Civic-Citizens Against Christian Nationalism

 

We urge every American to oppose Christian nationalism. As civic-citizens[1] who are privately Christian, our faith teaches us that everyone is created in the-God’s[2] image. Our adulthood commands us to appreciate[3] the living species and this world[4]. As Americans, we value our system of domestic-self-discipline[5] and the good that can be accomplished in our constitutional republic[6]. We civic-citizens[7] are concerned about a persistent threat to both U.S. religious communities and to our republic — the threat is Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge factional-Christian[8] and American identities, distorting both the Christian faiths and America’s constitutional republic. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be a national-Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy, racial subjugation, and religious submission. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite the entity We the People of the United States to join us in opposing this threat to our faiths[9] and  “to ourselves and our Posterity”, quoting the preamble.

As civic-citizens, believers are bound to the-God-mystery, not by citizenship, but by faith, pursued in personal-privacy. Civic-citizens assert that:

• People of all faiths and none have the right, self-necessity, and justice to engage constructively in the public square.
• Patriotism does not require fellow-citizens to minimize their religious convictions provided they observe and aid civic-integrity and statutory-justice[10].
• One’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, can and may be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community. On the other hand, spiritual inspiration to civic-integrity is appreciated by non-believing fellow-citizens.
• Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over non-religion.
• Religious instruction is best left to adult-personal-privacy[11].
• America’s historic commitment to religious pluralism enables faith communities to live in civic-harmony with one another without sacrificing private hopes and comforts.
• Conflating religious doctrine with political authority is tyranny. It oppresses the fellow-citizen’s opportunity to develop humble-integrity. It lessens the churches’ opportunities to discover the-ineluctable-truth[12] and the state’s necessity to develop statutory-justice.
• Civic-citizens, that faction of We the People of the United States that is defined by the preamble, can and may stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of spirituality—against religious communities at home and abroad.

Whether citizens worship at a church, mosque, synagogue, temple, or simply reserve sufficient humility to the-God, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As civic-citizens and Christians, we can and may speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of Jesus’ message[13] and a threat to American democracy.

We propose and request your aid to amend the First Amendment[14] to the United States Constitution so as to encourage and facilitate civic humble-integrity rather than Congressional-religious pride. With this reform, the entity We the People of the United States can and may separate church (a pursuit for adult-personal-privacy), from state (the necessary domestic and alien monopoly on coercion and force for justice). Thereby, Posterity, including legal immigrants will be empowered to hold elected and appointed officials in local, state, and national government to be of We the People of the United States rather than aliens to U.S. intentions.

 11/30/2022, prb

Copyright©2022 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included.

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[1] “Civic-citizens” refers to members of We the People of the United States who observe personal interpretations of the domestic disciplines proffered by the 1787 U.S. Constitution. Civic-citizen affirms the separation of church and state expressed by both the 1776 declaration of war for independence from England as well as the Sumerian political philosophy expressed in Hebrew scholarship in Genesis 1:26-28. It asserts that female& male-human-being can and may independently provide order& prosperity to the living species and to the world. I reverse the gender-order based on Jesus’ advice in Matthew 19:3-8: the man unites to the woman, and I cannot explain the meaning.

[2] Accepting to ourselves that, while the human being has the opportunity to develop the individual power, the individual energy, and the individual authority (HIPEA) to choose humble-integrity rather than egocentric arrogance, we propose “the-God” for civic discussion. We intend to include the various theisms and non-theisms fellow-citizens personally-pursue, in order to perfect their unique person according to the responsible-happiness they perceive rather than to someone else’s vision for them. “The-God” expresses humility in the hopes and comforts an individual’s personal-God provides them in privacy. Human being (verb) assures each person’s death.

[3] I choose “appreciate” rather than the traditional “love” out of humility toward the other party, including the-God. “Love” is often unwanted and justifiably so. Appreciate is more civic, provided “civic” refers to reliable human-connections more than to municipal rules.

[4] My 2021 interpretation of Genesis 1:26-28, a 5,500 year-old Sumerian political philosophy interpreted 2,500 years later by Hebrew scholars and neglected another 1,000 years later by Christian writers.

[5]  Little recognized and less accepted, the 1787 U.S. Constitution, especially in its preamble, proffers 5 public self-disciplines “in order to” encourage& facilitate responsible-human-independence (RHI) “to ourselves and our Posterity”. Religion was and is excluded from the disciplines, in order to accept spiritual pursuits as adult-personal-privacy. “Liberty” is a French fetish that too often is taken as license to let fellow-citizens’ blood. Consider for example, the mob violence U.S.-Democrat-run cities allowed if not nourished in 2020.

[6] Allowing postmodernism to terminate the 1787 Constitution’s guarantee --- a republican form of government --- is a death knell to the USA. To impose democracy is abdication to Anglo-American tradition, or European enslavement of the U.S. person.

[7] We the People of the United States as defined by the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

[8] Christian doctrine has under 10 Bible canon and each doctrine is subdivided, perhaps extensively. See Why are there so many sects of Protestant Christianity? - TimesMojo and Just How Many Protestant Denominations Are There?| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com).

[9] As a Baptist, I married a serenely-confident Louisiana-French Catholic woman and learned to cherish her faith for her (and each of our children’s faiths for themselves) without denying my faith for me. Also, I understand that there are Catholics who pursue the-God regardless of the Church’s insistence on a Transubstantiation-Trinity.

[10] Statutory-justice is the pursuit of flawless written-law and its enforcement and adjudication.

[11] Each viable-human-ova, the single-cell embryo, the fetus, the delivered baby, and the child is due the dignity and appreciation of a human person. An authentic woman cares for her viable ova, perhaps 400 during her fertile years, plus any children for life. The authentic man supports her and hers, in monogamy, for life.

[12] “Ineluctable”, known for 450 years and published in 1906 to modify both “truth” and “the . . . truth”, is unfortunately unknown in 2022. It means, “not to be avoided, changed, escaped, neglected, or resisted”. To lend precision& accuracy, I use hyphens and invite the reader/listener not to disassemble the phrase “the-ineluctable-truth”. I seek an improvement on this expression. People compromise “truth” by debating its object.

[13] Jesus’ message is that humankind can and may independently provide order and prosperity to living species and to this world.

[14] We propose to amend the First Amendment religion clauses to: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or promoting the free exercise thereof.