American Heresy: The Roots and Reach of White Christian Nationalism

by John Fanestil

American Heresy uncovers the complex legacy of America's founding principles, demonstrating how the very same values have produced both good fruit and the bitter harvest of white Christian nationalism. Fanestil adeptly traces an early American story that reaches into our present with alarming immediacy. Using cogent examples from the earliest days of colonial settlement through the Revolutionary War era, Fanestil helps us understand how many of the principles we view as paradigmatic expressions of American identity have had contested histories from the start. Virtue has brought both self-sacrifice and extremism; progress, both cultural pride and white racism. The very same principles that underpin the United States' proudest moments also forged the white Christian nationalism that fruited so dangerously in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The implications of Fanestil's complex history are highly pertinent--and alarming. Far from a fringe movement embraced by a violent few, white Christian nationalism is a spiritual inheritance shared by all white American Christians. Grappling with this history is vital if the United States is ever to move beyond its tragic legacy as a white settler society.

Genres: Religion, History, Politics

215 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2023

Reviews

[Katelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish for every single American in the country to read this book. At fewer than 200 pages, it is a short but very dense read, extremely well-researched and thorough.

As an American who is secular and ideologically aligned with the left, I initially dove into this book looking to better understand the hold that white Christian nationalism has on the country. In particular the alt-right and MAGA, as well as how it shows up individually in my own family members who are overwhelmingly conservative and pro-Trump. I was surprised to find myself reflected in the pages as well, and the author does an excellent job of addressing how all white Americans are influenced by this ideology or religious background due to its sheer proliference in early American life, in a way that is very matter-of-fact as opposed to combative or threatening.

I particularly liked the callout addressing a temptation to see Donald Trump as a single tyrannical opponent, instead of the truth, which is that he is a symptom of a larger force at work in American culture and politics, and that no, simply removing him from office will not pull us back from alt-right ideology, as comforting as a thought as that may be for some.

Additionally, with the recent death of Charlie Kirk with, what I felt initially, was an unusually strong reaction from the religious right, the chapters in this book titled "Liberty" and "Virtue" came together to explain martyrdom and masculine virtue in a way that made the response to Kirk not only comprehendable but to see the truth that it was always going to come about, perhaps even if he had died an "ordinary" death. He was not exaulted as a combat veteran (also covered in this book) or a politician (RIP Melissa Hortman & family), but in the original sense of martyrdom in the US: a spiritual soldier in a cosmological fight against good and evil, a proponent of early English Protestant values that influence us all.

As a secular American, I did at times struggle to follow all of the different denominations of Christianity, but it didn't hold me back significantly in following the text. In my mind I would've loved to be able to flip to an appendix that shows an abbreviated flow chart of how the branches relate to each other and a couple succinct differences in either ideology or practice.

**I no longer used Goodreads (hello, PageBound!) but I felt so compelled for folks to know what a fantastic book this is, I decided to share my review here as well. Feel free to add me on PB @punkerella! **

[Lisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended for those who identify as Christians and for those who don't. This book takes a broad look at the history of Protestantism in the colonies/US and how the threads of white Christian Nationalism have always been present. It could be a catalyst for curiosity, conversation, and change.

[Eugenea Pollock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a combination of historical perspective and religious inquiry as applied to a consideration of American foundational ideals and values—heavier on history, lighter on values. Personally, I found the very last paragraph in the book to be particularly useful.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book an interesting addition to understanding the resurgence of white “Christian” nationalism in the United States in our own time. As the author makes clear, while it is anything but “new” – having existed almost from the initial settlement of the colonies – it continues to morph in shape and language while always keeping certain thoughts, suspicions, and resentments ever central to its worldview.

As you read this book, I think it most helpful to regard the themes and ways of thinking of those who are white Christian nationalists today as things that “play unobscured and often unconsciously in the background of many white “Christians.” Certainly these thoughts – and the behavior that can so easily flow from them – are not “Christian” at all. But then, we humans are highly skilled in masking our beliefs and behaviors through “draping ourselves” in honored and beloved images and memories, whether they be of the flag – or of the cross.

I believe I can best convey Dr. Fanestil’s major argument by quoting verbatim key segments from the book.


The Nature of “White Christian nationalism”

“…white Christian nationalism is not a fringe movement embraced only by a violent few…. [Rather] the attitudes associated with white Christian nationalism thrive along a spectrum and can be found within every Christian denomination…. White Christian nationalism is a spiritual inheritance shared by all white American Christians…as a religious movement with deep roots in American history.” (P. 3)

“In [this book] I will argue that we cannot understand the current moment in American public life without understanding how a distinctly American brand of Protestant religiosity shaped the lives of America’s revolutionary generations. This religiosity inspired the English who colonized North America – including the Founding Fathers of the United States – to embrace noble values like order, destiny, progress, innovation, independence, and patriotism. But this religiosity also tempted the people who first called themselves Americans to embrace practices of violence, nostalgia, racism, propaganda, conspiracy, and nationalism. These are the bitter fruits of white Christian nationalism, a pernicious and distinctly American strain of Christian thought and practice that is, at present, in a season of renewed flowering…. (P. 6)

“I consider white Christian nationalism a Christian heresy because it encourages adherents to celebrate the English colonization of North America as a divine calling superior to God’s calling on other peoples.” (P. 7)

Some of the “fruits” of this heresy are these:

• “The genocide and mass dislocation of Native peoples, and the mass enslavement and torture of African captives and their descendants, were indispensable to our nation’s founding.
• The project of nation-building required the sustained exercise of extraordinary, institutionalized violence and the indiscriminate – usually lawless – seizing of land.
• The early American elites who oversaw this project were overwhelmingly white and male and Protestant, and they took for granted that these characteristics were emblematic of that it meant to be both “Christian” and “American.”
• These elites believed that the English colonization of North America, the success of the American Revolution, and the dramatic westward expansion of the new nation were not just justified but in fact divinely inspired.
• In championing these views, these white elites were supported by broad swaths of their white constituencies within the emerging democratic structures of the new republic. They were not outliers but were – as they are widely and recognized today – “true Americans.” (P. 8)

Because of this legacy, white Americans who consider themselves “Christians” are “perpetually susceptible to the temptations of white Christian nationalism: violence, nostalgia, racism, propaganda, conspiratorial thinking, and nationalism.” (P. 15)

The Legacy of Protestant Dissidents who were the First Colonists: “God is on our side” and “We must bring order to this land and cultivate it.”

The first colonists to North America were all Protestants, many of them people who were “dissenters” from the Anglican practices dominant in England. As such, they not only believed that humans were created “in the image of God,’ but that it was their God-given charge to “exercise ‘dominion’ over the natural world… At its most fundamental level, the English understood that the human exercise of dominion required the ‘taming’ of what they considered ‘wilderness.’ Wild lands could be tamed by ‘marking’ them as common land…at which point they became ‘private property,’ belonging to the rightful owner.” (Pp. 20-21) “…labor that ‘improved’ or ‘enclosed’ the land rendered it private property.” (P.23)

Accordingly, “they saw the vast terrains of the ‘New World’ as ‘wilderness’ to which their hardworking labor could be ‘naturally’ mixed. Dutifully, they enclosed family farms and demarcated town limits…established parish boundaries and ‘plantations’…and marked colonial perimeters with lookouts and forts. Practices like these seemed utterly logical to English colonists. After all, this was what the orderly use of land looked like.
These practices of landholding were alien to the Native peoples of North America…. To the English, the ‘Indians’ of North America were ‘heathen’…. In early modern English, ‘heathen’ was understood to describe uncivilized human beings who merely wandered in the ‘heath,’ or wilderness. Unfamiliar with native practices like seasonal migration, forest husbandry, and tribal hunting, the English saw the Indians of North America as lazy, for they did not dedicate themselves to the hard work of farming as the English knew it. As far as the English were concerned, the Indians’ rejection of practices like private landholding and settled agriculture evidenced their need of ‘civilization.’ This process required that the Natives should withdraw from the forests and adopt the ways of the English. They should, in short, ‘settle down’ and ‘get to work.’” (P. 25)

But to the Natives, it was the English who practiced strange and interfering ways by claiming and fencing off land that their peoples had roamed and lived on for generations. Their resistance, sometimes passive, often violent, led the colonists to debate whether they were “heathens to be converted” or “savages to be conquered.” (P. 27)

The first half of the 18th century was an almost constant contest for influence in North America between the French and the English. For their part, the French were more successful at recruiting Indian allies than were the English, largely because the French were more interested in the fur trade than in agricultural settlements that displaced Native peoples. One of the consequences of this decades-long struggle was the development of a “continental vision” among the English, “a shared desire to expand the territorial bounds of the English colonies – that is, to ‘enclose’ more land.” (P. 31)

The Importance of “Order” and America’s “Mission”

Another distinctive characteristic of these early colonists was an ardent desire for order – “to ‘law and order,’ to private property, and to the orderly disposition of both private and public lands….
“But this same longing undergirds a deeply rooted propensity to violence – especially violence over questions of ‘turf’ – that has always characterized American public life. The body politic that would become the United States was conceived in the forcible settlement of Native lands in North America. It was bathed in violence during this period of gestation, marked by the continual prosecution of wars against the French and Indians. And it was birthed in violent insurrection against the authority of the English king….
“The generations that founded the United States inherited ‘continental’ aspirations from their forefathers. These fueled the practice of continual territorial expansion and the continuous application of force and violence to achieve it.” (P. 33)

Another notable element of this religious nationalist thought is the persistent theme of manifest destiny – a conviction “that God has granted the United States a unique (and benevolent) role in human history.” (P. 40) This is a rather natural evolution from the Puritan conviction that everything they did in the “New World” was under the guidance – and protection of God. (P. 44)

[Cusack: And today we often hear this expressed by people who opine that America is “the essential nation” or the “indispensable nation.”]

“Just as the early Puritans were tempted to romanticize the first generations of New England colonists, so white Americans today are tempted to want to ‘enclose’ the past.” They resent and resist any attempt to recast their favorite story in ways that are more inclusive and truthful. “After all, everyone knows that the real American history is the American history that real Americans know.” (P. 56)


The Nature of Troublesome “Others”: Native and Black Peoples

“Those who joined the great English experiment of transatlantic colonization…embraced an ideology of progress that remains a hallmark of American culture today. As a clash of civilizations played out in North America, this same ideology led English colonists, over time, to all but abandon their stated aim of Indian evangelization, to embrace an economic system predicated on the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants, and to construct a hierarchical and racialized caste system in which they came to conceive of themselves as ‘white.’” (P. 60)

“When Indians and Africans were merely ‘heathen,’ they fell within the ranks of human and as such were seen as eligible both for freedom in this life and as such were seen as eligible both for freedom in this life and for salvation in the next. But the English in North American increasingly doubted the humanity of people their ancestors had considered candidates for civilization and evangelization. In the estimation of the English, the ‘save’ Indians and the ‘brutish’ Negroes had fallen from within the ranking of humans, to a new category that fell short – no one knew exactly how far short – of humanity…. The African slaves and their descendants had nowhere to flee. They could be broken, as could other creatures of ‘bestial’ nature.” (P. 68)

“For many White Americans [today], Christianity is more of an ethnic culture and identity than a set of spiritual beliefs. It means ‘White people like us.’” (P. 83)


Life is a “Struggle between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness”

“English Protestants conceived of human history as an epic and all-encompassing struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between light and darkness…. In this way of thinking, human life is a contest, a protest, a battle, and a stark, zero-sum game, with the light of individual (Protestant) liberty under perpetual threat from the forces of tyrannical darkness. In the worldview of early English Protestantism, this threat was ubiquitous.” (P. 111)

“Over time they came to think of themselves as confronting not just the inherent weakness of the human condition but also the influence of dark and malevolent forces, from both within and without. They were victims of a diabolical conspiracy. Across the span of centuries, this sense of pervasive threat and embattlement has remained a constant in the American psyche, with white Christian Americans from every generation conceiving of themselves as vulnerable to persecution by powerful forces both seen and unseen. These sensations of threat, persecution, and mistrust are enduring fruit of the American founding. White Americans often experiences these sensations most acutely when they see their young exposed to forces beyond their comprehension or control.” (P. 126)

“White Protestant American culture remains deeply rooted in this veneration of self-sacrifice as the supreme expression of especially masculine virtue….
“The dark side of this Protestant commitment to the principle of virtue stems from its starkly dualistic worldview. People who surrender to the darker side of this tradition can reduce almost any conflict to a battle of good versus evil. This spiritual surrender renders people prone to absolutism and to the belief that the truest sign of righteousness is always and everywhere confrontation. It can easily culminate in political extremism, often associated with a toxic brand of masculinity that sees almost any conflict as requiring the exercise of violence. This dysfunctional and damaging way of orienting to conflict is a bitter fruit that also springs from the Protestant roots of the American founding. True men (from the Latin vir for man, root of both ‘virile’ and ‘virtue’) are those who will ‘man up’ and die for the sacred cause. For some this yearning is so deep that if no cause is readily accessible, they will invent one.” (Pp. 154-155)

“This distinctively American predisposition to dramatic demonstrations of self-sacrifice is a cornerstone of ‘white Christian nationalism.’ This ideology invites distorted expressions of American virtue, a kind of idealistic American patriotism gone terribly, terribly wrong. As with any other deep social dysfunction, white Christian nationalism often flourishes in the fertile soil of lives shaped by multigenerational dysfunction and trauma.” (P. 155)

“…many Americans today take for granted that the agents of evil in the world will continue to mount threats routinely and ongoingly to the truth. These Americans expect these threats to come not just from outside the American body politic but also from within the institutions of government at every level. In their view, meeting these threats requires the exercise of bravado and virtue, up to and including the exercise of violence. Come what may, win or lose, the truly faithful must remain ever vigilant. At a moment’s notice, true Americans may be required to man up and fight.” (P. 157)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought and read this book because it was both about a topic that concerns me deeply and is written by a great and bright friend from long ago. I thought its focus would be on the current situation of White Christian Nationalism that has come to national attention following January 6th’s attack on the Capitol and attempt at insurrection. Instead, John has dig deeply into the long lived national consciousness from our nation’s founding. He details what I intuited as a presence of religious support for the revolution but with details that make that religious cause more deeply embedded in our national identity. I was especially surprised and challenged to read about how the American Revolution was directly an outgrowth of the Glorious Revolution in England where religious dissenters elevated conscience as essential to devotion to God, and used to resist and fight those whose religion was supported by the state. His description of virtue using its roots of “vir” manly connecting this to martyrdom as a part of violence was also quite powerful. My church, New York Avenue Presbyterian in Washington, DC, is the locus of the origin of “In God We Trust” on our U.S. currency and in our pledge of allegiance. The church does not retain such explicit and committed nationalism today but three blocks from the White House, it exemplifies how deeply rooted this Christian nationalism is. We are continuing this discussion in our church, especially in the context of the reappropriating of White Christian Nationalism by the Trump Administration and so many allies. John’s book gives one a thoughtful, sensitive look into what we have lost in understanding the intrinsic presence of these ideas in our society. Great work, John! Thanks.

[Jennifer Silva Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important and timely book

There could be no more important subject for Americans to study right now, and no more important conversations to be having right than those that will be provoked by this author's research and conclusions. Highly recommended for those of any faith.