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Last week, we spent a lot of time translating Christian Nationalist language. I focused on a speech/paper in support of The Heritage Foundation’s Phoenix Declaration because I could mine a rich vein of language that applies across the WCN spectrum. On the surface, this series may appear to be about public education, but it contains the keys to decode much of what WCNs say.
Knowing how to translate this language is even more vital when dealing with a compliant, ring-kissing media.
For example, last week I translated the word FORMATION as INDOCTRINATION. Specifically Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination.
I translated the word MORAL as BIBLICAL. Specifically the Christian Nationalist interpretation of Biblical morality.
Reader Kathy in Florida (the first state to adopt the Phoenix Declaration for its public schools) sent in this sentence from a Florida newspaper:
“Information without moral formation is insufficient.” (GO HERE to read the full piece in the Florida Phoenix.)
Last week’s readers can now read what the Christian Nationalist authors of this statement are really saying:
Information without Biblical indoctrination is insufficient.
Think I’m going too far? Assigning undeserved meaning to words and making unjustifiable leaps?
Let’s read Ryan Anderson’s defense of the Phoenix Declaration entitled “No Neutrality on Religion.”
No Neutrality on Religion. But let me really emphasize the point: There is no neutrality on religion, though in some quarters this is denied or simply not acknowledged. Too many people on the Left (and sadly many on the Right) think that the policies that our Supreme Court imposed on public schools with respect to prayer and religion and God are somehow “neutral.” They are not. Even apart from any particular doctrinal commitments or doctrinal teaching or catechesis—so leaving the substance aside for a moment, simply as a formal matter—treating education as something that can be done without relation to deeper metaphysical questions is not neutral. Treating education as something that can be conducted without invoking divine assistance is not neutral. Habituating students to view their “secular” studies as utterly disconnected from their one-hour a week “Sunday school” instructions is to already put your thumb on the scale for a certain worldview. Because Protestants and Catholics disagreed with each other, and non-Christians disagreed with Christians, all about the precise doctrines of God, we somehow thought that simply ignoring God would therefore be “neutral.” But it is not. It teaches and habituates a certain functional atheism.
I don’t think I need to translate this section. It calls for putting God back in public schools.
But whose God?
We find out a few paragraphs later:
The Founding as the Basis for Reviving Public School Education. And that means we’ll need to think about what a justified vision of education, based on a justified account of human nature and human flourishing, looks like for public institutions in our pluralistic republic. It can’t mean neutrality—that’s impossible. It can’t mean woke—that’s evil. I want to suggest that our Founding itself, and its reference to the laws of nature and Nature’s God, can help provide a starting point. Using natural law thinking and the broad tradition of ethical monotheism, along with a rich celebration of our nation’s heritage, while still providing lots of space for students, parents, and families to fill in the gaps by doing their own fine-tuning on specific doctrines or dogmas. Which is simply to say that a tolerant, capacious mere Judeo-Christian, pro-West, pro-America foundation can provide the basic vision.
Judeo-Christian = Christian Nationalism with a very limited tolerance for Judaism (that will wane with time)
Pro-West = NO EASTERN RELIGIONS. No Islam. No Hindu. No Buddha. No Shinto. No tribal faiths. No worship derived from Africa. No pagans.
Pro-America = See Pro-West above and compare to our current reality of shutting down immigration from many of the countries where these religions are prevalent.
Tomorrow, we will wrap up this deep dive into the Phoenix Declaration’s Christian Nationalist language by looking at the document itself.
But before I close, I reiterate that Christian Nationalist language means the same thing everywhere they deploy it. The real meanings of the words you’re learning apply regardless of topic and can be used to suss out the true intent of any Christian Nationalist statement.
Given how much of this language exists in our discourse, it is IMPERATIVE that more Americans know how to translate Christian Nationalist words and phrases. It is the difference between living under Christo-fascist laws or having the tools to stop them before they become laws in the first place.
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