Quote of the day—Andrew Whitehead, Landon Schnabel and Samuel Perry

In our newly published and freely available study, the connection between Christian nationalism and gun control attitudes proves stronger than we expected. It turns out that how intensely someone adheres to Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone supports gun control. One’s political party, religiosity, gender, education or age doesn’t matter.

You could be a mainline Protestant Democratic woman or a highly educated politically liberal man — the more you line up with Christian nationalism, the less likely you are to support gun control.

Andrew Whitehead, Landon Schnabel and Samuel Perry
July 25, 2018
Why some Christians don’t believe in gun control: They think God handed down the Second Amendment
[Interesting observation. But probably not that surprising when you know their definition of Christian nationalism:

Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalism believe that America has always been ― and should always be ― distinctively Christian in its national identity, sacred symbols and public policies. What’s more, for adherents to this ideology, America’s historic statements about human liberties (e.g., the First and Second Amendments) are imbued with sacred, literal and absolute meaning.

If I understand this correctly they believe a higher power, the Christian God, created our nation and constitution. And, I would imagine, therefore claim that God’s creation must be in His likeness—i.e. perfection. Any utility argument, or even a principled argument, that does not address the creation of the U.S. Constitution by a perfect being is pointless.—Joe]

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20 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Andrew Whitehead, Landon Schnabel and Samuel Perry

  1. Err, it’s all right there in the Ten Commandments. It’s not terribly difficult to find, and there’s not one jot or one tittle of nationalism in it. They’re making up new terms all the time, such as “Christian Nationalist” to distract us from the basics.

    Also, for the record, Christians aren’t nationalists per se, can’t possibly believe that the U.S. was “created by God” because governments are man-made, and they don’t have “sacred symbols”.

    Also, if laws can’t be taken literally, why do we even have them? There is a large industry which specializes in writing laws and contracts that are to be taken as literally as humanly possible. Try telling your mortgage bank or your landlord that you’ve reinterpreted your mortgage or your lease agreement, seeing it as a living document, and insisting that they not be “literalist”.

    It must be pointed out that “literal interpretation” comes in degrees. On the other hand a person might endeavor to understand as fully as possible what a text means, and that’s something else altogether. For example it is said that the Seventh Day Adventists are crazy because they’re “literalists” and yet the Adventists themselves often warn people against taking certain texts literally.

    Also it is a fact that people who could be called “conservatives” in the political sense, or “libertarians” (simply another term for “American”), have a perception of right and wrong that is closely, and in some cases entirely, in line with the Ten Commandments. So yes; in that sense the U.S. and the “West” in general, is more Judaeo/Christian in its foundations.

    I point out that the Ten Commandments predate the arrival of Jesus by a considerable timespan. Is one who appreciates, or even not fully understanding it but nonetheless having his moral foundations in, the Commandments to be regarded as a “Christian” then? There we get into a more advanced Bible study than most people, even many self-described Jews and Christians, are comfortable pursuing.

    If one believes that the Commandments are truly God’s law (and that document is one of only two or three instances in all of the history of Judaism and Christianity wherein the actual, literal, hand of God did the writing) then yes, one would take it very, very seriously.

    MUCH to the chagrin of Marxists, socialists, Progressives, papists and the other authoritarians worldwide, the Ten Commandments establish an authority above any man-made authority, they establish that that authority is the ONLY true authority, that material work is not to be our only pursuit, that there is to be a link between the generations, it establishes the right to life, the right to one’s property, it protects marriage, and warns against the desire for other people’s property.

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the left hates Judaeo/Christian culture, and especially hates the Ten Commandments. That document stands, clear and firm, against every single thing their authoritarian alliance ever wanted to accomplish.

    • Jesus predates Moses receiving the 10 Commandments. He has always been a part of the triune Godhead and was present at the creation.

      • You are correct of course. That’s why I used the words, “the arrival of Jesus” meaning the physical arrival on Earth as a flesh-and-blood man. The Old Testament speaks often of Jesus, and in great detail. In fact it is, in toto, a testament of His role and function and a prophesy of His arrival.

  2. Jesus said, “He who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one…”

    There is much debate, and vastly different ideas on that that means, but as with all important messages in the Bible, you’ll find the interpretation of it in the Bible. I left the “…” there because Jesus goes on to plain himself, saying that it is to fulfill the prophecy that says, of Him, “He shall be reckoned among the transgressors.”

    A Christian with a gun then isn’t necessarily interested in his own self defense, although the right to life would include the right to self defense. He’s establishing assertion of that right, but mostly he knows he’s going to be persecuted for it, he being now, as it was thousands of years ago, reckoned among the transgressors for the mere act of asserting the right for a lowly human being to live the life God have him.

    Possession of a gun then is a direct affront, a personal insult and challenge, to the authoritarian mind. It CANNOT be ignored. Is it, quite literally, heresy, and they want you dead for the mere public act of possession. They’ll put away any issues with murderers and organized crime, and they’ll come after you instead, reckoning you among the worst of transgressors because of the poignancy, the deafening loudness, of your quiet and humble assertion. You’re telling them straight out that you recognize an authority higher than theirs.

    • Didn’t Jesus also say not to resist an evil person, and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword?

      • “Live by the sword” means “be a swordsman”, a person whose lifestyle or profession is all about using weapons at every opportunity. That makes perfect sense: if using weapons is your way of life, whether honorably (soldier) or not (gangster), a violent end is a likely outcome.
        The words do not refer to those who can or will use a weapon in other ways, such as for self defense. Jesus quite clearly supported self defense.
        If you enjoy discussions like this, you really need to buy Rolf Nelson’s excellent novel “Heretics of St. Possenti”.

        • Yeah but Jesus said it to chastise Peter after cutting off the Roman soldier’s ear in self defense, and told him to put his sword away. That, along with the fact that Jesus told everyone not to resist an evil person in His Sermon on the Mount, would seem to cause the Christian understanding of how we are to conduct ourselves in a self defense situation to be about as clear as mud.

          • Jesus rebuked Peter and told him to put away the sword because Peter effectively stopping what was going on would interfere with the plan.

            The act of self-defense or act of defense of others wasn’t the problem, except at that moment Jesus’s desire was to be arrested for no other reason than the Pharasee’s desire to rid themselves of what they perceived to be a challenge to their authority.

          • Many things appear at first to be contradictory, even in simple mechanics, which is my craft and trade, but upon further reflection, study and experience they begin to become clear.

            Careful not to conflate owning a sword with “living by” the sword. That’s what the authoritarians accuse us of doing. They say that we must have criminal intent if we own guns.

            Jesus never said “evil person” in that context but rather said “resist not evil” and then you have to read the rest. Did He mean “evil person”? I’m not sure, but over and over again He addresses the evil inside a person without addressing the person. Therein I believe we begin to find a way to understand.

          • To add to Tirno’s statement, Jesus never rebuked Roman soldiers for fairly carrying out their duties. Soldiers who were the equivalent of the police then maintained law and order with the threat of the sword.

  3. 40 years in the pews and 10 in the pulpit, working with people across all denominations, and never once heard of any such Christian Nationalist concept. It’s fiction.

    What Christians actually believe is that all liberty derives from God. The Second Amendment is not God’s perfect expression of divine law. The right of self-defense is found throughout the Bible, and the only times it was ever lost was as the direct consequence of idolatry, imposed by evil rulers, and was restored immediately by God in response to repentance.

    You might have a better concept if you ask a very simple corollary: “Do you believe that forbidding the right to free worship is evil?” Freedom of worship and freedom of self-defense are won and lost together throughout scripture, and those who oppose both are uniformly presented as evil.

    The fundamental goodness or evil of any government will be judged by Christians through that very simple lens. There is nothing nationalistic about it.

    • The term, “Christian Nationalists” is supposed to invoke thoughts and associations with the term, “White Nationalists”, and a small jump to “White Supremacists”, and thus Nazis. Only white people who are not true Christians are Christians, you see, and the bible verse has been mistranslated; it is really, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and he will render unto God the things that are God’s” (The Leftists Bible, Matthew 22:21).
      The reason this dispute between Christians and Leftists is so important is that if rights don’t come from God, they aren’t rights at all, only privileges, valid until they are voted away by majority vote (what was the internment of the American Japanese in WW2, upheld by Korematsu except an affirmation of this principle?).

  4. Also, and this is critically important to understanding not only the current situation but all of history in between, the authoritarian confederacy hates America because it was early on established as a sanctuary for Protestants fleeing the death decrees of the papacy.. Oh how they must have hated that!

    They MUST smear Christians, or their authority evaporates.

    So it is that we are dealing with fascistic Rome today as surely and as completely as in the time of Jesus and shorty after, when Christians were being fed to lions in public arena and crucified by the thousands.

    • It was also founded so Protestants could flee the death decrees of other Protestant denominations.

      The first amendment was established to prevent the establishment of a state religion, not prevent any specific religion from being established.

      As a Catholic that got married in England (to a non-religious woman), I have particular views on the subject. In the process of applying for a marriage license, we separately had to apply at our respective local registrar’s office, mine at Bury St Edmunds and hers at Chelmsford. We had to do it on a schedule ahead of the wedding date because our names were to be announced in the local Church of England services over a period of weeks just in case an Anglican had a specific problem with us getting married. Her family also asked some family friends in the same district as the church we wanted to get married in to commit an act of perjury so the registrar in that district could be persuaded to let the wedding happen there. (Is a malum prohibitum crime really a crime if the people charged with enforcing it literally don’t care if you commit it right in front of their faces, and in fact would advise you to do so with a wink and nod?) There’s a reason why the Scottish village right over the border is the same-day elopement capital of the UK.

      The founding fathers quite properly intuited that religion can be a boon, but a state religion is a bane.

      • “It was also founded so Protestants could flee the death decrees of other Protestant denominations.”

        Long story short; those issuing death decrees or any form of rights violations aren’t Christians. QED.

        The point is that authoritarians by any name will persecute libertarians by any name, because the very presence of a libertarian is an existential threat to their counterfeit authority. The other point is that some libertarians by any name are practicing something closer to Christianity, at least in their works and deeds, than many “Christians”.

  5. What a complete load of anti-Christian bigotry piled on top of socialist bigotry against individualism.

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.:”

    Gee, right there, the Founding Fathers wrote it.

    • To be specific, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote it. Neither of this men were what you would call conventional Christians although they were probably closer to that than Franklin was.

  6. “Christian Nationalism.”

    I had a long screed typed out about this stupid concept, but Windy Wilson said better already, and much more succinctly.

    What a stupid time to be alive.

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