Concerns grow over the increasing ties between Christianity and right-wing nationalism

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• William Brangham:

  A growing movement led by right-wing politicians is increasingly challenging a centuries-old value of America's political system, the separation of church and state.

  Laura Barrón-López explores the rise of this religious rhetoric and what it means for November's midterm elections.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  On the ballot this November are a number of high-profile Republican candidates who are embracing Christian nationalist ideals. That's a belief that America was founded by and for white Christians, and that the government should center its policies on those religious beliefs.

  Take a listen to these Republican candidates facing voters next month.

  Kari Lake (R), Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate: You can call us extremists. You can call us domestic terrorists. You know who else was called a lot of names his whole life? Jesus.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA):

  I'm a Christian, and I say it probably. We should be Christian nationalists.

• Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO):

  The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.

  Doug Mastriano (R), Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Candidate: So much for this myth of separation of church and state.

  Dan Cox (R), Maryland Gubernatorial Candidate: When you look at our platform, it's the only platform out there that recognizes the creator, that recognizes that we have rights that supersede government.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL):

  We need people all over the country to be willing to put on that full armor of God, to stand firm against the left's schemes.

  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

• Gov. Ron DeSantis:

  You will be met with flaming arrows, but the shield the faith will stop them.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor at Calvin University who studies the role of Christian nationalism in history and in today's Republican Party. And she joins me now.

  Kristin, thanks for joining us.

  The comments that we just heard, how do they espouse Christian nationalist ideals?

  Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Author, "Jesus and John Wayne": Really, these ideas that America is a special nation, it's God's nation, and thus true patriots, real Americans are those who would uphold Christian values, and not just any Christian values, a particularly kind of conservative political understanding of what it is to be a Christian and what it is to be a Christian nation.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Where is the origin of what we're seeing as this modern-day Christian nationalist movement? Where did it come from?

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

  You can find the idea that America is a Christian nation stretching all the way back through American history in different guises.

  You could go back to the American Puritans, right — or to the Puritans in the 17th century. You could — you could hear this kind of rhetoric throughout manifest destiny and so forth.

  But what we're looking at today really is a modern manifestation that is, in the postwar era, really linked with the rise of the Christian right, the idea that Americans have to preserve and actually restore a lost Christian heritage, the idea that something had gone wrong, particularly in the 1970s, that secular impulses, that feminism, or secular humanism, even in some cases the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement were seen as disruptive forces.

  And so the idea was that Christians, conservative Christians, needed to unite and needed to restore Christian America, and to do that through voting, through policy and asserting their influence over the government.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  And have we seen a greater rise of this sentiment since former President Donald Trump ran for office? Where do you see it in his rhetoric?

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

  I think we see it certainly surfacing more.

  President Trump was very clear that he wanted to privilege conservative white Christians. He wanted to protect Christianity and a particular type of Christianity. And he very much used this rhetoric of us vs. them. He was not the president of all Americans. He was the president of his base, and he was going to promote them and privilege their ideas.

  And so, with that rhetoric, I think it became normalized and we started to hear that more in Christian spaces as well, more of a boldness to say that we have a right here.

  And, also, this goes hand in hand with the idea of embattlement, the idea of threat. And that was something that President Trump really excelled at, giving the sense that his followers, his base, that they were the ones who are under attack, and, therefore, they needed to be militant, they needed to strike out first, a kind of preemptive strike.

  And you see that among many Christian nationalists as well. Even though they are in the majority and even though they have a lot of cultural and political power, they will continue to insist that they are actually the ones who are embattled and, therefore, what choice do they have but to be ruthless and to seize power?

• Laura Barrón-López:

  We saw a lot of Christian imagery in the crowd on January 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol, and faith being used to justify violence there.

  How do you see the connection between the rise of these ideals and the violence that we witnessed on that day?

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

  First, it's important to point out that not all Christians who want to see their values enacted through our government are Christian nationalists or are promoting violence, right?

  Many, like all Americans, would like to see their values kind of find expression in the country in which they live. But in more extreme versions of Christian nationalism, we do see a correlation between the idea that America has a special destiny, and it's a destiny that's under threat, and it must be protected.

  We see connections between that and a willingness to use violence, to use violence to restore kind of the rightful order, to restore the rightful dominion over this country, so that it can follow God's path and secure God's blessings.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  And a new national poll gets at some of this, what we're seeing.

  It says that 61 percent of Republicans favor declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, but, also, a majority of Republicans understand that doing so would be unconstitutional. What do you make of the disconnect there?

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

  It's really important that we focus right now on the disconnect between Christian nationalism, particularly in its more extreme expressions, and our constitutional democracy, our commitment to democratic norms and institutions and to the constitutional rights of others.

  And so those statistics are alarming, that the majority of Republicans want America declared a Christian nation, even though they recognize that that's unconstitutional. And what we see really in the last decade or so is the erosion of a commitment to democracy, with demographic changes, where we're seeing the end of white Christian America.

  We see that, for many Christian nationalists, democratic means won't necessarily achieve their ends. And so we're seeing voter suppression, denial of voter suppression, that that's even happening, and, again, this erosion to the commitment of democracy, and it's really quite alarming.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Kristin Kobes Du Mez, thank you for joining us.

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

  Thank you.