{"id":15295,"date":"2025-02-25T23:06:57","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T12:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=15295"},"modified":"2025-02-25T23:06:57","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T12:06:57","slug":"as-christian-nationalisms-new-figurehead-trump-inspires-australias-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/as-christian-nationalisms-new-figurehead-trump-inspires-australias-extremes\/","title":{"rendered":"As Christian nationalism’s new figurehead, Trump inspires Australia’s extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first days of Trump\u2019s second presidency have passed with a flurry of tariff standoffs and literal turf wars<\/a> with Greenland, Canada, Panama, the Gulf of Mexico and now Gaza<\/a>. We\u2019ve seen restrictions on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s LGBTQA+ specific resourcing<\/a>, and a revisionist rewriting of Stonewall\u2019s<\/a> history.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, gender identity has landed itself front and centre in the culture wars. Now, we have an announcement that he is creating a taskforce to eradicate <\/span>anti-Christian bias<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any one of these topics might elicit a visceral response from a sociopolitical moderate or progressive, but reframing ethnic cleansing as a real-estate deal perhaps takes the cake. Who knows how Trump will top that!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching Trump capture the alt-right vote and morph himself from a felon, a rapist, and a dodgy businessman into an alt-right \u2018anointed one\u2019 spearheading what seems like a theocratic-come-dystopian nightmare is perplexing. But this is Christian nationalism, and it\u2019s here in Australia, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Christian nationalism? It\u2019s a religious, cultural and political movement that erroneously claims that a nation\u2019s \u2018Christian origins\u2019 are core to its integrity, success, cohesion and function as a nation. It brings together toxic patriotism, opposition to LGBTQA+ rights and legitimacy, idealising traditional marriage and gender roles, and grandstands on what it calls ‘Judeo-Christian values’. Too often, it includes white supremacist adherents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To look around Christian nationalism in America, it is common to see overlaps with the New Apostolic Reformation, the Seven Mountain Mandate (dominionism), and highly politicised churches as well as \u2018tradwife\u2019 movements, and groups promoting anti-vax and anti-authority conspiracy theories.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Australia and New Zealand, a trained eye is also likely to see Christian nationalist language in the <\/span>freedom movement<\/span><\/a>, which commonly rallies behind a battle cry of freedom of speech and religion. However, this movement often sprinkles Islamophobia and homophobia\/transphobia in there, making it clear these self-identified Braveheart types are about \u201cfreedom for me but not for thee\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In America, Christian nationalism is inherently built on American exceptionalism, but what American writers and those looking in from the outside of these movements fail to recognise is this: Australian evangelical churches have been baking in a gospel that includes their own version of that for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prophecies that <\/span>Australia is “the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit<\/span><\/a>“ and will play a central role in the last great move of the Spirit before the return of Christ have been <\/span>spoken and sung<\/span><\/a> for years. Iconic Hillsong alumnus Geoff Bullock penned an anthem, <\/span>Great Southland of the Holy Spirit<\/em>,<\/span><\/a> that effectively captured the early sentiments of a crowd that was eager to establish their own significance in the spiritual and cultural landscape of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

This may not have been a Christian nationalist anthem in the beginning. But it is now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A short wade through social media will reveal many players in the Australian Christian nationalist movement celebrating aspects of Trump\u2019s first hundred days, and his cutting back on immigration, erasing of trans athletes and trans passports, and establishment of a taskforce to eradicate anti-Christian bias, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching this happen from across the sea leaves many of us wondering how this is happening in the \u201cland of the free\u201d. But from those exiting or closely watching the Christian nationalist movement, it\u2019s a victory that\u2019s decades in the making.<\/span><\/p>\n

More shocking is this: rage-bait politicians like <\/span>Ralph Babet<\/span><\/a> and now <\/span>Peter Dutton<\/span><\/a> seem to be looking to America less as inspiration and more as an opportunity to copy and paste policy as if what is done there can ever be \u201cthe answer\u201d here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That alone is a babushka doll of problems. It emboldens the far and extreme right, as we see plainly on the social media platform formerly called Twitter, where MAGA trolls and white supremacists now come out shamelessly. It also leverages disadvantage and lack of education into social fractures that divide the left and right, and ironically, divide the right from itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

How so? Here\u2019s an example. Just weeks ago, I tweeted something about a man on a train in a MAGA hat and his treatment of a girl in a burka. I was advised by a Twitter gent that I should take her head covering and \u201cun-alive\u201d myself with it, such is the aggression of Trump\u2019s followers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The irony is that a MAGA voter who erroneously thinks his politics belong in Australia is the same as the Muslim beside him in one way: they\u2019re both likely conservative voters with religious freedom in their top political interests. Yet, the cult of MAGA sets them against each other. But, as a white male, he is both the apex predator in this scenario <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>the one most likely to identify as persecuted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutton appears to be looking to exploit the same multi-layered social divides. If you can embolden those who feel progress has robbed them of privilege, you can create a culture war that mobilises the political fringe, no matter the cost to social cohesion and progress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What, then, can we expect if Dutton gains power? Individual seat-by-seat swings might not be enough to give Dutton anything more than a minority government. But it is very likely to put settled issues back on the table, and that is something with a very real social and economic cost. For example, Australia\u2019s gun laws have long been settled. Yet, just recently, Bob Katter ranted about the need to turn schools into armouries and to train teenage boys how to wield a gun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutton\u2019s own commitment to the issues that Trump and the Christian nationalists have put back on the table may only be skin deep, though. As long as it captures a niche market that breaks the Labor lucky streak, he\u2019ll follow suit. <\/span><\/p>\n

L<\/span>ike \u201cScotty from Marketing\u201d Morrison, Dutton is about the numbers. The right-wing factions vying for influence in his party, however, expect him to deliver.<\/span><\/p>\n

At present, Dutton seems to be trying to capitalise on culture wars to ride into power. This will likely embolden people who feel disenfranchised. Where will we see this? Social media and in the vastly increasing amount of extremist language used on Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we are also seeing it in places like Elwood beach, where members of the <\/span>Nation Socialist Network, a neo-Nazi cell<\/span><\/a>, have been increasingly public with their workouts and their propaganda.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Across the ditch in New Zealand last weekend, a fundamentalist church sent its Man Up recruits to protest a <\/span>LGBTQA+ Pride Parade<\/span><\/a>. The church in question was Destiny Church, which has attracted significant criticism for <\/span>cult-like behavior<\/span><\/a>. But the first thing obvious to me, when I glanced across the web presence, was Christian nationalist undertones. The church is highly political, <\/span>vocally anti-LGBTQA+,<\/span><\/a> calls for New Zealand to return to its Christian roots, and doesn\u2019t seem to see the problem in appropriating the otherwise beautiful cultural display, the haka, to protest gay rights. Does Destiny Church and its Man Up program have networks in Australia? <\/span>Why, yes. Yes, it does.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Christian nationalism intersects with far and extreme right hate groups in obvious ways but has also infiltrated \u2018mainstream\u2019 faith to the point where God is a political conservative and Trump is his prophet and enforcer. This means that the religious and political right are likely to view America as the pattern \u2013 the blueprint for their return to privilege; er, power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Australia and New Zealand, a trained eye is also likely to see Christian nationalist language in the\u00a0freedom movement<\/a>, which commonly rallies behind a battle cry of \u201cfreedom\u201d of speech and religion.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same system of thinking has been adapted in other Western nations to create a quasi-contagion spread through the medium of social media, right-wing news (often poorly fact-checked), and in-person networks of churches, pastors, prophets and apostles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>present in this movement? Critical thinking. In its place, misinformation, disinformation, and cognitive dissonance thrive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christian nationalism sends its white missionaries to BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of colour) communities to \u2018save\u2019 them with the gospel of Christ, but rejects these same communities when the help they seek comes in the form of immigration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It rallies behind battle cries of \u2018freedom\u2019 but rejects the rights of others to also live free. It pickets abortion clinics and cheers the overturning of <\/span>Roe v Wade<\/span><\/i> because it claims to be \u2018pro-life\u2019, while ignoring the needs of the mother (which may be life-saving or life-ending), ignoring the needs of vulnerable women and children <\/span>after <\/span><\/i>the child is born, and rolling back gun control that makes school shootings such a regular occurrence in American schools.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This way of thinking is, of course, linked to the New Apostolic Reformation and dominionist theology that holds Christians up as \u2018destined\u2019 or \u2018mandated\u2019 to take dominion in the seven domains of society. Politics and economics are two such mountains, which may go some way to explaining how democracy and oligarchy are in bed with each other \u2013 both in Trump and Musk\u2019s America and in <\/span>Dutton and Rinehart\u2019s dream<\/span><\/a> for Australia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How could these two possibly link when Jesus fed the hungry (welfare), healed the sick (Medicare) and turned over the tables in the temple (anti-capitalism)?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe the answer lies in the decades of doctrinal scaffolding built in churches. This is incredibly effective when it comes to altering a person\u2019s belief system and their sense of persecution or need for action. Think about it this way:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n