NBC News is apparently getting concerned about recent polling showing former President Donald Trump beating President Joe Biden among Latinos and sees Christianity as a big reason why.
The news outlet brought out the Christian nationalist boogeyman in hopes of persuading some to change their mind.
“Latino evangelical support for Christian nationalism rises as Trump courts religious vote,” NBC headlined Monday.
Noticias Telemundo reporter Lourdes Hurtado, who wrote the NBC story, pointed to Trump’s appearance at the National Religious Broadcasters convention last month.
She quoted him saying, “We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity.”
“We have to bring back our religion; we have to bring back Christianity in this country!” – President Trump.⁰
Watch President Trump’s NRB Speech: https://t.co/NGJEPz6a34 pic.twitter.com/5l8eWbx6Te
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) February 23, 2024
“Trump’s rhetoric is linked to the ideology of Christian nationalism, which calls for America to be an unequivocal Christian nation in its laws and customs, and whose adherents don’t believe in a separation of church and state,” Hurtado claimed.
NBC grabbed on to her pronouncement in a Tuesday post on X about the story.
“Christian nationalism, which doesn’t separate between church and state and whose members are being courted by former President Trump, is rejected by most Americans but has grown among Latino evangelicals,” NBC said.
Christian nationalism, which doesn’t separate between church and state and whose members are being courted by former President Trump, is rejected by most Americans but has grown among Latino evangelicals. https://t.co/gEzmxxNh4c
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 12, 2024
No subtlety there. NBC’s message is clear: You don’t want to be associated with those people, do you?
Christian nationalism is a fairly new term that leftists made up to try to dissuade Christians from engaging politically or at least to suppress enough of their vote to allow Biden to win.
Democrats certainly don’t want Latinos to make that outcome harder to attain by voting for Trump.
In 2016, he carried 28 percent of the demographic, and that total went up to 36 percent in 2020, Reuters reported.
A New York Times/Siena College poll published earlier this month found Trump beating Biden with Latinos, 46 to 40 percent.
Hurtado pointed the finger at those darn Latinos who, she says, buy into Trump’s “ideology of Christian nationalism, which calls for America to be an unequivocal Christian nation in its laws and customs, and whose adherents don’t believe in a separation of church and state.”
“Though the majority of Americans (67%), reject or are skeptical of Christian nationalism, it resonates strongly with two religious groups: 66% of white evangelicals and 55% of Hispanic Protestants, who say they support or sympathize with this movement, according to a 2023 American Values Atlas survey conducted nationwide by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI),” she reported.
Christian nationalists just sound like faithful Christians.
The PRRI said the group includes those who reported reading the Bible weekly or more, attending religious services weekly or more, and praying once a week or more.
PRRI specifically says you are a Christian nationalist if you believe: “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation; U.S. laws should be based on Christian values; if the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore; being Christian is an important part of being truly American; and God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”
The first proposition is just silly: “declare America a Christian nation.” I’ve never heard anyone who the left likes to label Christian nationalists, like popular speaker and podcast host Lance Wallnau, Flashpoint host Gene Bailey, or Turning Point president Charlie Kirk, say such things.
The founders did not set up a system that even allows that. So no one has to be Christian to be truly American either.
James Madison made clear in the First Amendment and other writings at the time that there would be no established, mandatory religion in the United States, like European counties, including Great Britain had.
George Washington, while serving as president, wrote a famous letter in 1790 to a Jewish congregation saying, “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Similarly, President Thomas Jefferson reassured the Danbury Baptist Association in an 1802 letter that the First Amendment guaranteed their freedom of religion, and that the U.S. would have no official established religion.
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State,” he wrote.
As for PRRI’s other indices of Christian nationalism, they can be summarized as Christians wanting to see Godly values permeate the nation’s laws and culture. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a good thing.
Using that measurement, America’s greatest leaders were Christian nationalists.
The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, including Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, said we all have God-given, inalienable rights which are based on the “laws of nature and nature’s God.”
Washington, who commanded the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, exhorted his troops in a July 1776 order, “The blessing and the protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger.
“The General hopes and trusts, that every officer, and man, will endeavour so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.”
In his second inaugural address in March 1865, Abraham Lincoln cited the Bible four times and mentioned God 14 times to argue that slavery was wrong and the United States should abolish it.
He concluded, “As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,’” the 16th president said, quoting from Psalm 19.
President Franklin Roosevelt saw the fight against Adolf Hitler in World War II as necessary to preserve Christian civilization.
In a radio address in May 1941, just months before America’s entry into the already raging war, he said, “Today the whole world is divided between human slavery and human freedom — between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal.
“We choose human freedom — which is the Christian ideal. No one of us can waver for a moment in his courage or his faith. We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world.”
Franklin then led the nation in prayer in a radio address on D-Day, June 6, 1944, opening, “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”
President John Kennedy, in his much-celebrated inaugural address in January 1961, said, “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe–the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his “I Have A Dream” speech in favor of civil rights reform, said, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
“This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring,” he added.
Finally, in more recent times, Ronald Reagan, in one of the most noteworthy addresses of his presidency to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, made a call for Christian engagement in the public sphere.
“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself,” he said.
Neither Latino Christians nor any other Christian American should be cowed by NBC or the left from voting based on their faith.
Christian values are the key to helping make America great again.
