The Christian Nationalist Message is Loud and Clear
Tomorrow and Sunday, September 16th and 17th, from 10AM to 6PM, you’re invited by Matt Shea and company to “The Great Re-Awakening,” aka the “ReAwaken America Tour” held just over the border at Stateline Speedway in Post Falls. The tour is brought to you by the entrepreneur, former DJ and business coach, and failed candidate for mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma (in 2009), Clay Clark. Mr. Clark hatched the show as “Health and Freedom” tours in 2020 peddling conspiracy theories about Covid-19. In the summer of 2021 Clark rebranded the show as the ReAwaken America Tour, shifting emphasis to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and now featuring the Trump-pardoned criminal, Michael Flynn.
I encourage you to explore the background of the ReAwaken America Tour in its wikipedia article. With the exceptions of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Post Falls, Idaho, all listed ReAwaken events have been held at mega-churches, even as multiple other Christian Church leaders have condemned the tour—but, apparently, with much less fanfare and media attention.
The poster for the Stateline event displayed below suggests (but carefully does not promise) that if you attend you might see not just General Flynn, the keynote speaker, but a lineup of a great many other far right grifters and supporters of insurrection, including Mike Lindell (the “MyPillow Guy”), Sean Feucht (recently in Spokane at Riverfront Park), Josh Hawley, ?Lindsey Graham, and Roger Stone, among a sea of others, some of whom I recognize but cannot name.
The attraction of the headliner in Post Falls, Michael Flynn, is well-covered in this Associated Press article: “Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior”. I urge you to click and read. It draws heavily on an August 12-13 ReAwaken America presentation at the Cornerstone Church in Batavia, New York, that is said to have drawn thousands.
According to the AP article:
Flynn is “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
“He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups,” she said. “All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And he’s at the center.”
Flynn’s worrisome “Christian” Nationalist message reads like incitement to attack your neighbors:
He’s repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and said that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of thousands of people who have paid to see him speak that there are 75 members of the Socialist Party in Congress, and has said the left and Democrats are trying to destroy the country. He asserts, above all else, that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.
The country, Flynn often says in speeches and interviews, is in the midst of a “spiritual war,” and he goes after many of the institutions and ideas that stand as pillars of American democracy.
He has told audiences he doesn’t trust the U.S. government or government institutions that oversee the rule of law. He called the media “the No. 1 enemy” and said it has done a “horrible, horrible disservice to the country by just constantly lying and trying to deceive us.” He says elementary schools are teaching “filth” and “pornography.” He continues to assert, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that elections can’t be trusted. He says, over and over, that some of his fellow Americans are “evil.”
“They dress like us and they talk like us, but they don’t think and act like us,” he told a podcaster recently. “And they definitely do not want what it is that we want.”
Note well the link to “a certain kind of Christian”:
“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God, right?” he [Flynn] said.
Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a “true” American is to be Christian — and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics.
I find all this chilling. Worse, this is the sort of riled up crap that parts of the local Republican Party depend upon for votes—and the sane Republicans know better than to openly cross swords with these people (a topic for next week). Have a listen to this tiktok video of Matt Shea, former Washington State Representative from Spokane valley, self-appointed pastor, and endless promoter of his theocratic “Liberty State”. Then visit Redoubt Newsand note that the same quasi-military code appears on the top of the page. If you are tempted to want to dismiss all this, I urge you to recall the origin of the name of one of the militia groups that stormed the Capitol of January 6, the Three Percenters:
During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. Three Percenters today identify with this 3% because they were true patriots fighting for the freedoms the nation we love and honor was founded on.
These people are nuts, but they’re nuts and organizing, and now they have a famous retired general and Trump-pardoned criminal to rally around in their quest. Worse, they are deceiving the gullible by cloaking themselves in distorted Christianity.
Add your name to this petition organized by local Christians and Christian sympathizers against this “Christian” Nationalist “ReAwaken America Tour”. Here’s the link to the petition: https://secure.everyaction.com/jQ4VzMGfe0yZdwJy7Ymttw2?emci=5cb756c2-312f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&emdi=4265d07b-922f-ed11-ae83-281878b83d8a&ceid=155031
With its religious trappings and appeals to violence this gathering may be worse than having a Trump “Stop the Steal” rally in our backyard..
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I have no idea what the attendance will be at this Stateline event tomorrow, but the fact that it is happening in our neighborhood I find chilling and worrisome. Yesterday I texted to the number (918.851.0102) on the poster for a ticket. A few hours later I received a phone call from an excited, fast talking young man backed by boiler-room sounds who rattled off a dozen names of people pictured on the poster he said would appear in person at the tour. I asked it that included Josh Hawley. He asked if Hawley were pictured on the poster. I said yes and he reassured me that, then, yes, Hawley would be there in person. (I should have asked if Roger Stone was also going to be in Post Falls in person since he is also pictured on on poster.) Then he offered to sell me a $500 “VIP” ticket…or a $250 General Admission ticket…or a “scholarship” for $135…or, finally, “name your price”. The poster says that “4000 tickets will be sold”—and my young man insisted that I should buy now because as we talked the remaining tickets had dropped from 130 to 129—and they would surely sell out. I didn’t have the presence of mind to say “$5, but I don’t give my credit card information over the phone, so would you reserve a ticket and I can pay at the door?” I wonder how many true believers and how much money this hard sell will attract?
P.P.S. Apparently Sean Feucht, another Christian Nationalist pictured on the placard, came and went from the Spokane Pavilion with a free concert on Sunday, August 21. No one got back to me to say that they attended, and I cannot find any media coverage to say what actually happened.