“White Christian nationalism” (WCN) has become quite the bogeyman in contemporary religion coverage, even though few reporters seem to have spent much time actually engaging with people in the flocks led by said nationalists.
Instead, journalists read their social media, watch their YouTube videos and talk with sources drawn from a rather predictable list of activists and experts who oppose the bogeyman.
But that does not a complete story make. Readers end up with, at best, half of a debate.
One outlet that’s building or staking its reputation on WCN continuing to be a thing is Religion News Service, which has been rolling out stories on the topic since last September, thanks to a grant from the Pulitzer Center. The latest story in its “White Christian Nationalism since the Jan. 6 Attack” series ran Jan. 26 here. It began:
When supporters of former President Donald Trump rallied near the White House on Jan. 6 of last year, a boisterous pocket of young men waving “America First” flags broke into a chant: “Christ is King!” It was one of the first indications that Christian nationalism would be a theme of the Capitol attack later that day, where insurrectionists prayed and waved banners that read “Proud American Christian.”
It also announced the presence of followers of Nick Fuentes, a 23-year-old white nationalist and former YouTube personality who was subpoenaed this month by the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the Capitol attack. …
“Christ is King” is not controversial in itself: The phrase is rooted in Christian Scripture and tradition. But Fuentes’ supporters have given it a different connotation. They have chanted it at anti-vaccine protests and the anti-abortion March for Life, some of them holding crucifixes aloft. It was heard in March, at an America First conference, where Fuentes delivered a speech saying America will cease to be America “if it loses its white demographic core and if it loses its faith in Jesus Christ.” Fuentes also declared the country “a Christian nation.”
There are a bunch of academics and other sources quoted here but what appears to be the central thesis –- that WCN is bleeding into the mainstream institutions and life of conservative Christianity –- was not proven by a long shot.