Season 6, Episode 23: Jenny, Danielle, Rebecca: Christian Nationalism and this Moment in Iran

“El mexicano frecuenta a la muerte, la burla, la acaricia, duerme con ella, la festeja, es uno de sus juguetes favoritos y su amor permanente.”
― Octavio Paz, El Laberinto de la Soledad

Lindsay Graham: https://abcnews4.com/news/local/after-laying-out-a-similar-plan-11-years-ago-lindsey-graham-hails-trumps-iran-operation

https://youtu.be/wjGgrU8g30c?si=Bly_wZswHLJr8gpw

Danielle (00:04):

I saw this thing from Lindsay Graham, this clip, and he was saying what we're doing in Iran now is going to ... And Lindsay Grand is a senator here in the United States. And he said he's going to ... What we're doing in Iran, quote, doing, because they're not calling it a war, they're calling it a special operation. He said is going to set the tone in the Middle East for the next 1000 years. And so you can go into your eschatology and your theology after this, Jenny, but he also then proceeded to say that this is a matter of which religion is going to be predominant in the planet. And they talked about Islam and they spoke about Christianity in those terms. And yeah, I wonder what comes up for you as I even just say those brief few sentences about theologically how we grew up or the frame you come from.

Jenny (01:03):

So much. I mean, so much. I think about how skewed and biased the interpretation of Revelation was in the world that I grew up in. And it was always like fear mongering, like barcodes were the mark of the beast. And then I know people in that same world that said that COVID vaccines were the mark of the beast and just like all of these things. And the mark of the beast was literally the numerical definition of Caesar Nero. It's nothing like we say it is. It was apocalyptic literature that was speaking to the time for a very specific purpose. And yet it has been co-opted. And I really appreciate this book from Bart Erman called Armageddon, and he breaks down the entire historical context for the Book of Revelation and then what has happened to it. And I was thinking about, I was nine, 10 years old when I watched the movie Left Behind with Kirk Cameron and I was terrified that the rapture was going to happen.

(02:16):

And it was only a year or so, maybe it was even in that same year that I watched the two planes hit the world Trade Center buildings on my family's television. And it was the same television I had just watched Left Behind on that year. And so in my little nine, 10, 11 year old brain, I was like, oh my God, those pilots got raptured and me and my mom are here in our living room and that's what happened.That's how quickly and how much that was associated with my consciousness and what I had been conditioned to. There's many more things that come to mind, but those are some of my first thoughts.

Danielle (03:00):

Well, even into my young adulthood, and maybe even now, it's been so ... We had to watch when I was little, we went to church and we watched these scenes of the United ... The rapture had happened. And then if you were left behind, then what would happen to you? And the only image I remember from these movies, and I should look them up, is people confessing Jesus because they wouldn't take the mark of the beast. And then they ... I wasn't even in kindergarten, so they put their heads through this guillotine and then they snapped down and people were beheaded. So I remember watching that at church and then at some point coming home and dreaming that the devil was in my room and then running outside and no one was in the garage. So I thought I'd been left behind. And oddly enough, even though I have moved away from that belief entirely about the rapture, if I wake up and everybody's gone or I'm not expecting it, even to this day, something flashes in my mind, "Oh, I wonder if that happened.

(04:11):

I wonder if I got left. I wonder if I didn't make it. " So those things have a lasting impact.

Jenny (04:18):

They do. They really do. I mean, I often think about ... So nine eleven happened and then that following summer, me and my mostly white dance studio from Colorado Springs was dancing at the Colorado State Fair to the song Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue. That's literally about bombing and destroying lives and people. And we were doing punches and kicks in these old Navy American flag t-shirts. And it was, again, this fusion of fear of the rapture with this belief in if Israel takes over all of the land around Palestine, then Jesus is going to come back. And I was so conditioned to be excited about the death and decimation of hundreds of thousands and millions of lives of people. And it is so devastating and infuriating to me to think about the rhetoric of those jihad terrorists over there conditioning children for war.

(05:31):

When I was literally being conditioned for war and the holy war and believing that I was on the side of God and these other people were on the side of Satan, it leads to so much dehumanization and harm. I hate it so much.

Danielle (05:50):

Yeah. It's almost like apocalyptic or ... I come back to the Handmaid's Tale and it ... Have you watched much of it or any of it? Okay. Well, a lot of people, I won't tell you, but it starts off with like, you don't really know what's happening, but they're escaping in their car, this family of three. And over the series, it flashes back so you get more of the story. But as it flashes back, I began to feel like, "Well, why didn't they get out sooner? What stopped them from leaving sooner? What was it? " And you see this progression both of this story about our Congress losing its powers or seeding its authority to a leader. And when I watched the movie, it was before this elect ... Well, watched the show. It was before this election and kind of during last year a bit.

(06:54):

But in my mind, I'm like, "Well, how did that happen?" And then as you watch the Senate vote, literally, and they don't vote to reign in war powers for Trump, you wonder what is happening? It's like not every president, but for this large scale of attack, there's no precedent for a president bypassing Congress and shooting the shit out of something, some other person in this scale and not having Congress involved. I mean, for all of Bush's faults and failures and horrors and lies, I mean, he did try to pitch it to Congress.

(07:33):

And so I'm not a Bush fan anyway, but sometimes I'm like, "Well, that was even better." But then you mix that with Doug Wilson of CREC and Pete Hegseth talking about Armageddon and we're doing this for Jesus. And then it just becomes almost impossible to untangle with people who believe that way. Yeah,

Jenny (07:59):

It does. It does. And the more I learn about Christian nationalism, the more this has been in the works for the last 50, 60, 70 years. And so we're seeing it in a huge, drastic way, but Bush and others that were elected from the moral majority were all part of that really long game plan to get America back to this very white, patriarchal, heteronormative view of Christianity, which in my mind isn't actually Christianity. It's not a historical version that the brown Jewish man from Palestine promoted. It was the bastardization of that when Constantine created this marriage between military and state and Christianity. And I think since 300s, AD, there's been this snowball that's just continued to grow and grow and grow and we're seeing it play out right now.

(09:25):

Yeah. I noticed that it puts me in quite a dissociated state, which is very familiar to me. And I think that's largely what my childhood was, was being dissociated and actually thinking that that was a good thing because this life meant nothing.This was all a means to an end until heaven. And so then even as I say that, I feel grief because I've come to feel that this life is really, really significant. I just watched this beautiful documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light about the poet, Andrea Gibson's Journey with Cancer. And it was such a profound image of how meaningful relationships and love and life are. And I didn't know that in this Christian nationalist world. Relationships were always a means to an end to something. My own body was a means to an end to something. And so it takes a lot of work for me to drop back into my body because of this conversation and because of what's playing out in our world.

(11:21):

And that's really real.

Danielle (11:23):

Yeah. I just went through that first module of SE training. So I'm all over the language, Jenny. I know what you're talking about. Well, talk to me a little bit about an escapable threat then. When you say that, I think most people think, oh, and then their minds are twirling. I know my mind was when I first started learning about it, and it resonated a lot for me, but walk me through how you think of that for you.

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.