Social justice book reviews
I spend my waking days fighting against the Christian Nationalist movement that plagues the United States. Christian Nationalists weaponize the idea of religious freedom to justify stripping away the rights of Black, queer, disabled, and poor people, as well as women and anyone who is capable of pregnancy. Their attempt to overturn the 2020 election is the clearest indicator that they intend to put an end to our world-famous democracy.
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I held off on buying and reading Preparing for War until I met Bradley Onishi at my organization’s conference, the Summit for Religious Freedom, in April, because I couldn’t imagine that there could be more to say about Christian Nationalism that hadn’t already been said. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—he proved me wrong.
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Christian Nationalism, or the malicious use of Christianity as a weapon to strip people of their liberty, is a poison to American democracy. Alarmingly, more than one in three Americans have never even heard of Christian Nationalism. This frequently-updated list of Christian Nationalism books by a full-time advocate for church-state separation will help you and your community understand the crucial facts surrounding this issue. Only when we all fight this insidious system together can we achieve true religious freedom.
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If I could summarize Andrew Seidel’s new book American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom in one word, I would say it is difficult. At times it is difficult to comprehend due to legal jargon (even after the author purposely trimmed the fat, so to speak) but it is immensely difficult to stomach. This was a book I had to read slowly and take plenty of breaks from. It wasn’t a fun book, and it wasn’t intended to be.
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Since its release in June 2020, Kristin Kobes du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation has been required reading for anyone seeking to gain a full perspective on the Christian Nationalist movement in the United States and how it got this way.
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Let’s be clear: a Christian Nationalist is not a person you want to be. But leave it to Christian Nationalists to embrace Christian Nationalism, and to make it look like the right thing to do.
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In the last month, we have heard countless Republicans and anti-abortion advocates trying to use the recent uptick in vandalism against crisis pregnancy centers as proof that the pro-abortion side is the side of violence. James Risen and Judy Thomas’s 1998 book Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War blows that entire argument out of the water.
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It is a strange position to find myself in, trying to reconcile my values as an atheist and as an intersectional feminist. Allow me to explain.
In the beginning of this month, the French Senate passed a bill that, if made into a law, would enforce a sort of “secular dress code”. This amendment applies very specifically toward the rights of Muslim women, including:
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As someone who is hoping for a brighter and fairer future for my country, I found hope and reassurance in watching the inauguration of our new President and Vice President, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But as someone who is not religious, and who knows all too well the harms of Christian Nationalism, I also found division and exclusionary language.
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I wish that I could rejoice in the fact that today, I write my first ever blog post reviewing a book by a woman, but after reading it, I feel as though there is little to be joyful for. Don’t get me wrong, I truly believe that it would be greatly beneficial for the future of America (and the rest of the world) if everyone read The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, but at the same time I felt that it was deeply disturbing.
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