The other day, Politico writer Heidi Przybyla appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” to talk about the hysteria de jour, “Christian nationalism.” Donald Trump, she explained, has surrounded himself with an “extremist element of conservative Christians,” who were misrepresenting “so-called natural law” in their attempt to roll back abortion “rights” and other leftist policy preferences. What makes “Christian nationalists” different, she went on, was that they believe “our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority.”
As numerous critics have already pointed out, “Christian nationalism” sounds identical to the case for American liberty offered in the Declaration of Independence. Then again, the idea that man has inalienable, universal rights goes back to ancient Greece, at least. The entire American project is contingent on accepting the notion that the state can’t give or take our God-given freedoms. It is the best kind of “extremism.”
None of this is to say there aren’t Christians out there who engage in an unhealthy conflation of politics and faith or harbor theocratic ideas. It is to say that the definition of “Christian nationalism” offered by the people at Politico and MSNBC comports flawlessly with the mindset that makes the United States possible.
Conservatives often chalk up this kind of ignorance about civics to a declining education system. It’s not an accident. It’s true that Przybyla, a longtime leftist propagandist — and I don’t mean a biased reporter; I mean a propagandist whose reporting is often transparently ludicrous — followed
