CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A young, white, male pastor stands at the pulpit of an evangelical church. He’s holding a bible in the air and shouting into his headset microphone. Behind him we see a giant American flag and a burst of light and smoke machine fog.  To the right of the panel we see a man at a drum kit, rocking out.

CAPTION: Project 2025 may not appear to be a religious endeavor, but it is! (Kind of!)

CAPTION: It’s a product of a political/religious hybrid philosophy known as Christian Nationalism.

PASTOR: I believe that the Bible is infallible and the only source of God’s Word!

PASTOR: And the Bible tells me that God will only bless this country if we enforce– at a federal level–a set of values specific to 1950s white America!

PASTOR: Don’t think about it too hard!

Panel 2

A white woman in a black t-shirt and a MAGA hat is talking into a microphone implicitly held by an off panel reporter.  Her t-shirt reads “I STAND FOR THE FLAG/I KNEEL FOR THE CROSS, and it features a soldier kneeling at a gravesite in front of an American flag.

CAPTION: What is Christian Nationalism? it’s “a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems–that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.” (1)

CAPTION: But it’s not just any form of Christianity! It “includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.” (2)

MAGA WOMAN: No, I’m not racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic–I’m just a good Christian!

Panel 3

Jesus Christ, in white robes and carrying a shepherd’s crook in his left hand, stands behind Donald Trump with his right hand on Trump’s right shoulder. Trump is reaching up with his left hand to touch Jesus’s, and with his left hand he’s holding out a smart phone to take a selfie.  Doves fly through clouds in the background.

CAPTION: Once you know what Christian Nationalism is, you realize that Project 2025 is basically a Christian Nationalist bucket list.

CAPTION: And you start to understand why, for many, many voters, “voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage.” (3)

TRUMP: Don’t worry, Big J, I’ll ride through the eye of that needle on the biggest, greatest camel you ever saw…

Panel 4

Eight smiling women in full length dresses and hats or bonnets stand in a line behind a bearded white man in a sweater who is leaning on the counter of a clerk’s desk, pointing at himself with his thumb. The female clerk looks flummoxed.

CAPTION: Central to the Christian Nationalist worldview is a “biblical” view of family. Project 2025 centers this view all over the place.

CAPTION: Project 2025 calls for the HHS Department to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.” (4)

MAN: Yes, I’d like a marriage license, please. I’ll be biblically marrying these eight women —just like King David!

PAGE 2

Panel 1

A close up of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wagging his finger.

CAPTION: Like Christian Nationalism, Project 2025 is also openly white supremacist, and anti-Black in particular.

CAPTION: It urges a re-elected President Trump to “eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.” (5)

JUSTICE THOMAS: Sorry, the only racism that I’m aware of is reverse racism!

Panel 2

A drill sergeant in silhouette walks by a line of new recruits, all leaning rifles on their shoulders. Three of the recruits stand at attention, but the fourth looks uneasily back at the reader.

CAPTION: Both Christian Nationalism and Project 2025 are also militaristic, advancing a foreign policy that emphasizes military strength above all else.

CAPTION: “The next conservative President must end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.” (6)

DRILL SERGEANT: Remember, if you’re not sure, just ask yourself — “Who would Jesus shoot?”

Panel 3

A grinning, skeevy-looking man in a trench coat and fedora starts to pull a book out of his coat like someone selling illicit goods. He’s talking to the figure from the “Sickos” meme: a man with black hair, bushy eyebrows, stubble, and a long-sleeved black shirt with “Sickos” written on it. He is rubbing his hands together in excitement.

CAPTION: And of course both Christian Nationalism and Project 2025 want to censor LGBTQIA+ lives, based on the bogus concern that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading  their  school  libraries.”  (7)

TRENCHCOAT MAN: Wanna buy some pornography, pal?

TRENCHCOAT MAN: I got some real sick stuff! Heather Has Two Mommies, Angels In America, Plato’s Dialogues…

SICKO: YES…HA HA HA…YES!

Panel 4

A pair of hands in close up uncap a pen above a ballot. On one side of the ballot we see “KAMALA HARRIS/TIM WALZ.” On the other side we see “DONALD J. TRUMP/J.D. VANCE/THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION”

CAPTION: And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Project 2025 is, ultimately, a blueprint for enforcing Christian Nationalist ideas at the federal level.

CAPTION: If that’s not the kind of America you want to live in, you’ve got a choice to make at the ballot box!

Panel 5

A plain white caption box with citations, surrounded by captions that say “VOTE.”

CITATIONS:

• Whitehead, Andrew L.; Perry, Samuel L. Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (p. 10). Oxford University Press.

• Ibid. (p. 10) That’s a real shirt, by the way.

• Whitehead & Perry, Sociology of Religion, Volume 79, Issue 2 (p. 147)

• Project 2025, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” (p. 481)

• Ibid. (p. 103)

• Ibid. (p. 9)

• Ibid. (p. 1) Page One! This is on page one!