Christian Nationalism and Responses To It

Herbert Rothschild, a local newspaper columnist (Ashland.news) and community leader, will join the Jefferson Center for a discussion of Christian Nationalism and Responses to It on Sunday, October 20th from 4 to 6 pm at The Jefferson Center, in the Old Ashland Armory.
Christian Nationalism is a political movement based on the belief that the United States is a Christian nation, that real Americans are Christian, and that America has a special relationship with the Christian God. As a result, Christian Nationalists want civil government to privilege Christianity in various ways, including instituting prayer in the public schools and state support for religious schools and other church activities, despite our Constitutional commitment to separation of church and state.
In practice, Christian Nationalism often overlaps with beliefs in U.S. global domination, White Supremacy and hostility to immigrants from non-European countries. Christian Nationalists are an important segment of the MAGA constituency and regard Donald Trump as divinely commissioned to re-establish the U.S. onto its Christian foundation. They tend to regard their political opponents as evil agents of demonic forces. They were prominent in the January 6th insurrection, believing that what they understand to be God’s laws supersede the civil law. What do we make of this and how do we deal with it?
Herbert Rothschild is a retired college professor and a long-time activist for peace and justice. He worked for civil rights and civil liberties in Louisiana in the 1960s and 1970s, then in the nuclear disarmament movement. After coming to the Rogue Valley, he led Peace House from 2012 through 2015. He began publishing Relocations, his weekly column on public affairs, in the Daily Tidings in 2014; it now appears in Ashland.news.
The program will be held in the Jefferson Center space, suite 101, in the Old Armory Building, 208 Oak St., in Ashland. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. It is part of the Salon series of The Jefferson Center, a Rogue Valley non-profit focused on critical thinking using secular humanist values to understand and engage with issues important to our community.