Christian Nationalism: Where Everything Is YOKE

This week’s newsletters have covered the Christian Nationalist concept of being UNEQUALLY YOKED as it relates to MARRIAGE.

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Now that readers have endured a scene from My Favorite Movie of All Time, and I have reminded everyone the VP identifies as “unequally yoked” in marriage, let’s expand the discussion of what Christian Nationalists mean by the term “unequally yoked.”

For readers who don’t have time for the catch-up newsletters, here’s the Biblical mention of the term “unequally yoked:”

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

II Corinthians 6:14 KJV

The term “unequally yoked” is medieval contractual language. It reduces marriage to a contract between two parties/families.

In the 1600s, when King James VI (and King James I of England) commissioned the King James translation of the Bible, marriage was a CONTRACTUAL agreement between two families. Things like love, devotion, affection, and commitment had nothing to do with marital contracts between moneyed families. Parents arranged marriages between their children to benefit their mutual business interests, increase their asset holdings, and expand their power and control.

Lesser humanity often married their daughters to whomever could take them off their household rolls. Or they used their daughters as property to work and enrich the family money chest.

Readers needing a primer on this system can watch my favorite version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, complete with a wet-shirted Colin Firth HERE. Or improve your attention span and vocabulary by reading the book. (I try to re-read it once a year.)

(I know Pride and Prejudice is 19th century, but I wanted an excuse to objectify Colin Firth’s shirt. Also, most of these dumb and stupid – I mean YOKE – rules were still around then.)

To Christian Nationalists, it isn’t weird or backward or horrifying or abominable to apply the medieval legal term “yoke” to a marriage. The joining of two people in holy matrimony was a contractual arrangement that had nothing to do with love, desire, or mutual longing. Marriage was a YOKE to be born by both parties for the greater good of whoever needed money and power from the arrangement.

White Christian Nationalists take this medieval term further than marriage. “Unequally yoked” applies to all business arrangements and contractual agreements.

They interpret II Corinthians 6:14 as I am forbidden by my One True God from entering into ANY contractual or business arrangement with an unbeliever.

This could include:

• Marriages

• Business partnerships

• Formation of companies

• Ownership of property or other assets

• Provision of services

• Hiring employees and contractors

• Elevating certain voices in the public sphere

• Handshake deals and informal business agreements

• Politicians, elected officials, and political appointments

Let’s call their aversion to forming any of the above agreements with non-believers YOKENESS.

YOKENESS:

Etymology: From yoke + ness

Pronunciation: yōk’něs

Noun

(Slang; politics; racism; White Christian Nationalism; white supremacy; ALWAYS derogatory)

The quality or state of using religious extremism to burden all connections (yokes) to others, especially to deny any relationship or contract with those who hold different beliefs.

Because we have A LOT OF FREAKING EXAMPLES OF YOKENESS that Christian Nationalists have fought/are fighting right now, I’m making today’s newsletter short so that we can do a deeper dive tomorrow.

Seriously. We need to pop into their spaces and say, “This sounds like YOKENESS” every time we see them parroting this crap. Tomorrow’s newsletter will give readers tools to call out YOKENESS everywhere.

Please join us.