Can Christian Nationalists Be Convinced to, You Know, Stop?

How do we talk to Racist Uncle?

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Earlier this week, I attended a screening for an upcoming documentary about Christian Nationalism that I’ll be writing about in a week or two. But there was a little Q+A situation afterwards that I’ve been thinking about. An audience member asked the panel (Russell Moore, Jemar Tisby and David French, moderated by the excellent Dr. Christinia Edmondson) how we could convince our Christian Nationalist friends and family members to, you know, stop being that. 

I forget who said what, exactly, but the panel’s general consensus was that there wasn’t much sense in trying to de-convert the converted. Instead, they suggested, we should focus on the Christian Nationalist-curious — those who haven’t quite drank the kool-aid but are sniffing the pitcher. 

That’s understandable, but it still feels like a cop out to me. It doesn’t really get at the heart of the question, which is becoming very common and often comes from a place of real hurt and concern. In my experience, people who want to talk a loved one down from some sort of Trump-y, MAGA-y Christian Nationalist cliff are asking with a broken heart. These people don’t just want their dad or their grandma to have better opinions or politics or whatever. They’re asking because they miss their dad or their grandma, from back before all they ever talked about was illegals, rising crime and election fraud. They want that old person back. I think of this experience one guy wrote about his mom’s final days: 

This was in January, she died two days after inauguration. I was watching when my dad called to tell me to come out to Arizona because she wasn’t going to leave the hospital. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in October and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia right at New Year’s. It was really fast. The thing is my mom was never Republican, my dad was always the standard fiscal Republican who didn't care really about social issues. She was a Brooklyn Jew who taught nursery school. The flip switched in 2008 and she just got scared of the world. Between Fox News and Facebook it just was a feedback loop of fear and hate. I went the other direction, I've slid pretty far left over the years. My brother and dad are both slightly Republican but got scared of my mom and I decreed whenever I visited she was not allowed to be blasting Fox 24/7 in front of my kids. She agreed and we ignored politics besides me seeing her like Ted Cruz posts on Facebook.

The night before she died (she chose to be taken off oxygen the next day) I guess she decided she needed one more hit and it was worth it to break our agreement. It was a Tucker segment about immigrants streaming over the border. I ate in silence, said goodnight and cried in the car.

I think a lot of people are justifiably concerned about having the same experience with their own parents or grandparents, and telling them to just focus on other people doesn’t help. So, what should we do instead?