Christian Nationalist Preacher Threatens Repeat of Spanish Fascism
Say what you like about Christian Nationalism, but you can’t plausibly argue that the violent ideology has no basis in the Christian bible.
Take, for example, Minster Chuck O’Neal of the One 16 Bible Church in in Beaverton, Oregon, formerly known as the Beaverton Grace Bible Church, O’Neal cited specific a bible verse as the basis for Christian Nationalism in a recent sermon. He called it the Great Commission, and he found biblical justification for it in the Gospel of Matthew.
“Ultra MAGA Christian Nationalism. ‘Pastor, can you find that in your bible?’ Yes, I can, in one of my most favorite verses, Matthew 28:18-20. Matthew 28:18-20: Our king, the king of kings, the lord of lords, Jesus Christ who conquered sin, Satan, and death and rose again in the third day before he ascended, he commanded Christian Nationalism on a global and local level. Matthew 28:18-20: Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to me in Heaven and on Earth.’ He is the absolute authority, the authority above all authority, above all nations, above all kings, above all governments, all presidents. ‘All authority has been given to me,’ says Jesus, in Heaven and on Earth. ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Nations! Do we not want nations to be saved? Did Jesus not want nations to be saved? Will Jesus not bring every nation to its knees before him? He will. Oh yes, I intend to make this a Christian nation. Yes, I intend to see every man, woman, and child confess Christ as lord. I intend to see biblical law the law of our land.”
The biblical law that Chuck O’Neal refers to isn’t just some general requirement that everybody praise the Christian god and go to church. As Chuck O’Neal sees it, biblical law contains some very specific requirements, including a ban on divorce and the prohibition of homosexuality and transgender identities. O’Neal told his congregation,
“Marriage is one man and one woman for life, under god, by god’s design.”
Under the biblical law that Chuck O’Neal wants to impose on the United States, everyone’s marriage will be controlled by Christian leaders. Secular marriages won’t be allowed any more, and neither will divorce. Same-sex marriage will be outlawed. Transgender identities will be made illegal under his Christian Nationalism as well.
“Men are men and women are women, and men do not become women and women do not become men.”
Chuck O’Neal’s expanding list of biblical laws restricting Americans’ private lives offers a potent reminder that Christian Nationalism demands total control. Christian Nationalist propaganda begins with what seems to Christian Americans like a small, reasonable request: Could the government grant Christianity a special place of respect? Once that foot is in the door, more specific demands follow. Once Christianity is allowed to be the national religion of the United States, it logically follows that American laws should be Christian laws.
The Christian laws that Christian Nationalists want to impose on the United States are out-of-date and out of touch with present day American culture. They demand that equality of gender and sexuality be revoked, and that every American be forced to comply with heterosexual cisgender norms. Christian Nationalists say that anything else is evil and should be against the law.
“Genesis 1:26: ‘Let us make man in our image. Male and female he created them.’ That’s the god they spoke of. I truly never thought we’d live to see the evil we are seeing today, as perverts parade themselves in streets with little children out there being taught perversion by them, and grandma and mommy and daddy and grandpa standing along the side of the pervert parade, smiling as if this was a beautiful family scene. Grandma and grandpa and mommy and daddy should all be arrested, and the children taken from them.”
Christian Nationalism begins with the requirement that all Americans be forced to worship the Christian god. To people who are raised within Christianity, this doesn’t seem unreasonable. They believe that being a Christian is what’s normal and natural for all people. Forty percent of Americans are non-Christian, but people who live in tight-knit Christian communities tend not to perceive this cultural diversity. Everyone they know is Christian. Their churches like to keep it that way.
Christian Nationalism seeks to impose the closed-off nature of right-wing Christian churches on the entire country. Christian Nationalists feel uncomfortable with people who are different from them. They accuse anything and anyone that deviates from what they learn in their churches of being evil.
So it is that Christian Nationalism turns from simple control over Americans’ religious identity to totalitarian government control over every aspect of Americans’ private lives. Christian Nationalists seek to impose a Christian government so strong that it even has the power to tell Americans who they can have sex with and how to do it.
In a Christian Nationalist America, punishments for deviation from biblical law will be harsh. Remember what the Christian Minister Chuck O’Neal threatens:
“Grandma and grandpa and mommy and daddy should all be arrested, and the children taken from them.”
Would Christian Nationalists really do this? Would they really throw parents into prison and take children away from families who refuse to follow Christian biblical laws?
We don’t need to speculate about the answer. Recent history shows us exactly what a Christian Nationalist government would do. Less than 50 years ago, a Christian Nationalist government imposed the system of Christian biblical laws and punishments that Chuck O’Neal longs for.
You may not know what I’m referring to. That’s because most American children aren’t taught this part of history, and most American adults don’t like to think about it.
I’m talking about the Christian Nationalist government of Spain under the fascist Francisco Franco.
We teach our children that fascism was defeated at the end of World War II, but that’s not really what happened. Fascism in Spain persisted for two generations, from the 1930s until 1975, just 47 years ago.
A central component of Spanish fascism was the blending of church and state. In fascist Spain, Christianity was made the official religion of the state. Christian churches were given the legal power to control people’s lives. Christian priests and nuns had the authority to impose biblical laws. To be anything other than Christian became illegal.
In fact, the Spanish fascist government didn’t stop at requiring all people to be Christians. The government decided what kind of Christian everyone had to be. To belong to the Catholic Church was mandatory. They called this regime National Catholicism.
Christian Nationalism was in force in fascist Spain. So, if we want to understand what Christian Nationalism really means, we can look at what life in fascist Spain was like.
Remember what Christian Minister Chuck O’Neal said about what should happen to families that violate Christian biblical laws?
“Grandma and grandpa and mommy and daddy should all be arrested, and the children taken from them.”
This is exactly what happened in fascist Spain. Grandma and grandpa and mommy and daddy were arrested. The Christian Nationalist government identified all the people who were not Christian enough, all the homosexuals, all the liberals, and rounded them up. Soldiers and police hauled everyone who refused to obey the biblical laws of fascist National Catholicism off to prison.
Then, the atheists, the liberals, the gays and lesbians, the independent women of Spain, and anyone else who spoke out against the Christian Nationalist government were tortured and killed, and their bodies were dumped in mass graves. The Christian Nationalist government of fascist Spain murdered one of every thirty of its citizens.
The cruelty of Christian Nationalism in fascist Spain didn’t stop with killing. Just as Chuck O’Neal threatens to do here in America, the Christian fascists took people’s children away.
Over the last decade, the people of Spain have begun to learn the details of a horrific government program that was enacted under Francisco Franco: The Christian Nationalists of fascist Spain stole people’s babies and sold them for profit.
Many of the records that documented this abuse were destroyed after the fall of the fascists, and many fascist judges and government officials remain in their positions. So, the full extent of the baby-stealing program is not known. Some estimates place the number of stolen babies in the tens of thousands. The documentary Stolen Babies of Spain calculates that 300,000 babies were taken from their families.
The widespread theft of babies across Spain was done with the approval of the fascist government, but the people who actually stole the babies were the priests and nuns of the Catholic Church. The trafficking of stolen babies was a Christian Nationalist program.
Christian leaders in Spain worked with the fascist government to set up a system of political and religious surveillance. Families and individuals who were disloyal to the government and the Catholic Church were identified. When women from these families went to hospitals to give birth, nuns took their babies and told the women that the babies had died. The babies were then sold to wealthy Christian families loyal to the fascists. Eventually, in order to keep the trafficking of stolen babies going, the Christian Nationalists of Spain began to sell the babies overseas. Many of the stolen babies ended up in the United States.
The babies that were stolen by the Christian Nationalists of fascist Spain are now middle-aged adults. Many of them have no idea where they came from, or that they were stolen from their parents, even if they know that they were adopted at all, because their adoption records were falsified.
The goal of the systemic theft of babies was to establish a permanent system of Christian control over the government and culture of Spain. Fascist doctors who crafted the system believed that children could inherit the atheism and liberalism of their parents. The goal was to ensure that the stolen babies would be raised as Christians who would support the fascist government. Eventually, financial profit for the National Catholic Church of Spain also became a strong motive.
Christian Nationalists like to depict themselves as having family values, but as the history of fascist Spain shows, what Christian Nationalists actually value is just one kind of family. Christian Nationalism despises all other kinds of families, and seeks to destroy them. Christian Nationalists seek to control families, to deny them the freedom to be happy on their own terms. Under Christian governments, families become tools of authoritarian power, and family life becomes impoverished, forced into compliance with a thin ideological script.
Think back to the way that Chuck O’Neal insists that men must behave in certain ways, and women in other ways, with anything that deviates from these mandatory performances derided as a perversion that must be banned. Just as Chuck O’Neal wants to force marriage to become a lifelong bond, the Spanish fascist Christian Nationalists seized control of marriage, dissolving all marriages that had not been performed in Christian churches, and prohibiting divorce.
Homosexuality was banned. Sex outside of marriage was made a crime. Unmarried women who were suspected of having been sexually active were put into special prisons where Christian nuns supervised their punishment.
Women who showed signs of independence, atheism, or political liberalism were forced to perform a Walk of Shame. Their heads were shaved, they were forced to drink laxatives, and then they were forced to walk naked down the street even as their bowels began to uncontrollably empty. Their Christian neighbors came out of their homes to jeer at them and assault them. Often, at the end of this gauntlet, the women were shot dead.
Christian Nationalism under the Spanish fascists did not create a wonderland of peace and love. The National Catholic government maintained its power through violence and fear. Between ten and fifteen percent of the adult male population was used as slave labor. Squalid prison camps were filled beyond capacity with enemies of the Christian Nationalist state. Democracy was forbidden as the nation was subjected to one party rule. While the population as a whole suffered under famines, Christian Nationalist elites made themselves filthy rich through corruption.
Through it all, the official fascist government doctrine of Christian Nationalism kept telling the people of Spain that Christianity was a religion of love.
When preachers like Chuck O’Neal tell us that they want to make the United States a Christian Nationalist nation, we can look at the history of Christian Nationalism in regimes such as the Spanish fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, to get a good idea of what they really have in mind.
We also can look at the way that Christian Nationalist churches treat their members. Chuck O’Neal’s One 16 Bible Church used to operate under the name Beaverton Grace Bible Church. The church chose to change its name after it got a bad reputation for abusing and harassing its own congregants. When church members complained about the way they were being treated, Chuck O’Neal and the Beaverton Grace Bible Church sued them for libel. O’Neal and the church lost the suit when evidence provided to the court substantiated the church’s abusive practices.
If Christian Nationalists succeed, and force the United States to become a Christian nation, we’ll all become involuntary members of an abusive church that we are never allowed to leave.