Who, I ask, is afraid of Christian nationalism? From the looks of it, quite a few. Many of whom, it must be said, don’t fully understand what they’re reacting to. Christian nationalism has become the latest bogeyman of elite opinion. It’s routinely denounced from pulpits, condemned on cable panels, and dissected in classrooms by professors who treat it as a contagion. It has been painted as theocratic extremism, likened to white supremacy, and cast as a domestic analogue to radical Islam. But this hysteria says more about the cultural panic of the professional class than it does about Christian nationalism itself. Let’s begin with an obvious but crucial point: Christian nationalism is not a plot to install a pope in the Oval Office or rewrite the Constitution in Leviticus. It’s not calling for holy war or demanding a church-run state. At its core, it is a political and cultural movement that insists America’s values, laws, and institutions are not neutral. They emerged from a particular moral and religious tradition, and that tradition was overwhelmingly Christian. That’s not fascism. That’s fidelity to the facts of American history. Christian nationalists argue that public life should reflect this legacy, that faith is not just private, that the Founders were not secular technocrats or moral relativists, and that family, tradition, and religious conviction should shape the moral architecture of the nation, not just market values or bureaucratic trends. But try telling this to critics like Amanda Tyler, who would have you believe otherwise. The lawyer and executive director of BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) has compared the movement to Roman imperialism, Confederate race theology, and anti-Semitic conspiracies. She warns of “Judeo-Christian” slogans in public schools as if they’re hate speech, and equates long-standing theological views on gender, marriage, or life with extremism. But Tyler isn’t defending pluralism. She’s redrawing the boundaries of acceptable belief. She’s arguing — not implicitly, but explicitly — that traditional Christianity becomes dangerous the moment it leaves the pew and enters the public square. (RELATED: Is the ACLU Crazy?) The irony couldn’t be richer. The progressive crusading against dogma is enforcing one of her own. Whether she knows it or not, Tyler is pushing a sort of soft theocracy in reverse — where only state-approved faith is welcome, and everything else is marked for containment. The irony deepens when one realizes that America’s Founders never envisioned a public square scrubbed clean of religion. They opposed state churches, yes. But many of them openly embraced the role of faith in public life. George Washington spoke of religion and morality as “indispensable supports” to political prosperity. Congress held Christian worship services in its chambers. Public schools taught the Bible alongside civics. Today’s Christian nationalists, whether one agrees with them or not, are trying to recover that historical continuity. They’re not burning crosses. They’re running for school boards. They’re not storming courthouses. They’re passing legislation. They’re not calling for violence. They’re voting. That’s not insurrection. That’s civic engagement, even if Tyler thinks otherwise. (RELATED: Is Religion Threatening American Democracy?) What terrifies Tyler and others most, I suggest, isn’t the supposed threat of violence. It’s the quiet, steady threat of real effectiveness. Christian conservatives have made tangible, measurable gains on abortion, school choice issues, parental rights, and curriculum reform. They’ve organized. They’ve built lasting networks. They’ve taken local politics seriously, understanding that power doesn’t just reside in Washington but in school boards, statehouses, and courtrooms. They look at the ideological excesses of gender politics, radical DEI orthodoxy, and the erosion of parental authority and say, enough. They want liberty, yes — but an ordered form of liberty, not the kind that worships impulse or drifts into a libertine free-for-all. And perhaps most importantly, they’ve dropped the purity tests that once made them easy to sideline. They’ve grown pragmatic. None of this makes the Christian nationalist movement immune to critique. Like any political force, it can become insular, reactionary, or overconfident in its mandate. But to smear it as proto-fascist is not only lazy; it’s disingenuous and dangerous. So, I ask the question again: Who’s afraid of Christian nationalism? Those who fear a public square shaped by conviction rather than compliance. Those who believe religious belief is virtuous when it’s progressive and violent when it’s not. And those who believe freedom of religion means freedom from religion. Christian nationalism isn’t going away. The more it’s demonized, the more it organizes. If that frightens the gatekeepers of modern discourse, maybe the problem isn’t with the faithful. Maybe it’s with a culture that tolerates everything, except belief that refuses to bend the knee. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: Controversial Atheist Sam Harris Confesses The Carbon Aristocracy: How the Rich Engineered the Climate Crisis — And Made You Pay for It Beyond DEI: How a Top US University Became a Marxist Factory The post Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.