistake of underestimating the resolve of these people. They are on a mission from god.