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White Nationalists’ Hostility to Christianity

White Nationalists’ Hostility to Christianity

Last updated on: September 1, 2017 at 11:06 am by Gene Veith

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White Nationalists’ Hostility to Christianity 2017-09-01T11:06:19-04:00 Gene Veith

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The Left is attempting to link the white nationalists who demonstrated at Charlottesville with Christianity, thus discrediting both parties. A review of a book on the subject is headlined ‘Blood and Faith’: A new book links white nationalists to Christianity. But the interview with the author proves rather the opposite: White nationalists tend to be opposed to Christianity. And when they claim otherwise, they demonstrate a theology and a take on the Bible that bear no resemblance to Christianity of any kind.

Journalist Kimberly Winston discusses Blood and Faith: Christianity in White Nationalism and interviews its author, Dr. Damon T. Berry, a religious studies professor at St. Lawrence University.

In the interview, Dr. Berry says, “The Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations are very firmly founded in Christianity.” But he then says how they believe the Bible teaches that the Jews are descendants of Cain, who was the son of Eve and the Serpent in Eden! Thus the Jews are “biologically evil.” The Klan and the Aryan Nations torture the Bible in other ways, such as interpreting the “beasts of the field” in Genesis as non-white races meant to perform manual labor for white people.

Does that sound “Christian” in any sense? Is turning the Bible, most of which was written by Jews, into an allegory of anti-semitism “Biblical”?

In the course of the interview, Dr. Berry says how many white nationalists–indeed, some of the key figures in that movement–are anti-Christian. Some are “Odinists” who follow a modern version of ancient Norse religion, worshipping Odin and Thor, whom they conceive of as gods of strength and violence, unlike the Christian’s weak deity, Jesus. (“Your God was nailed to a cross. My God uses a hammer.”) Others have constructed a new religion based on race. Still others are atheists.

Dr. Berry’s answer to a question about “anti-religious white nationalists” is worth quoting:

There are some white nationalist groups that specifically speak out against religion, especially Christianity, as being harmful to the white race. Each of these groups articulates that position differently. Revilo Oliver, one of the formative ideologues of modern white nationalism, was deeply atheist in his views, as is Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance. William Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance (a white nationalist group), felt Christianity was an alien ideology and he wanted to promote “cosmotheism” — the idea that the races are “evolving” and the white race will eventually become like gods.

Ben Klassen, founder of the Church of the Creator, was doing the same. He determined his ideology — called “Creativity,” a pantheistic religion with the white race at the center — should be the white man’s religion. And Richard Spencer (president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank) is anti-religious.

And his comment about how both the religious and the anti-religious white nationalists came together at Charlottesville is also telling:

What I am seeing is an explicit turn to the political. I would say the groups who have a religious vision and the ones who are anti-religion are trying very hard not to bring up anything that would be too divisive, and one of those things would be Christianity. In Charlottesville, the KKK and the Odinists were there, but nobody chanted “Jesus is our white savior” or “all religions will lead to race suicide” — which are things they say to each other all the time. But now they are saying their race is their religion and anything else — including Christianity — is negotiable.

Photo by Martin, “Ku Klux Klan,” via Flickr, Creative Commons License

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