Princeton: Christian nationalism was a fundamentalist reaction to liberal human rights and civil rights movements of the 1940s-60s (1 gen 1940 anni – 1 gen 1960 anni)

Descrizione:

From the 1940s, a more liberal and engaged wing of Christianity argued for human rights, opposed wars like Vietnam, and promoted "sympathetic engagement" with the needs of a diverse world". This position was countered by a conservative evangelical movement which already at the time defined the US as a "Christian nation" and promoted a Constitutional amendment putting God and Jesus in the nation’s Constitution.


Christian Nationalism’s threat to a healthy democracy is a popular topic these days, and with good reason. But few of the many excellent books and articles on the topic explain its origins. Christian Nationalism is anything but new, and it did not emerge out of nowhere. The Christian Nationalism popular among white evangelicals today was developed over many decades in response to a Christian Globalism advanced by the more liberal, ecumenical wing of American Protestantism.

Many Methodist, Congregational, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Lutheran leaders of the 1940s and after argued that what Christianity actually demanded from the United States was sympathetic engagement with the needs and interests of the diverse peoples of the entire globe, including adherents of non-Christian faiths.

These ecumenical strivings of the old, “mainline” churches often focused on the United Nations and on human rights organizations—liberal Protestant leaders were more responsible than any other lobbying group for putting human rights on the international political agenda of the post-war years.

These people were also early advocates of the diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China. Most of them opposed the Vietnam War, and some became among the nation’s most adamant critics of imperialism.

Evangelical voices complained loudly that these liberalizing efforts were deeply flawed by their failure to insist on the unique truth of Christianity. In 1949, the National Association of Evangelicals proposed a constitutional amendment putting God and Jesus in the nation’s Constitution. A similar push was made in 1954, but the mainline leaders joined forty-eight Jewish organizations in opposing this effort to make the USA officially Christian. The Christian Nationalism of our own time is the direct descendent of evangelical initiatives of the 1940s and 1950s.

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