“Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.” I clearly remember this call from a pulpit decades ago because it seemed so odd to hear such a thing in church. Rev. D. James Kennedy, a ballroom dancing instructor in the 1950s who became senior pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., grandly announced: “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Bible!”
Down from the rafters, hanging on wires above the pulpit descended a huge Bible seemingly ablaze. Accompanied by old time miracle-riffs on an organ, Kennedy’s congregants stood with hand over heart to recite a chilling pledge of allegiance to The Word: “I pledge allegiance to the Bible….”. I went to Coral Ridge to see for myself how Kennedy preached about “the infamous men of Sodom who have moved into our churches.” I was one of those men. In the 1980s, when visiting my hometown Dallas, I attended what is still considered the largest LGBTQ church in the world, the Cathedral of Hope. I had helped this church raise money for a chapel to be designed by gay architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005). I had not experienced Christian Nationalists warning about the “men of Sodom moving into our churches” until I saw that giant hanging Bible in Fort Lauderdale.
A pledge of allegiance to a flying Bible seems quaint compared to today’s Christian Nationalist movement, now a pillar of the new Trump presidency, which evangelical leaders liken to a “Red Sea moment in America.” One leader recently compared Donald Trump to Moses parting the Red Sea allowing his people safe passage into a new Promised Land. Amanda Tyler, the lead organizer of the Christians Against Christian Nationalism Campaign of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., warns in her new book the U.S. is now at “a high tide of Christian Nationalism.”
Tyler, a devout Baptist from Austin, is direct about the threat Christian Nationalism poses to religious freedom in the U.S. “Christian Nationalism is a political ideology that seeks to fuse American and religious identities….into one set of political beliefs…..It is pernicious and insidious,” she explains in her book, “How to End Christian Nationalism.” Besides being written by a Christian from Texas who asks hard questions, what makes this “how to” book such a good read is Tyler’s rejection of the despondency of the moment. She has no time for that. “We all have a role to play in ending Christian Nationalism,” she explains, by organizing in our communities, churches and with our legislative allies nationwide. This, she emphasizes, includes all who are impacted by Christian nationalism in unequal ways including “people of color, people who are not Christian, LGBTQIA+ people and people who belong to more than one of those identity groups.”
Tyler lays it out: Christian Nationalism exists in a multiverse beyond the old-school haters we once knew and loved. How can one forget “God Hates Fags” Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church? When my friend the conservative Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming said he favored same-sex marriage, Phelps called him a “Senile Old Fag Lover” (2003). Today, Tyler writes, Christian Nationalists have smoothed those rough edges “using Christianity as a prop to achieving power” in their drive toward an authoritarian theocracy. She explains with cool precision how they evolved into a “well-funded and highly organized political” movement that “points not to Jesus of Nazareth but to the nation….as the object of allegiance.”
A Texan to her Baptist core, Tyler draws from her unique experience working at “ground zero of the culture wars,” the Texas Legislature. Following a proposal to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the Texas public school system (which passed in Louisiana) came legislation to replace licensed counselors in the public schools with religious chaplains. Using her “how to” logic she tells the story of Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), a committed Christian and seminarian, who successfully opposed the school chaplain bill. Talarico told Tyler that his years as a public school teacher and his Christian faith meant he couldn’t stay silent “in the face of the Christian Nationalist agenda.” Tyler asks, “What would happen if a broad-based coalition of people of faith joined state Rep. James Talarico in saying we don’t want religious instruction happening in our public schools?” Tyler puts this to readers as a basis for action to be carried from the lawmaking trenches of Austin to Washington itself. Tyler’s how-to book rises beyond anger, despondency and “hopium” into concrete ideas for organizing and action among believers and non-believers alike.
Maybe Amanda Tyler’s campaign will take root in states like Oklahoma where the Superintendent of Schools issued a request for vendors to supply 55,000 Bibles (for $59.99 each) that sounded a lot like Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bible printed in China for $3. The Bibles were to be used for classroom instruction in history, supporters claimed. After a storm of derision, the superintendent’s request was revoked without explanation.
Charles Francis is president of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., and author of “Archive Activism: Memoir of a ‘Uniquely Nasty’ Journey.”
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