Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers
Greg Olear summarizes a conversation he had yesterday with Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Stewart was Olear's guest on his PREVAIL podcast. The two discussed the dangerous (and underestimated, by many Americans and our media) rise of Christian nationalism. Seven main points, discussed in detail in the article linked at the opening of this paragraph:
1/ It’s about power, not culture.
2/ Although there are many leaders, it’s leaderless.
3/ It’s puritanical in its theology.
4/ It wants to eradicate the barrier between church and state.
5/ It wants to eliminate public schools in favor of religious schools.
6/ It views Trump as God’s instrument.
7/ It’s connected to the insurrection.
And, to repeat and underscore, as Stewart says in her Power Worshipprs,For too long now America’s Christian nationalist movement has been misunderstood and underestimated. Most Americans continue to see it as a cultural movement centered on a set of social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, preoccupied with symbolic conflicts over monuments and prayers. But the religious right has become more focused and powerful even as it is arguably less representative. It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.
