we are going to hear from a historian a nationally recognized expert on religious freedom. dr. mark david hall is the herbert hoover distinguished professor of politics at george fox university. he is also a senior fellow at baylor universities institute for a study of religion. he has written, edited, or co-edited a dozen books on religion and politics. those are in america, i thought those are two topics you are supposed to talk about, religion and politics, but he has written one that is called, did america have a christian founding? that is controversial today. his next book which will be released next spring is entitled, proclaim liberty throughout all the land, how christiane lee has advanced freedom and equality for all americans. i will tell, you if we ever have a prey vote stand book club, we will start with his collection. tonight, he is here to lead us in exploring the origins of the term christian nationalism. please welcome, dr. mark david hall. >> thanks to the family research council and the robertson school of government for hosting this event. i literally would have done it anywhere, but i was thrilled when i heard it was going to be a quarter stone chapel. my brother in law and sister-in-law our members here in the family warships here, and we have also worship here on multiple occasions when we've come to visit. and i'm just always blessed by the musical worship, i love your pastors preaching, you will have a great church, and thank you for hosting this tonight. so, if you look at the history of the term christian nationalists, what you will find is prior to no one, 2000, six no one was using. it's not literally, no one, but it was rarely used. and it was not used as it was used today. we should be clear about this. christians were not running around calling themselves christian nationalists, christians were not saying, we need to advocate for christian nationalism. christian nationalism came about really about 2006 as a term of criticism written by people that were highly critical of what they described as a toxic mix. americans who wanted to conflate god and country. but that is not all, they are racist, they are sexist, they are militarist. think of almost every-ism or is that you don't like, and that is christian nationalism. now these early books, a few were written by academics, and most written by popular authors or activists or -- who worked for places like the freedom for mulligan foundation. that should maybe give a hint as to where some of these are coming from. and they made some ridiculous arguments. i document some of these. i will just mention one now. many of them attribute christian nationalism to the work of an obscure calvinist theologian up -- who almost no one has heard of, who influenced almost no one. now they like him because he does say he is a post millennial, he says a kingdom of god will advance, and when it advances, societies will become christian, and they will adopt biblical law. and then the societies, homosexuals will be put to death if they engage in homosexual activity, men will dominate the church and the state, to encourage-able juvenile delinquents will be put to death. drawing from livid occult passages. so that sounds really scary, right? for christians, who would want to live in the sort of society. well one problem is, it is pretty easy to document it. i do in it publication that will be linked tonight. really, no one follows that. there are a few thinkers that are in influenced a little bit, but really, not at all. so the flavor of argument, this is when 2006 began the dribble of books that came out every couple of years. an article about would come out. things escalated with the january 6th 2021 attack on the u.s. capitol building. this is, when you follow that it, all christian nationalists have attacked the u.s. capitol building. i was flying back from a speaking engagement on january 6th and i got a message from a reporter who wanted a comment on the christian images among the rioters at the capitol riot. and i said, while i've been flying, send me some. she sent me about five images, three of them were literally 1.5 miles from the u.s. capital. there was a rally that they were christians came together and prayed to overturn the results of the election as is our constitutional right, they had some signs and crosses in the sort of thing, they were not necessarily among the riders. they were far more people there than at the rioters. well if you turned to the actual riot, you have the evergreen state pine -- pine state flag, which says on it, an appeal to god. well that sounds kind of christian, and it could be from judges, but it also could be from locked second treaties. or they could've brought it up because it is a revolutionary era flag. the only distinctively christian photo that they had from the actual ride it was a guy holding a bible in front of it. in front of the riders. upshe ignored me and the headlie the next day >> she completely ignored my caution and headlined the next day in the so dinners mcgeachin article, everywhere, is christian nationalists have attacked the u.s. capitol building. and if you look at images from that day, what you will see is a sea of american flags. a sea of maga hats, a confederate flag, the crazy viking dude, and eventually there did come out of christian flag was there and a few other images are there. there were some prayers sitting on the capitol. so there were certainly some questions there who thought they were acting as god would have them act, presumably. they weren't, let's be crystal clear about that. attacking the u.s. capitol building, attacking anything, really, is never acceptable. well, since january 6th, and before, some more serious books have started to come out. this is by academics, people like samuel perry -- paul miller, and others. i checked these to be scholars acting in good faith, attempting to measure the phenomenon of christian nationalists. now, like the earlier authors, they describe it a toxic mix. racism, sexism, militarism, this is a horrible, scary, thing. and i'm kind of terrified if there are in fact americans who hold those views. and unfortunately, i am afraid, that there are. i would like to think, and i'm pretty sure it's a really tiny number, in rural parts of the country. i won't say what part of the country because i don't want to insult any particular region. but, they came up with a measure, away of measuring, this were they concluded that in fact, 52% of americans are either fully supportive or partially supportive of this horrible, toxic, stu, they call christian nationalism. now this is a scary thought. if half of american citizens are partially supportive of christian nationalism, then we may be in trouble. fortunately, there measures are fundamentally flawed. they are really good at measuring whether or not one is a strict separation is. so the questions they utilize involve things like should religious memorials be permitted on public land. in other words, should blends bird cross in maryland be permitted, or should it be torn down, like the american humans association wanted to do. should the ohio holocaust memorial be permitted to have a star of david, or should this be prohibited as a freedom from religion argument. so are you in favor of the separation of church and state, should prayers be allowed in public schools or should schools presumably banned prayers. this, again, is a very bad set of measures to measure this horrible, toxic, stu, that we call christian nationalism. i think, and again, i want to assume that the authors are acting in good faith, but there are a few lines throughout the book that i think kind of give away the bias that is implicit or otherwise. if you are pro-life, you are considered merely controlling women's bodies. i wonder if the women in here who are pro-life know this, and women are just as likely to be fully pro-life as men. i think you could be the most pro-choice american in the entire world and still understand that pro lifers are concerned with protecting innocent human lives. you may think they're wrong, but to accuse them of simply being interested in controlling women's bodies is just wrong. or, they say, these christian nationals are attempting to define religious liberty as something more than the freedom of worship. well, this is news to me as a student in the first amendment, which begins, congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. the first amendment has always, religious liberty has always meant more than freedom to worship. we have the freedom to act upon our religious convictions whenever possible. of course, there are appropriate limits put on this, you don't need to sacrifice a child to the sun god, but we do have the freedom to act. and yet, according to white headed perry, if we try to defend a more robust understanding of religious liberty, you are a bigot. and of course, what they have in mind is jack phillips, mayor no statement, another christian creative professionals who refused to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies. all right, so i think these measures are bad. now, fortunately, not also see all just are the same. there are a couple of sociologist a pennsylvania state who that have come out with a recent article, smith and adler, i think the names are. which i think have a much more reasonable -- i think christian ashton is a thing. i am not going to have time to describe what it is, i assure you, it is not this horrible, toxic, mix, that is described by the critics of christian nationalism. christian nationalism does exist, and it is embraced by maybe 20% of the american population. we can perhaps talk about that a little later. >> let me mention recently, over the last year, for the first time, christians have started coming out and embracing the label of christian nationalists. marjorie taylor greene, for one. there are a couple of academics who might know, who are good, solid, christians, and i can assure you they are not racist, they are not sexist, they are not military stick. but they are writing books saying we should embrace christian nationalism, let's reclaim christian nationalism. christian nationalism is a good thing. but i understand what they mean, but again, i assure, you they are not advocating for racism, sexism, -- the whole nine yards. they are advocating for the importance of the -- importance of culture, that sort of thing. i think this is a very imprudent move. christian nationalism is a concept, it is a term in tempted by critics. we should not embrace it. we should just simply identify ourselves as christians. we are christians, we are followers of christ, we have an obligation, a god given obligation, a biblical obligation, to be involved in politics. to be involved in the city. to be fighting for justice, liberty, and freedom for all. that is our obligation, and we cannot fall away from it. but we cannot embrace this term of christian nationalism that is just imprudent and it is handing victories to our critics. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank, you dr. hall. and now can be the time when you can take out your phone if you would like, and we are going to have a poll question. so you will see a qr code that will be on the screen, if you want to take a picture of that, and those of you online have the poll question there for you. so if we could pull that up on the screen there it is. so go ahead, take a snapshot of that with your phone. and that will bring up the link, and you can take the poll question. does everybody have that? >> if anybody is having trouble, we have got a group of five year old in the back that can help you use your smartphone. all right, let's see. can we bring the poll question up on the screen? here it is. what is christian nationalism. not certain, but definitely not with the left says it is. a creation of the media, an attempt to intimidate christians who care about their country or all of the above. so go ahead, take that poll question, and we will get the results and share those with you. there is the poll question, those online, take that poll question and it will all be combined together. all right, to share with us about how the term christian nationalism is being used, is one of the most accomplished men you've probably never heard of. stephen quaglin is in attorney, he is a decorated officer and specialist on issues that relate to terrorism and subversion. in september of 2001, steven was mobilized with from his private sector career and assigned to the director to intelligence with joint chief of staff as a major in the united states army reserve. he was assigned to serve and and strategic communications. he has been recognized as the pentagon's leading expert on islamic law as it relates to national security. today, he is principal of unconstrained analytics which is a 501(c) (3). dedicated to analysis of evidence, on constrained by pre-conceptions and biases. i will repeat that. that is what the media used to do. it is a dedicated analysis of the evidence, unconstrained by preconceived shuns and biases. sounds like the perfect guy to unpack for us how words and labels can be and are being used for particular ends. please welcome steven cognizant. >> thank you very much, it is a pleasure to be here. what i would like to say before anything else is, i was -- in office for a few years ago, and he has a little thing, that memorializes the tree between america and britain at the end of the revolutionary war and you know who the witness of that document wasn't writing -- to the question that people have to ask themselves, i grew up, i think we all grew up god and country. when did that stop being the rule? and why is it stopping the rule, and how did it get so far. but i'm going to do, what i do, an unconstrained allen licks is that i'm going to take a look at issues from the political warfare perspective. so this is not going to be a political analysis. you get that from people better than me at that. we are not going to look at it theologically because that is not my area here at all. but we are going to say, if we are looking at this like we looked at a foreign country, how it would define, and we are going to run with it. so political warfare is the insurgency model, it are -- that is the dominant form of the left occupies the united states right now. as relates to this discussion, what i really want to point out is that one of the things that exist, if you read the books that colleges or universities about critical race theory or intersectionality, you read too much. what we want to do is get people to understand that it is much more simple. but if you really understood how simple it was, you would simply know how to fight back. so, what is intersectionality. that is to take a value, a value that is held in a culture and they are going to create, make up, a phony term. and they are going to give that term every negative attribute they can come up with that they are focusing. so, patriotic christians, we've become now christian nationalists. and it will be defined negatively. in the point will be in the media to collide the one with the other and what would be called in the language of marxism, a negation. and it is as simple as that. so what they do is they create these intersectional lines of operation. black lives matter. what does that do, it attacks on race. lgbt says that we demand that you accept our metaphysical claim of gender over the scientifically verified fact, and biology, of sex. that's what this is all about, and it is all about intimidating people. they don't care that they get their fellow travelers to say, lgbtq and let their children go to letterbox in a school. they had one in their mind when they got you to accept it, by not doing anything about it. so what i'm going to do is instead of over engineering all of this, i am going to take things they have said and i'm going to focus on jim artist b and bob roberts, because there are some of the meeting voices in this, and i want some of you to know how they are defined in their own words. is that fair enough? and what i'm going to do is i'm going to go across the leading piece there and won a percentage of the people here lift their heads up, we are going to the next slide, fair enough? so, christian nationalism is an information campaign designed to synchronized with january 6th narratives. reading these twitter feeds, three things will emerge. one, they say what they think. so you really don't have to assess what they are saying at this level of analysis. to, they're broadcasting openly through twitter and in the media, we are seeing that. and three, the little political warfare point is that they are so confident that they're in charge there in gauged and what's called open communication. they are not worried that you did not hear what they said, because they are recently confident that even if you understood what they said was not right, you are not going oh quite what they meant. so here is one on ja'marr'tis b and i will let you read that. it has to do with january 6th. and now we will move to the next one. it directly attacks american christians for being american christians. for being politically active. as such, is an attack on identity. the guys that are right to say that you are an american, you are a question. think about, it lgbt says that you are not allowed to call yourself a woman if you are woman, or a man if you are a man. when you add all of these intersectional lines of attack, it destroys your political yourself a person. and that is the objective. so, christian nationalism is also designed to synchronize with the unit times 16 19 project, the objective, to alienate disenfranchise christians from their own history. do you think that is happening? you know how to take classes in a place like the church to find out what your american history is any more. and your kids are being told something that gets them so spun up you can't even talk to your kids. that is not a outcome. whether directly or indirectly, the christian nationalism narrative is designed to tie into marxist critical race theory efforts that identify all american institutions as racist, as noted, it is an intersectional line of effort. >> and, of course, these are their own words. the narrative is delegitimizing along christian lines. reverend robertson is multi fit neighbors network has powerful international tie and's. roberts lichens american christians to a grift in class of my changes at the temple. if i'm going too fast, just say. the goal is to see what they are saying in their own words. suggesting that christians who defend themselves, the institutions they created, their value, and their way of life is on christian for that reason. suggesting that christians do have do not have a right to defend themselves and their way of life. implying maybe, with, cost republican leaders are just as anxious alienated from their base as the left. after all, roberts multi faith network appears to have lincoln project -- we have to break this graphic into two, so there is the one, holiday, ambassador. and here it is with the lincoln project. >> and not just a little support from the white house. fort is the, the people who created the american public are america's greatest threat to the american republic precisely because they don't want a democratic marxist republic. americas christian roots are being reduced to mythologies, first up and delegitimizing a person's history, in furtherance of disenfranchising them from it. gaslighting the values of american christians based on assumptions that are then turned into facts and then declared erroneous. watch the weasel language perceived. we perceive that they do this, but the rest of the sentence is treated as if it is a fact, to attack you. appe