Religious scholar explains how Christian nationalists 'leverage' the Bible for their bidding

30 July

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Biblical scholar and popular TikToker Dan McClellan told Mother Jones he has little appreciation for Christian nationalism, which appears to be the latest fad folks are pouncing.

“I think a lot of people are jumping at the opportunity to get on board this attempt to take over the government on the part of Christians,” said McClellan. “And unfortunately, it means hurting an awful lot of people along the way.”

McClellan told ‘More to the Story’ Host Al Letson that he had witnessed enough abuse and misinterpretation of the Bible and began pushing back on Tik Tok, where he found an audience that often opposes maneuvering the Biblical into a weapon. One of McClellan’s popular clips show him deconstructing the claims of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, who refuses to call himself a “Christian nationalist” while insisting he is both a “Christian” and a “Nationalist.”

“This means you’re just a Christian nationalist who doesn’t like the label ‘Christian nationalist,’” McClellan said of Kirk in the video.

“[Kirk] is an example of somebody I get tagged in his videos a lot and I try not to engage unless there’s a plausible case to be made that what he’s talking about overlaps with the Bible,” McClellan said. “That’s an example of somebody who right now is trying to leverage the Bible in defense of Christian nationalism because that’s the hot new thing right now is to be a Christian nationalist. And I think a lot of people are jumping at the opportunity to get on board this attempt to take over the government on the part of Christians.”

The Bible, he said, “has to be interpreted,” which means “whoever best interprets the text in support of their ideologies is going to be able to leverage that ultimate authority.”

“It’s a very attractive instrument ... to serve their own ends. And unfortunately, far too often that means powerful people using that as a tool against less powerful people and groups,” McClellan said.

There are parts of the Bible that have God saying: “Show no mercy,” said McClellan, but using those words to call empathy a sin is a great way to tear down the fundamentals that make society work and create a nation of warring enclaves.

“The notion of the sin of empathy is just an attempt to try to overturn the fact that we’re social creatures and we are evolutionarily and experientially predisposed to feel what other people are feeling,” McClellan said. “That is what allows us to cooperate. That’s what allows us to build larger and more complex social groups without things breaking down. Empathy is important to the survival of humanity.”

“The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination. The Bible says God created the universe out of nothing. The Bible says you should beat your kids—a lot of different claims about what the Bible says,” says McClellan. What matters, he said is “to share what we think the authors were trying to say when they wrote whatever they did right in the Bible.”

Read the full Mother Jones report at this link.

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