.The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Santa Cruz filmmaker Dan Partland, an Emmy-Award winner and unflinching voice of sanity in insane times, still remembers what book he was reading over the December 2020 holiday break: Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. 

And he still remembers how much the book, recommended to him by his friend actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, was freaking him out. Partland (director) and Reiner (producer) were considering doing a film on the subject, and Partland remembers prepping for a pitch meeting sometime later in the week starting Jan. 6, 2020. Watching the attempted insurrection in Washington DC that day, Partland was even more freaked out.

“I had this experience of watching the insurrection in real time, having just done a deep dive of research into the state of this movement,” he says. “And I think had I not been so sensitized to the content, I would not have seen the myriad signs and symbols, all of the evidence that January 6th was at its core, a Christian nationalist uprising. And it was stunning to me because I was watching television news coverage on multiple channels, and no one was speaking about it. It was there plain as day for anybody to see. Anybody who was at all steeped in the political movement that is Christian nationalism would’ve seen.”

Given the very real possibility that either a Donald Trump victory–or a Trump defeat–in the upcoming November presidential election could unleash his private army of religious-extremist followers to further violence and anti-democratic agitation, Partland’s powerful new film God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, could hardly be more timely. It opens Thursday at Santa Cruz Cinema with a Q & A discussion with Dan Partland moderated by former Good Times staffer Wallace Baine,  at 7 pm.

From the time President Trump had tweeted in late 2020, about the upcoming January 6 fracas, “will be wild,” gears were turning, a network of self-described evangelical Christians was mobilizing to the cause of supporting a man many claimed to believe was a Messiah.

“People didn’t just show up at the Capitol that day,” Partland says. “There had been weeks-long campaigns in churches and in church groups, and email lists driving the faithful to the capitol for Jericho marches on January 5th, and with the plan to stay over for the big demonstration on January 6^th.”

The Christian nationalist flavor of the January 6 attempt at overturning democracy was unmistakable, and yet powerful people in a position to bring the point home to the general public colluded in keeping it quiet. 

Consider that the January 6 Committee investigating what happened never even mentioned the name “Virginia Thomas” in its voluminous report, even though, as the Washington Post reported, “Buried in the explosive news that Virginia Thomas aggressively advocated for Donald Trump’s coup attempt is a choice revelation: The spouse of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas texted with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about Jesus Christ’s otherworldly role in delivering the election to Trump. Meadows texted to Ginni Thomas that the ‘King of Kings’ would ultimately ‘triumph’ in the quest to overturn the election, which Meadows characterized as ‘a fight of good versus evil.’ Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, replied: ‘Thank you!! Needed that!’”

Partland recalls his shock at seeing a video the January 6 committee put together to provide an overview of what happened that day. “I was very familiar with the footage for January 6th by this point,” he says. “And I watched their reel, and there are no Christian images, no references, no bible verses, no ‘Jesus Saves’ signs, no images of Jesus, no images of Mary, no crosses. Completely all of the Christian imagery was omitted in their reel. … There was so much of it there, you would have to very carefully cut around it. And that told me that the January 6th committee was fully aware that this was a Christian nationalist uprising and they wanted to be very careful that they didn’t want to pick that fight.”

Partland’s wish isn’t that people see his film and come away thinking just like he does–he wants people of all viewpoints, and religious faiths, to come take a look, and soak up the viewpoints of those included in the film, including many people of faith.

 “It isn’t really important what I think,” he says. “We have the very best voices from a wide spectrum of vantage points. We have a lot of prominent Christians. And that’s really important because this idea that Christian nationalism is a threat to democracy, that’s why I started on the film. But what I learned along the way is some of the people who are most concerned about this are American Christians because they see it as a real threat to the church. And I think that’s not surprising because at this point, this particular politically-charged American right-wing religiosity is becoming the dominant expression of Christianity in America. And it is so far field of what centuries of Christian teaching has said that Christianity is really about.”

Partland’s film is far from the only important contribution on this difficult but pressing subject, but it remains notable that a local filmmaker has checked in with a high-profile documentary that Hollywood Reporter hailed as a major event, quoting angry-Cajun political pundit (and one time Bill Clinton strategist) James Carville: “This is a bigger threat than al-Qaeda to this country. Let me tell you something, they got the Speaker of the House, they got probably at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more. Don’t kid yourself … this is a fundamental threat to the United States.”

Partland, whose other work includes #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, released in 2020, tries hard in discussing the content of his new film to steer away from undue alarmism. His tone is measured, calm and thoughtful, even when he spells out the deeper threat: “There is an overwhelming opinion among a lot of American Christians that the United States itself has a kind of messianic role in human history,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “That God has chosen the United States to play a certain role that only the United States can play in human history, where it is central to God’s plan to spread Christianity around the globe,” he continues. “If you believe this and you feel like democracy is getting in the way of achieving God’s plan, then you can convince yourself that democracy is what has to go.”

Let that sink in.

“That’s the central scary idea to it,” Partland says. “We are at a point where this idea of the role of the United States in human history as ordained by God is so central that a lot of American Christians really feel–have convinced themselves–that it is their duty as Christians to undermine democracy where they have not been successful in persuading their fellow citizens about the way forward. So they’re going to force it, either by democratic means or if necessary by undemocratic means. And at this particular point in time, they have decided that violence is an acceptable option.”