I say quite absolutely yes. To take even a cursory glance at a google search for ‘Christian nationalism’, for example, would show that a pattern of beliefs and values most certainly coalesce to ‘infect’ the American political process in an attempt to make civil law more like biblical law. Here is an easy example: other students may have walked across the quad over the last two days and seen the Project Truth display that was intended to scare people away from considering abortion as a choice, even though law currently is quite clear, Constitutionally: abortion is legal.
But in an effort to sway public opinion to the ends of making abortion not only illegal, but, according to at least three of the members I spoke with, a crime punishable by the American legal system, this group continually accosted students with a pamphlet describing abortion as worse than slavery and akin to ‘womb-lynching.’ What is the penalty for the woman who has an abortion prior to 20 weeks? I pressed….God will decide. See where I am going with this?
Nationalism can be defended as an ideology, as I have shown, but I can agree for the sake of argument that it is a thin ideology in that it does take on characteristics of the ideology it is attached to. I believe my example shows this as well, in that there is a ‘good’ American Nationalism that we can all agree gives us warm fuzzies (national anthem before a game, etc.) but when this is connected at the hip to fundamental evangelical Christianity, it becomes a danger to the legitimacy of our Government. The law is the law; God’s 'law' is for people who believe in him to follow.
To force American law to bend to Dueteronomy and Leviticus, as this group contends it should, would change us from a democracy to a theocracy.
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