Lisa Jacob says she felt the impact of Christian nationalism since she was little. When she was growing up in D-FW, neighbors would cross the street to avoid her family and strangers would tell her to “go back where you came from.”
“Shortly after 9/11, my family and I experienced a lot of harassment,” said Jacob, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. Her family is Christian, she says, but she still feels the impact of Islamophobia.
Today, the 35-year-old former pastor is fighting Christian nationalism as North Texas’ first field organizer — and the nation’s first field organizer — for Christians against Christian nationalisma group that fights a religious ideology considered by many to be a growing threat in America.
Jacob, who took office in November, describes Christian nationalism as “a convergence of religious and national identities such that to be Christian is to be politically engaged in a very narrow way, and to be American, it’s about defending Christian values and Christian values.” identity.” This ideology causes anyone who is not or does not appear to be Christian to be treated as “less than” and un-American, she said.
A recent Public Religion Research Institute survey of Christian nationalism found that 29% of Americans are either “adherents” or “sympathizers” of Christian nationalism, based on their agreement with several tenets of the ideology. Twenty-seven percent of all Americans surveyed at least mostly agree that “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation” and at least 38 percent largely agree that fact that “if the United States moves away from our Christian foundations, we will no longer have a country.” .”
Christian nationalist ideas are expressed in the rhetoric of a increasing number of Republican politicians, including former President Donald Trump and far-right leaders such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. In a 2022 speech praising the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Boebert said she was “tired of this separation of the waste of Church and State” and called the United States a nation “created to glorify God.” Scholars and experts have argued that Christian nationalism is a “main supporter» of Trump and, as New York Times title, “one of Trump’s most powerful weapons.”
Christians Against Christian Nationalism is a project of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Libertya nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC. In her work for the project, Jacob focuses on educating North Texans about what she sees as the dangers of Christian nationalism and mobilizing affected residents to speak out and vote against plans to law likely to threaten the protection of religious minorities.
Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaigns against the implementation of new Texas law which allows public schools to employ chaplainsincluding those without licenses, with money earmarked for school security.
Last year the group helped organize chaplains across Texas sign a statement of opposition to the law before it is signed into law in September. Jacob is now focused on the March deadline, when all Texas school districts will vote individually on whether to use their security funding to pay chaplains. Her organization is creating educational resources to help people know when their school boards are voting on the proposal and what impact it would have on them.
Jacob’s organization chose North Texas to hire its first field organizer for two reasons, she said. “The threat of Christian nationalism is great in our region, but it is a place where we have also built strong partnerships. »
Local partners include Fellowship Southwest, the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas and Faith Commons, in addition to churches committed to combating Christian nationalism. The group has built a “bipartisan coalition” of area residents, Jacob said, that “lends itself to many diverse perspectives and ideas.”
“These are people who are committed to living their faith. Faith is not for them a theoretical thing or a private thing, but faith becomes the thing that pushes them to love their neighbor well, and this is how they fight against Christian nationalism.
Joy Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.
