The label “Christian nationalism” is the new Progressive dog-whistle for “scary American patriots.” It signals to Progressives that Americans who love God and country – which used to be the norm before our descent into a post-Christian, post-patriotism culture – are a subversive danger to democracy. Christianity, after all, imposes a moral code that chafes Progressive libertines, and nationalism, with its emphasis on state sovereignty and secure borders, frustrates their globalist ambitions.
Whenever Christians wave the Stars and Stripes, wear a MAGA hat, or pray that God blesses our country, the Left hyperventilates over the specter of a fundamentalist theocracy on the rise. They envision America becoming a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia in which white male Christian mullahs hang homosexuals and imprison women for seeking abortions. The Left’s vision of the separation of church and state, therefore, is one in which Christian patriots and their values are best excluded from the halls of government power entirely.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that filmmaker and anti-Trump hysteric Rob Reiner is now bravely “taking on” this threat to democracy and globalism in his forthcoming documentary titled God & Country. Reiner, who once directed outstanding movies such as This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men, and Misery was reduced during Donald Trump’s presidency to unhinged political rants on X (then Twitter). He has attacked Trump as “a mentally ill sociopath,” a “sick criminal,” a “lying malignant narcissistic cancer,” and of course, a white supremacist.
Reiner continues to bash Republicans on social media and hype the existential threat of Trump’s return to presidential politics, but he managed to find the time to produce God & Country, in which, as The Hollywood Reporter describes it, “religious leaders and scholars, journalists and historians sound off about the threat of a movement that infuses Christian dogma with far-right politics.”
According to Variety, the film features interviews with political commentator David French, VeggieTales co-creator Phil Vischer; Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore; Islam apologist and failed CNN host Reza Aslan; Anthea Butler, race-mongering Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at UPenn; and various Christian evangelicals who give the film a patina of balance and political neutrality.
The trailer mixes interviews with footage of Trump supporters, church leaders talking about God saving America, and of course, the FBI-instigated Capitol chaos of January 6. “This is not a movement about Christian values, this is about Christian power,” intones one interviewee, while another states, “Christianity at its best is committed to love and truth and justice. If we do this right, what a country we will be” – suggesting that the good Christians are the ones who stay out of politics and devote themselves to social justice.
To clarify: Reiner is not the director on the project but the executive producer; his celebrity power will give the film a huge boost in the marketplace. The documentary is directed by Emmy-winner Dan Partland, who also directed 2020’s #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump. That film relied upon the contributions of such notable Trump-haters as his Press Secretary KellyAnne Conway’s husband George, who was a co-founder of the corrupt grifters of the Lincoln Project, and Malcolm Nance, a left-wing propagandist posing as a national security expert, to make the armchair diagnosis that then-President Trump was mentally unfit for the Oval Office (curiously, Partland has not released a documentary questioning Joe Biden’s mental fitness for the presidency).
“Christianity is in crisis,” Partland told Variety about the new film. He is correct about that, but precisely for the opposite reason that he means. Christianity is in crisis not because it is being corrupted by a lust for political power, but because Christians have become so marginalized politically and culturally. We are in a post-Christian era now, as I wrote above, but leftist content creators like Reiner won’t be satisfied until they deliver the coup de grace against their political enemies by demonizing them as a greater threat to American democracy than Islamic fundamentalists are (we’re actually a Republic, of course, but the Left loves to paint themselves as the guardians of “democracy”).
Democrat strategist James Carville, for example, stated recently on Bill Maher’s Real Time that Christian nationalism is – are you ready for this? – “a bigger threat than al-Qaeda to this country.” Of course, al Qaeda’s leadership of the global jihadist movement has been diminished over the years, but the cadaverous crank Carville’s suggestion is that Christians who believe they should be more engaged in politics are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists – a claim that would be laughable if it weren’t so morally reprehensible. He went on to add ominously that Christian nationalists “got the speaker of the House, they got probably at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more. Don’t kid yourself… this is a fundamental threat to the United States.”
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
“To be clear,” director Partland continued,
Christianity is not the problem, and having one’s faith inform one’s political beliefs is not the problem. The problem is the intertwining of a Christian identity with a political identity such that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The danger to democracy led me to explore this topic, but what I learned in the process is that the threat may be even greater to the Church itself.
Reiner recently tweeted a similar message: “Christian Nationalism is not only a danger to our Country, it’s a danger to Christianity itself.”
The notion that Partland and Reiner are deeply concerned about protecting Christianity from the secularizing corrosion of earthly power is ludicrous. Reiner is an avowed atheist. He and Partland are surely taking this seemingly sympathetic angle to present their film as being Christian-friendly.
Participant David French, who states astonishingly in the trailer that Christians are “leading the charge in malice and division” in this country, tweeted in his own defense,
I'm in a documentary produced by Rob Reiner, and lots of folks are mad at me for "partnering" with a person who isn't a Christian. But that anger is part of the problem. This is a pluralistic country. We "partner" together as citizens, and we have a shared interest in confronting Christian nationalism. I'm proud to partner with my Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and atheist friends who want to preserve our classical liberal republic.
What French doesn’t seem to grasp is that Reiner and his cohorts aren’t collaborating with French and his fellow evangelicals in an even-handed, good-faith, pluralistic effort to “preserve our classical liberal republic.” Reiner’s Party is the party of unbridled, totalitarian lust for power, and they are using useful evangelical idiots to demonize MAGA Americans and to help crush the political mobilization of Christian conservatives entirely.
Check out the trailer below:
In all fairness, my commentary is based so far only on the trailer and the politics of the filmmakers. God & Country will be released in theaters in February by distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories, at which time I will review it and amend my judgment of the film if Rob Reiner et al pleasantly surprise me – but I’m not holding my breath.
And to be clear, I do not support the idea of rule by theocracy, Christian or otherwise. But not only is there no danger of that happening in America, the real danger to democracy, and to our Republic, is already gathering momentum: a cabal of globalist elites aiming to amass power by way of the Great Reset and to control the population through techno-totalitarian surveillance and food scarcity.
Wake me when Rob Reiner makes a documentary about that.
It is another attempt to demonize religion of the Christian type and further divide us as a country.
Rob Reiner remains "meathead'. Only now he is not funny; he is a nasty anti American anti Christian ranter with $ to make films of his twisted version of reality.